NDP finance critic Bruce Ralston is planning to file a formal complaint alleging that Finance Minister Colin Hansen misled legislature about pre-election discussions concerning the HST.

Ralston said Friday that the documents contradict what he'd been told by Hansen when questioned in legislature in November, 2009.

Ralston had repeatedly and pointedly asked Hansen about any discussion the government might have had about the harmonized sales tax before the May election.

At one point he asks, "There was no discussion at any level, between the minister of finance, his officials, and the premier and his office and his officials, about the HST, between January, when it was first raised publicly in Ontario, and the end of May -- is that the minister's position?"

Hansen responded: "That is correct."

"When you actually see what you suspected was always there in the hard documents, it is a surprise, even a shock, because I asked Colin Hansen as finance minister in the legislature some very specific questions about the existence of briefing documents of discussion prior to the May 2009 election, and he was very emphatic in saying no," Ralston said.

Ralston went on to say that he intended to call for Hansen to step down.

"In the legislature, you're expected to tell the truth, and if you don't, there is a way of bringing it out before legislature and asking the speaker to rule on that. And that's certainly my plan, based on what I've heard so far.

"It amounts to another way of saying this minister should be replaced. He said he won't resign, so that means he has to be replaced. And in our system, only one person can do that, and that's the premier. The next question that arises is, who would replace him?"

But Hansen insisted that Ralston's questions focused specifically on pre-election discussions about the implementation of the tax, and not the tax itself.

"What that discussion was about, was very explicitly about the implementation," Hansen said. "I think that people are being very loose about the context of those particular comments."

With a report from CTV British Columbia's St. John Alexander.