Madam Speaker, I am not one bit surprised Conservatives are not happy to hear that. We should hear some earth-shattering testimony from the mayor of Brampton in relation to foreign interference during that leadership contest.
I will bring this to the issue we are talking about right now. We are talking about removing the GST on some essential items during a time when Canadians experience, and will be experiencing, a stretch in their wallet from paying for things over the holidays.
I heard from a Conservative member, maybe 20 or 30 minutes ago, who said the only people who will benefit from this are billionaires. I am sorry, do billionaires buy car seats in the dozens? Am I missing something? Do billionaires buy diapers at Costco in bulk? What am I missing here? Only a Conservative would get up and say an initiative like this would only benefit billionaires. It is absolutely ludicrous.
What I find most troubling, and it has been highlighted several times today, is another flip-flop by the Conservatives. All we ever hear from them is “axe the tax”. They will not even axe the tax. Literally, we have a tax here that we are ready to axe, and the member for St. Albert—Edmonton does not even want to axe it. This is the hypocrisy. Not only is it hypocritical in the sense that Conservatives are always running around talking about axing the tax, but this is a tax they proposed axing in the last election, literally. Now the member from St. Albert-Edmonton and the member for Carleton, the current leader of the Conservative Party, do not want to axe it.
Let us go back to 2021 for a second because it is really important to put this into context. Erin O'Toole was the leader, and I am sure we all remember what happened. His finance critic was the member for Carleton. The member for Carleton, now the Leader of the Opposition, had made a statement about the governor of the Bank of Canada. What did Erin O'Toole do at the time? He said to the Leader of the Opposition, “You're out, and I'm putting the member for Abbotsford in your position.”
This is important context and I will get to it in a second, but I think it is safe to say there was no love lost between those two. They did not get along. Even during the 2021 election, we could almost feel the animosity between the member for Carleton and Erin O'Toole. Notwithstanding that, when Erin O'Toole made his platform announcement about getting rid of the GST for one month in December, do members know who celebrated it, reposted it, talked about it and made it an issue?