Mr. Speaker, the member has made the industry committee entertaining and interesting in all aspects. I do enjoy serving with him. It has been a good committee to serve on, and the member has made it a good environment for that.
I want to be very clear about where our current predicament started. It was partly with the member for Beauce as the minister of industry. I do not know if the member for Central Okanagan—Similkameen—Nicola supported the member for Beauce, who has now created his own People's Party. It was the policy direction of basically taking the spectrum auction in and not using it appropriately. The question is, with regard to policy, why we did not actually put more competitive things in place.
There were other expenditures that the previous government did. An example is the implementation of the HST, which the previous government did and the NDP opposed by itself. People now pay HST on their phones and their services, and if they are happy about it, they have the previous government to thank for it. By the way, the $6 billion used to grease the wheels of the provinces is still being paid with interest, because we are still in record deficits, thanks to the record deficit the previous government put us in.
Germane to this discussion is the issue surrounding the cap. The cap is to put in price stability, which is necessary right now. The member described this idea as absurd. However, the reality is that many countries have used this, including our own country when it comes to utilities and telephone prices. Why is that an absurd idea, when other countries use this type of measure to protect consumers?