Madam Speaker, even the Liberals had second thoughts about the slapdash tax and its impact, and they issued a partial refund. The refund was paid from the government to a distributor, who did the honourable thing and returned the refund directly to farmers.
However, almost a year later, the government has decided that it wants the money back, and it is demanding interest. Fairness seems to apply only to Liberal insiders. How fair is it that farmers who are suffering from poor policy decisions are now on the hook for the NDP-Liberal government's being too reprehensible to honour a rebate?
Recently I had the opportunity to ask bureaucrats from across departments whether the action was even legal and how they had received the power to make such a decision. They could not answer. One person even suggested that it was up to the individual border agents.
It is beyond ridiculous to suggest that a decision impacting farmers' livelihood and costing millions of dollars did not follow procedure or was not grounded with a law or policy. It is absurd for the government to suggest that such a decision would and could be made by an individual CBSA agent. However, in the wacko government, apparently nobody bothered to check first.
Now let us look at the finance minister and her vibe cheque, because yes, now the government is slashing temporarily and spending $6.28 billion in a thinly veiled attempt to buy votes from Canadians who are already earning a six-figure income. One might think that they could take a moment and think to use some of the money to pay off the over $1.2 trillion in national debt, but why would they? Going deeper in the hole for showmanship and self-glorification is the ultimate Liberal play, tried and true.
Do not take my word for it; here is testimony from Jeff, the owner of a small business in my riding: “How does the government expect my small business to take HST off of all of these items in one night? We have to collect the HST December 13 and have it off on December 14. How am I supposed to manually do this for all the items in a convenience store? It would be easier to close my business for two months than to do all of this. This is an absolute joke and a travesty to lay this on small business owners and right before Christmas and for only two months. It's going to take me a week to manually change every item. If I get it wrong, I'm going to be charged interest by our government. What an absolute embarrassment of a government, and no wonder no one wants to start a small business anymore.”
Small businesses are the backbone of the Canadian economy, and what I hear when I am speaking with Canadians is that from farms to convenience stores, everything the NDP-backed Liberal government is doing is set to destroy them. Canadians are tired of the relentless, oppressive flood of ineptitude coming from our Prime Minister and his horde of yes-men and yes-women.
People do not want policy and government run from scribbles off the back of a napkin. They deserve a positive change. They want hope for a better future. They want common sense, and only a Conservative government will give them that.
We will axe the tax, letting people keep more of their money that they worked so hard for. We will build homes, starting by removing the GST on new builds, which will save people up to $50,000, and get an additional 30,000 homes built every year. We will fix the budget, beginning with a dollar-for-dollar rule to curb excessive government spending. We will stop the crime by repealing the broken catch-and-release bail policies that are endangering our lives.
I plead with the Liberal government to hand over the unredacted documents to the RCMP and let it do the investigation. Let us get Parliament going. Canadians deserve accountability and transparency from the Liberal government, and they want it today.