Mr. Speaker, it is almost as if the Conservatives have an allergy to good ideas when they are working and helping Canadians, if they do not actually fit the Conservative ideology at the time. The ecoENERGY retrofit program was a great example.

The Conservatives started up a program, which was supported broadly by the building trades community in Canada and by Canadians who wanted to do something about climate change and reduce the cost of home heating. The Conservatives started the program up and then killed it. Then they realized it was working really well, because their own analysis said it was, and they started it up again, and then they killed it again.

They cannot imagine why the building sector in Canada has no faith in the Conservative government. It is because they cannot keep a straight thought consistent for more than two times in a row.

We have also seen this with the Conservatives getting rid of the small business hiring tax credit, which is a program that was obviously well applied.

This reminds me of a conversation I had with a Conservative minister about the ecoENERGY program, but in this case it was specifically about a program to help Canadians get into more efficient automobiles. When we were on the plane, he said it was unbelievable that the program was oversubscribed and there were so many people coming into it. My first intuition was that if it was working for the Canadian auto sector building cars here, and it was working for Canadians by lowering the cost of filling up at the pump, and it was helping out the environment, then an oversubscribed program is a wonderful problem to have. His response was so indicative of how Conservatives think about these things, because he said, “No, no; we're cancelling it”, and they did. Two weeks later they cancelled the program outright.

At some point one has to say that Conservatives never let the facts get in the way of a good argument.

Nathan Cullen

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