Madam Speaker, I would not say his name because I am not allowed to do that, but it was the Leader of the Opposition who did that. Just to put it into context, they were not exactly friends; I would argue that they did not get along. Yet the member for Carleton, the current Leader of the Opposition, liked that so much that he was willing to put aside his differences with Erin O'Toole to celebrate the fact they had brought that along.
Flash forward to now: Suddenly Conservatives do not want to axe the tax anymore. That is where we are. The Leader of the Opposition is saying this is a phony scam that will result in nothing and this is just a trick. He should talk to some of the businesses and restaurants in downtown Kingston about whether or not it will be beneficial to remove the GST from takeout and from eating in restaurants in January.
When I was younger, in my 20s, I worked in the hospitality industry in Kingston. The slowest month of the year is January, and February would probably be the next slowest. This is the time when we can genuinely impact those businesses. We are very proud of the number of restaurants we have in downtown Kingston. I am not sure if it is because we are heavily populated by all the Queen's students, but we like to think we have the most independent restaurants per capita in the country.
This will directly benefit them. This is not just about giving a break, although millions of people will benefit and will rejoice in it, not just the billionaires, as Conservatives would say. This is about helping our economy keep moving and helping those small businesses that would typically have a slower time.
I also hear Conservatives saying it is really difficult for small business owners to change the sales tax on their system for two months. Back in the 1990s, when I was doing it, we used to change it on a nightly basis based on drink prices changing every night. It is very simple to go in there and change what is currently marked at 5% to 0%. They can even do it now from a smart phone for all of the restaurants they might have throughout the country. They do not even need to physically be at the terminal to do it anymore. I am sure not everybody is using that technology, but the red herring the Conservatives are throwing around here, that it is just going to be a massive, complex thing for a restaurant or a small business to change the tax percentage from 5% to 0%, is nothing more than that: just a red herring.
It apparently was not going to be a problem when it was only going to happen for one month in December 2021, when Erin O'Toole proposed it and the member for Carleton, the leader of the opposition, celebrated it. It would have been simple to do in 2021, but I guess in 2024, the technology has reverted back to the 1950s or 1960s and it will be next to impossible to do.
Of course, I am dripping with sarcasm here because I cannot stand to listen to the hypocrisy over and over from Conservatives on this. They actively want to see something fail rather than try to support Canadians. They have a choice when we get to voting on this whether or not they want to give this tax holiday. By the way, we are not even the ones who most recently used the term “tax holiday”; it was literally in their platform in the last election.
Every Conservative sitting here agreed when they ran that for December 2021 that it was a great idea to give a tax holiday to consumers. Suddenly in 2024, it is the worst thing we could have ever thought up. It is literally the exact same program. This is just typical. It happens over and over. Conservatives continually do this. Every Conservative sitting here also ran on a platform of pricing pollution. What did they do there? They just completely flip-flopped on that. They suddenly said because they are not doing it, it is a horrible idea. That is not their job in here. Their job in here is to hold the government accountable, not make it their mission to see that absolutely everything fails to the detriment of Canadians. That is what they are doing.
Whether it is filibustering, or whether it is voting against measures for Canadians they dreamed up in the last election, they are always doing it. They just hate the idea. It is more important to them to see political failure on this side of the House rather than seeing Canadians get ahead. They are more interested in political failure and seeing the government fail than they are in helping Canadians.
I would encourage all members, including those who have been silenced by the leader of the opposition, to vote in favour of this later today. It is good legislation and it is legislation we know they like too.