Madam Speaker, just to follow up on the comment by my colleague from Prince George—Peace River—Northern Rockies about forestry, was he kidding? The Conservatives under Harper, with Harper's softwood sellout, lost a billion dollars, basically snatching defeat from the jaws of victory. Not only that, but they closed 200 softwood plants across the country. That cost us 100,000 workers. There is a lot of resentment about Harper's softwood sellout and the lost jobs, not only in Prince George but also right across the country.
I am sorry, but when the Conservatives start talking about softwood workers, they should give me a break. Their policies were terrible. That was the worse, most corrupt government in Canadian history; it was incompetent in financial management and had many scandals, which were all covered up by the Conservatives. Now they have the audacity to say they took care of forestry workers. They sure did: They threw them out of work. That is not how an NDP government works. We make sure that people get good, unionized jobs. People have the wherewithal to put food on the table and keep a roof over their head.
I want to come back to what the NDP has accomplished. When we look at the bill that we will be voting on tomorrow, it is another example of the NDP putting pressure on the government to get it to actually do the right thing. The government does the wrong thing. It has followed what the Conservatives put into place far too many times, such as the massive overseas tax havens that cost us over $30 billion a year, according to the Parliamentary Budget Officer, courtesy of the Harper regime and every single Conservative MP. Their constituents cannot thank them for pharmacare, dental care, anti-scab legislation or affordable housing, but they can thank their Conservatives MPs for allowing the richest and most entitled people in Canada, as well as the most profitable corporations, to take over $30 billion in taxpayer money offshore every year. That is thanks to the Harper regime. Its most notable achievement was to hollow out and gut the federal budget.
It is because of those things that we have the current motion before us tonight. We simply cannot ever trust Conservatives to do the right thing. We cannot always trust the Liberals to do the right thing either, but when they accept NDP leadership, they do end up doing the right thing. As far as Conservatives are concerned, Conservatives simply do not. That is why we need a motion that actually gets us through all the gates and obstacles, so we can get this GST relief to Canadians.
Colleagues will recall, of course, that it was the member for Burnaby South who called for this, who said we needed to take the GST off family essentials. The NDP members think differently from the Liberals and the Conservatives, who are always just paying lip service. In the case of the Conservatives, they are badly damaging the country every time they get the reins of power.
The NDP called for taking the GST off all essentials. That includes the cellphones that we use, which are an essential service. We pay far too much for our cellphone bills. We are being gouged in this country. We also want to take the GST off home heating, children's clothing and a variety of other essentials. The government has done part of that, but certainly not all of it. We believe that, this Christmas season, we have a responsibility as parliamentarians to step up and actually get the GST relief adopted. Now, Conservatives do not feel that way. They prefer to be imposters. They would love never to do anything to help anybody. That is their modus operandi: They come into the House and pontificate but never accomplish a damn thing.
If we compare the leaders who will be contesting the next election, we know that the Liberals are not popular. There is no doubt that they have made a number of mistakes. I will take the member for Carleton and the member for Burnaby South and compare both of their accomplishments. I will take one for the last 20 years and the other one for the last 20 weeks. Let us take the member for Carleton over the last 20 years. What is his singular accomplishment? I have been in the House for that same period of time, and I can tell members that the one thing he did in 20—