That in relation to Bill C-70, an act to amend the Excise Tax Act, the Federal-Provincial Fiscal Arrangements Act, the Income Tax Act, the Debt Servicing and Reduction Account Act and related acts, not more than one further sitting shall be allotted to the consideration of the second reading stage of this bill and fifteen minutes before the expiry of time provided for government business on the day allotted to the consideration of the second reading stage of the said bill, any proceedings before the House shall be interrupted, if required for the purpose of this order, and in turn every question necessary for the disposal of the stage of the bill then under consideration shall be put forthwith and successively without further debate or amendment.
The Deputy Speaker: Is it the pleasure of the House to adopt the motion?
Some hon. members: Agreed.
Some hon. members: No.
The Deputy Speaker: All those in favour of the motion will please say yea.
Some hon. members: Yea.
The Deputy Speaker: All those opposed will please say nay.
Some hon. members: Nay.
The Deputy Speaker: In my opinion the nays have it.
And more than five members having risen:
The Deputy Speaker: Call in the members.
(The House divided on the motion, which was agreed to on the following division:)
Rideout
Ringuette-Maltais
Robichaud
Robillard
Rock
Scott (Fredericton-York-Sunbury)
Serré
Shepherd
Sheridan
Simmons
Skoke
Speller
Steckle
Stewart (Brant)
Stewart (Northumberland)
Szabo
Telegdi
Thalheimer
Ur
Valeri
Vanclief
Verran
Volpe
Walker
Wells
Whelan
Wood
Zed-134
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The Deputy Speaker: I declare the motion carried.
Mr. George S. Baker (Gander-Grand Falls, Lib.): Mr. Speaker, I was not intending to speak but since you called my riding I certainly have a few words to say.
The question before the House is whether the Minister of Finance, who is probably one of the best finance ministers that Canada has ever seen, who has the best record of any finance minister Canada has ever seen-I had better be careful-with the exception of the gentleman who became the finance minister in the fall of 1977. The boss became finance minister at that point. There is one exception.
What we have is the rational legislation of the great Minister of Finance and the irrational logic of all the opposition parties. It is what separates Liberals from Reform and Tory and Bloc members. Imagine discussing a bill in this Chamber and having the official opposition advocate that the GST should be changed so that it includes food and prescription drugs. Just imagine that.
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Reformers stand in this Chamber and say: ``We do not like what the Liberals are doing. We would like to have the tax extended to include food and prescription drugs'', as the representative for the Reform Party stated in the House with respect to this bill.
Imagine the transport critic for the second party in opposition, who is just like the Tories, advocating a tax on fuel to improve the roads. Imagine that. An increase in the excise tax is being recommended by the opposition parties.
The finance minister has the best record in Canadian history, with the small exception of the minister of finance in the fall of 1977; the boss. The finance minister is saying to the opposition parties: ``No, we cannot afford to tax people more on fuel and on gasoline, as the opposition parties are suggesting''.
Not only that, they are also advocating helping the rich out a bit more. They suggested that our first priority should be to remove the taxes on jewellery. That was their priority yesterday in this Chamber.
They want to do away with the Canada pension plan. The Reform Party is exactly like the Tory Party. At the Tory convention two months ago they said: ``Let us get rid of the Canada pension plan totally''.
One other thing distinguishes the Liberals from the Tories and the Reformers. The Tories' policy meeting passed a resolution to experiment with medicare. That is exactly the same policy as the Reform Party of Canada. The policy statement of the Reform Party, its budget, which I always keep here in my desk, but I am not allowed to show it-
Mr. Silye: Read us something. Be accurate.
Mr. Baker: The hon. member for Calgary Centre is saying: ``Be accurate. Read something from it''.
Here are some of the recommendations of the Reform Party. On December 3 the hon. member for Calgary Centre said: ``Make it the broadest possible tax. Let us tax everything: groceries, prescription drugs''. Tax everything.
Mr. Silye: Keep going, George. Keep going.
Mr. Baker Mr. Speaker, I can certainly do that. I will quote from the medicare section. The Reform Party says: ``The original medicare model is not only intolerably expensive, it is undesirable''.
What do we have here? We have the opposition parties-and of course we cannot leave out the Bloc. The Bloc is on the record as supporting any tax forgiveness for wealthy people as long as they travel to the United States. It is on the record as being in favour of doing away with any double taxation on estate taxes. That only deals with people who make over $600,000 a year. That is the Bloc for you.
Here we have the opposition parties saying no to the Government of Canada. They say they want more taxes on ordinary people. They want to do away with medicare. They want to do away with the Canada pension plan. They say they have a better way.
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What is their better way? The Tories and the Reform Party say they want to get there faster. Where? They want to eliminate the deficit faster. That is their policy. Where are we today under this Minister of Finance? Which country in the industrialized, democratic world has the best record for economic growth this year and next year according to the OECD and the IMF? It is Canada.
The most recent figures are out. Which nation of the G-7 has this year the best record with the deficit and the GDP ratio? This new statement is from the IMF and the OECD made up of 28 nations, economists that hold their meetings in Paris and decide on those macro economic questions. Is it Germany, Britain, Japan, Italy, the United States?
Some hon. members: No.
Mr. Baker: Is it Canada?
Some hon. members: Yes.
Mr. Baker: We now have the country with the best economic growth according to the OECD and the IMF of any of the industrialized democracies in the world. We now have, as well, Canada leading every other industrialized democracy in the world in the deficit to GDP ratio.
The IMF made an interesting statement the other day. It said that the best record for interest rates was guess which country? Canada.
These opposition parties that stand in this Chamber together with the Tories who try to hide, the Tories who have a policy to do away with medicare, do away with the Canada pension plan, to put taxes on groceries and prescription drugs, who want to put on additional taxes so they can build highways. They want to put toll gates on our roads to pay for them. Then they stand in the Chamber and say no to the great Liberal response to the problems in our economy. They stand and say no. We want to tax ordinary Canadians. We want to give tax breaks to the rich.
However, we want to reduce the deficit more, while at the same time have a government that has the best record of any industrialized, democratic economy in the world. That is why Canadians are going to say no to these opposition parties and yes to the Liberal government.
[Translation]
Mr. Yvan Loubier (Saint-Hyacinthe-Bagot, BQ): Mr. Speaker, I welcome this opportunity to speak at second reading of the bill about the GST.
First of all, I would like to say to the hon. member for Gander-Grand Falls, who so eloquently described his affection for the Minister of Finance, that I previously found him to be more objective in his analyses than he was a few minutes ago.
When we say the best Minister of Finance, I think we should qualify that statement. He just went with the flow. Even Mickey Mouse would be a better Minister of Finance than the one we have today, considering the economic climate. This is a Minister of Finance who maintains the tax loopholes for the rich.
Is that what the best Minister of Finance is supposed to be like? The hon. member for Gander-Grand Falls usually comes down hard on giving preferential treatment to the wealthy. However, his government, for which he now seems to act as a yes-man, maintains the privileges of the wealthy. Is that what being the best Minister of Finance means? The best Minister of Finance after the one we had in 1977, who is now the Prime Minister?
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Remember that the Minister of Finance we had in September 1977 ran up the first major federal deficit. Is that what the best Minister of Finance in 1977 was supposed to be doing? I am very disappointed in the hon. member for Gander-Grand Falls. He is usually a better analyst.
As for Canada's performance, I may remind him that the Canadian unemployment rate is around 10 per cent and that we will need more than 900,000 jobs in Canada to revert to the same labour market conditions we had before the recession. Is that Canada's best performance? We just received some statistics indicating an increase in the rate of child poverty. Is that Canada's best performance? We have one of the poorest records in the world in overcoming poverty, and all the while we maintain the privileges of the rich. It is awful to hear such things.
Is the best Minister of Finance the one who signed the political agreement with three maritime provinces that will cost us $1 billion? Is the best Minister of Finance the one who wasted $1 billion on an agreement that will not resolve the GST? If that is the case, it is time we woke up and it is time for the yes men on the other side to wake up as well. The arrangement is less and less justifiable before the voters, in my opinion. The farce has gone on long enough.
Canadians outside the maritimes are going to have to pay about $1 billion for an agreement that settles nothing and that scuttles a promise the Liberals made even before the last election campaign. They told everyone they would abolish the GST, the bloody GST. They lied to the people. It is a horrible thing to do. And the people believed them and voted for them.
What do we end up with today? A monumental farce, an agreement worth $1 billion to harmonize the GST with the taxes of three maritime provinces. It really takes the cake when they present it as an extraordinary accomplishment by the best Minister of Finance, who is second only to the 1977 Minister of Finance, who is now the Prime Minister. It is quite a show.
Canadians have not been fooled. They know very well they are going to have to pay for this agreement, which resolves nothing. It is nothing more than a local agreement with three maritime provinces. In Quebec, we will pay $250 million for this agreement. Worst of all in this story is the fact that Quebec harmonized its provincial sales tax with the GST at no cost whatsoever to the government. It did not cost a penny.
We did it because our intentions were good, because we wanted to improve trade and because we wanted transactions to take place as smoothly as possible. We did not want small business to be stuck with two completely different systems operating in parallel. We did all that. We even administer on behalf of the federal government the infamous goods and services tax. And we did not get a penny in compensation for it, not a single penny.
Now the government is presenting us with this agreement reached with the three Atlantic provinces. They are buying off the people in the maritimes for $961 million, that is nearly $1 billion.
It is a disgrace to present such a bill, and particularly to impose a gag order to limit debate on this bill.
They do not like to hear the truth, to hear that they have been deceiving the public. Their commitment was not to hide the GST nor to sign an agreement with three Atlantic provinces, hoping that it would be used as a model nation-wide. That is not was they promised in the election campaign; they ran on the promise of scrapping the GST.
We all witnessed the show the Deputy Prime Minister put on when she resigned and, half a million dollars later, made a triumphant comeback, having cleared her name. It is terrible to put on a show like that, and the people have had it. After spending $500,000 on this show, we are now spending nearly $1 billion on a historic agreement with the maritimes.
The worst part is the incredible lack of transparency in all this. After this historic agreement-historic mainly for its cost of nearly $1 billion-was signed, the provinces, not only Quebec, but also Ontario and British Columbia, asked the Minister of Finance what formula was used to work out this huge amount.
The Minister of Finance obstinately refused to make it public, knowing full well that this formula, if it exists-which is doubtful because this is a political agreement and political agreements do not require formulas-was not tailored to the specific situation of the three Atlantic provinces.
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I am convinced that the federal mandarins who were present when the harmonization agreement was struck with Quebec, in 1991, must have thought: ``We must be careful, because Quebec is the only province to have completed this harmonization process and it did not ask anything from the federal government''. Quebec is so nice that it did not ask anything from the federal government. Therefore, once Quebec decided to go along with harmonization, these mandarins must have devised the formula so as to completely exclude the Quebec situation. But let them make it public. If they have the courage of their convictions, if their formula is so good, then let them make it public, so that we can see how the finance minister managed to find $1 billion in his pockets and generously give that money to the maritime provinces. One billion dollars.
Liberal members are boasting that books are exempt from the GST. This is great, and I want to congratulate Bloc Quebecois members, because they are the ones who, from the beginning, with the eight founding members of the Bloc Quebecois in this House, and out of all the members of all the parties in this House-and I see the hon. member for Longueuil-rose to ask that the GST not be imposed on books.
In Quebec, there is no provincial sales tax on books. This tax was eliminated. The finance minister tells us: ``All the books that will be bought by educational institutions and organizations promoting literacy will be tax exempt''. We say great, but the government must do more. Culture should not be taxed. All books should be exempt from the GST, as called for by the eight founding members of the Bloc Quebecois. I see my colleague, the member for Rosemont, who is also in the House and who used to rise almost every other week, because we did not have many opportunities to speak back then, to demand that the GST be taken off books.
Members of the Bloc Quebecois were the only ones to meet with representatives of the literary community, all of them. The Liberals refused. The Conservatives refused; I understand. We were the only ones to do so.
So I congratulate the minister for this small part of the bill, but I would like to see him go further, and heed the Bloc Quebecois's call to stop taxing culture and literacy.
The Deputy Speaker: Dear colleagues, before giving the floor to anyone else, I must tell you that we voted on the hon. member's amendment yesterday and that debate is now on the main motion.
As you know, the hon. member for Saint-Hyacinthe-Bagot addressed the motion at length yesterday, for 50 minutes I believe. This is the fault of the Chair, which should not have given the floor to the hon. member. I ask my colleagues not to speak twice on the same motion in future.
I am certain that my colleague shares my opinion that we may not speak twice on the same motion. This is the Chair's fault, and I take responsibility for this error.
Mr. Loubier: Mr. Speaker, I have a small question. Yesterday, the debate was on the amendment I proposed. Today, it is on the bill as such at second reading. It should be possible to speak twice in two days, because the debate is a different one. I am asking for your opinion on this.
The Deputy Speaker: It seems that we are now debating the main motion. The hon. member for Saint-Hyacinthe-Bagot spoke for almost one hour yesterday on the main motion. He proposed an amendment at the end of his speech. He perhaps thought he had spoken on the amendment yesterday, but the hon. member spoke twice on the same motion.
I am sure he will not do this again in future. I am counting on my colleague not to speak twice in future. It is an error.
[English]
Mr. Monte Solberg (Medicine Hat, Ref.): Mr. Speaker, it is a pleasure to speak once again to Bill C-70.
First I must decry the fact that the government has moved time allocation, a form of closure, on this piece of legislation. I need to point out that since the fall session began, the government has pushed through precisely nine bills and here we are ramming
through important pieces of legislation in the last week. That is completely unacceptable.
I have to speak to some of the accusations made by the member for Gander-Grand Falls. I would simply say that if he was not completely misleading the Canadian public, he certainly was quoting hon. members out of context and I must set the record straight.
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The hon. member from Gander was saying that the Reform Party wanted to raise taxes. Let me make it very clear that our party will provide the average family of four in this country with a $2,000 tax break by the year 2000, $15 billion in tax relief for Canadians. That is part of our fresh start platform.
The hon. member also spoke about the government's record of low interest rates. I have to address that. The reason we have low interest rates is that this country's economy has been so soft. That is why we have had low interest rates.
Noticeably the member did not speak about unemployment. I would think someone from Newfoundland must address unemployment. In 1995 the G-7 said that Canada had the worst record when it came to unemployment in the G-7. Out of all seven nations Canada had the worst. Why would a member from Newfoundland not address something like unemployment? That is ridiculous. Obviously the government's record is so bad that the hon. member could not bear to raise the issue of unemployment.
By the way, the Reform plan would take 1.2 million low income Canadians completely off the tax roles. I want to make that clear. Somehow the member for Gander-Grand Falls left people with the impression that we were going to tax low income Canadians more. We are going to take 1.2 million low income Canadians off the tax rolls. These are people whom the Liberals are currently taxing, including the member for Gander-Grand Falls who has voted in favour of every budget the government has brought in.
The member for Gander-Grand Falls apparently is no friend of the unemployed. He is no friend of working Canadians who are being taxed to the hilt. I think the member for Gander-Grand Falls has a lot of explaining to do to his constituents.
Specifically on Bill C-70, we need to remind people that this bill came about because of a broken promise, a very sorry beginning for this legislation. Going back to before the last election, members on that side of the House said: ``The GST is completely unacceptable. It is terrible. We will rip it out if we become government''.
The member from Gander spoke of the finance minister. The finance minister when he was in opposition said that the GST was terrible and that they did not want to have anything to do with it. The Prime Minister has been in this place on and off since 1963, 33 years. You do not even get that much for murder in this country but he has been here that long. He sat here knowing very well that there was a possibility the Liberals could form the government and he said: ``We do not want to have anything to do with the GST''.
What happened on October 18, 1993? The current Deputy Prime Minister said on national television in a CBC town hall meeting that if the GST was not gone, she would resign. She led everyone to believe that the Liberal government would get rid of the GST. We know that individual MPs campaigned on the promise to get rid of the GST.
What did the Liberals do? Did they get rid of the GST? The record is very clear. The government did not get rid of the GST. Instead because it had no takers for its harmonization proposal, and it was desperate to come up with a reason or a justification for breaking its promise, it ran out to the Atlantic premiers with $1 billion and said: ``Please come on board so we can say that we fulfilled our promise in some way, shape or form''.
A billion dollars. And what was the result? Now a tax regime is being established in Atlantic Canada that is going to visit all kinds of sorrows on the people of Atlantic Canada. Beyond that, it creates all kinds of other problems. It is extremely divisive. When one area of the country is rewarded with a $1 billion compensation package but other areas are told that they are on their own, what happens? We get division.
We get problems with national unity obviously. That is the government's whole approach to the issue of unity: divide and conquer, split people apart. The government has done it from day one and continues to do it. Lately it is talking about distinct society again. I cannot believe it, but it is part of its whole approach.
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What does this harmonized sales tax do specifically in Atlantic Canada? The government claims it will create jobs but the facts simply do not bear that out. We know already that stores are closing in Atlantic Canada because they cannot afford to implement all the necessary changes associated with bringing the harmonized sales tax to Atlantic Canada.
Greenberg stores is based in Quebec but has stores throughout Atlantic Canada. It is closing stores because it cannot bear the start-up cost of this new harmonized sales tax. Seventy-nine jobs are already disappearing in New Brunswick. It just escapes me that we are not hearing from New Brunswick MPs. They are not standing up and saying: ``We have to do something to protect these jobs''. Somehow the members from New Brunswick are strangely
silent. Where are they? Why are they not standing up for their constituents?
If something like that were happening in my riding or anywhere in Alberta where all those Reform MPs are, or in British Columbia or any Reform constituency I would like to think that those Reformers would stand up even to their own leader and government and say: ``This is unacceptable. We will not put up with this. We have received clear direction from our constituents and they do not want us to vote in favour of this legislation''. But the Liberals are like sheep. They are completely quiet. They have been cowed by the Prime Minister and the power of that office, which is ridiculous. It is absolutely counter to democracy.
The hon. member for Gander-Grand Falls spoke about democracy. He is a member who has spoken out in the past and has been relegated to the very end of the row, almost out the door. He can stand up and try to revive his flagging career all he wants knowing that the minister of fisheries may not be long for cabinet. However at some point he apparently wronged the Prime Minister in some way and now he has been relegated to being almost out the door and probably has no chance of getting anywhere which is unfortunate. That is how this government deals with people who do not toe the line.
Let me speak about some things that will happen in Atlantic Canada as a result of Bill C-70. We have received letters from the Retail Council of Canada, as have hon. members across the way. It has warned about the tax in pricing aspect of Bill C-70, about how it will hurt many large retailers. It has talked about the millions of dollars it will cost. In a very up front manner it said that those costs will be passed on to the consumers in Atlantic Canada.
Consumers will bear the cost of the deal that is being implemented in Atlantic Canada because the government was so desperate to come up with some kind of rationalization for not fulfilling its GST promise. Atlantic Canada has to pay for the government's broken promise. Atlantic Canadians have to pay literally out of their own pockets for this broken promise. But that is not all. Right now we are only talking about the large chains. What about the small businesses?
Greenberg stores is not a large company and it is laying off 79 people with another 71 possibly going. The other day I heard a story about a Halifax businessman who sells magazines. Approximately 8,500 journals come into his store on a weekly or monthly basis. Because of this legislation he will have to change the price on every one of those magazines. I do not care how hard a person works, that cannot possibly be done every week.
Does the government care about all these common sense objections to this deal? Again the government members are strangely silent. Where are the members from Atlantic Canada? Where is the member for Halifax who sits in this place and so often speaks up? She is strangely silent. Not a word. Why are they not standing up for their constituents? Why are they not standing up when they know it will cost jobs, when it means higher costs for consumers? I would think that is a basic responsibility of any member of Parliament.
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What about the defence minister? He represents a riding in which one of the Greenberg stores closed. Should he not be on his feet as a cabinet minister? Should he not be defending his own people?
I cannot believe they are allowing this to be pushed through on closure without so much as saying this is wrong, we have to at least fix some of the details. They are silent.
Other bodies have spoken of the problems this will cause in Atlantic Canada as well. The Real Estate Association of Canada talks about a $4,000 increase in the cost of a new house in Atlantic Canada. What is the government doing?
There has been no initiative from the government coming forward and saying ``we are going to deal with that, we will fix it''. It is going to let the people of Atlantic Canada bear a $4,000 increase in the cost of a new House simply because it had to rush through that deal to try to save the Deputy Prime Minister. That is unacceptable.
If you make a mistake, as the government, if you break a promise, why do you not acknowledge that you have broken a promise, throw yourself at the mercy of the electorate and take your medicine? To try to somehow cover it up and then make people in Atlantic Canada, the most vulnerable economy in the country, pay for it is cruel. I do not know how else to put it.
As we near the end of this debate, sadly the government has pushed through closure. I urge hon. members across the way to somehow screw up the courage to stand and defend their own constituents. Sixteen thousand people in New Brunswick alone have signed one petition in opposition to this legislation.
If hon. members across the way will not listen to me and my colleagues in the Reform Party, perhaps they can somehow find it in their hearts to listen to their own constituents. That is the least the people of Atlantic Canada can expect from their MPs.
Mrs. Diane Ablonczy (Calgary North, Ref.): Mr. Speaker, today we are debating a bill that has come up very suddenly. It is a bill that, as of last week, was not even on the government agenda, the so-called GST harmonization bill, really the GST hiding bill that the government is trying to now push through as quickly as possible while people in the country are busy getting ready for Christmas and have their minds on other things. It is very typical of this government.
There are four main concerns that Reform has about this bill. One is that this new form of the GST will kill jobs. It is bad for business, it will kill jobs. This is in a part of the country that can least afford to have this kind of action taken against its economy.
Second, this new form of GST that the Liberals are ramming through the House is bad for consumers because it will substantially raise the cost of many goods.
We know our economy is driven 60 per cent by consumer spending. Now we will have even more difficulty, even more of a burden placed on the backs of consumers who are trying to provide the necessities for themselves and their families.
Third, this new form of GST that the Liberals are pushing through in Atlantic Canada is bad for taxpayers because it means that taxes will be increased.
The fourth thing is that this new form of GST being put forward by the Liberals is breaking a Liberal election promise, a strong, unequivocal, firm, clear commitment by this Liberal government to scrap, kill and abolish the GST.
These broken promises continue to disconnect Canadians from the electoral process, increasing the level of cynicism and increasing the level of distrust and disrespect for elected people and for the institutions of government. This is a very worrisome and sad situation in this country.
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This bill was put forward and then closure was immediately voted through the House. The government is sneaking this bill through. Invoking closure yet again, as I said the last time I spoke on a closure bill, this seems to be a weekly if not almost daily occurrence by this government. It is disrespecting the democratic checks and balances of our system to simply push its agenda through with as little opposition and as little opportunity for examination as possible. This is not democracy as it was meant to be.
I will not repeat some of the concerns that I raised in my last speech in this House on this issue except to say that Canadians who are watching the proceedings of the House on a daily or occasional basis need to take note of how this government is arrogantly and undemocratically flouting the conventions and the democratic checks and balances that have been put into place. I believe we are going to be paying a heavy price for this increasing erosion of the democratic process in our country.
In 1990 a member of Parliament who is sitting on the government side and also sitting in cabinet said: ``The goods and services tax is a regressive tax. It has to be scrapped and we will scrap it''. The minister of defence now has a different tune to sing just five or six years later. He had the chance to keep strongly made promises, to act on the outrage that he and many of his colleagues expressed about the Conservative government GST and now he is totally backtracking and not to be heard from in this debate. The present minister of defence did not say: ``It must be harmonized and we will harmonize it''. No, he said: ``It has to be scrapped and we will scrap it''.
On May 2, 1994 the Prime Minister said with regard to the GST: ``We hate it and we will kill it''. Now he is saying ``we really like it and we will bring it back in a form that will gouge even more money out of taxpayers and citizens in the Atlantic provinces''.
When the government fails to carry out these clear election promises, these clear representations to Canadians who place their faith, trust and confidence in this government and in government members, Canadians feel increased cynicism with their government and their country. This is something that is very disturbing and it is going to be a very difficult situation to deal with as time goes on.
I would like to spend a few minutes talking about an aspect of this new replacement GST of the Liberals called a notional input tax credit. At present when a good or service is introduced into economy the GST is paid on those goods. When the goods go through the economy again in the form of used goods, the GST does not have to be paid on that good because it was already paid the first time it came into the economy. That was in the past.
The Liberals have seen a golden opportunity to vacuum even more money out of the economy to fund its waste and its spending and its inefficient, bloated government. Now when a consumer buys a used product he will end up paying the GST yet again even though the GST has already been paid. In fact, that GST will be paid over and over every time there is a transaction involving those goods. This is something called tax cascading, which is kind of a nice term. Canadians would probably call it stacking the taxes, a tax on tax on tax. In fact, the taxpayer will have to pay tax twice, three times, four times and maybe more on the same goods.
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This is nothing more than another Liberal tax grab. It is also sneaky because the Liberals have not introduced this increased tax take. The honest way is to put the tax bill before the House and have it properly debated. It simply changed the definition of what the GST will apply to. The GST will be paid over and over.
This will have a very negative effect on any business dealing with used goods. It will kill jobs, raise consumer prices and suck more tax dollars from the pockets of Canadians. There is very little profit in many of these businesses already.
We know and the Liberals have acknowledged time and time again that taxes kill jobs. For example, the Liberals said that taxes on employment income, taxes such as UI premiums, make it more difficult for businesses to operate at a profit, to expand their
economic activities and for the economy to grow and to create business and employment opportunities for Canadians.
Yet we see that taxes are something that the Liberals simply cannot do without. There have been over 35 tax increases in one way or another from this government in its years in office. Its total tax take has grown by $28 billion over its term in office; $28 billion that the government is taking out of the pockets of Canadians, out of the hands of business people, job creators and entrepreneurs and investors, workers and consumers, and putting it into the hands of politicians and bureaucrats. It is no wonder we continue to have an abysmally high rate of unemployment in the country. It is no wonder that Canadians have to work harder and harder and find less and less discretionary disposable income and find it more difficult to make ends meet.
The standard of living of all Canadians is being lowered. The Liberal government is making a big show, a big production out of caring about the rate of poverty and the children in our country who are living in poverty. At the same time, it is pushing through measures such as this which contribute to the increasing poverty of members of our society, taking more taxes from the most vulnerable members of our society by this type of tax increase and doing it in a very hurried way to make sure that people do not see what is going on.
There is a lot of misinformation, a lot of distortion by members opposite when they get up to speak, trying to cover up what is really happening. However, we need to get the message out to Canadians that this is not the way to attack child poverty in this country. It is not a way to give the poorest and most vulnerable members of our society a leg up. It is only a way to get more money into the pockets of the government.
The harmonization is a red herring, a feeble attempt to convince taxpayers that the Liberals have kept their GST promise. Other provinces have been clever enough to see through this and have rejected this scheme. I urge the House to reject this scheme and to protect the people in the Atlantic provinces from this kind of tax grab on the backs of Atlantic Canadians.
[Translation]
Mr. Paul Crête (Kamouraska-Rivière-du-Loup, BQ): Mr. Speaker, I wish to tell Quebecers and Canadians that there are three good reasons why Bill C-70 ought not to be passed by the House of Commons.
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The first, and perhaps the most serious, is that it sends a very ambiguous message to Canadians and Quebecers about what this government's word is worth. During the last campaign, they were saying that they were going to scrap the GST, that it would no longer exist, that they would make it disappear. Once in power, they began to hum and haw and to mark time, but in the end they did not respect their contract with the voters.
Running for office is like signing a contract with each voter, stating what one commits to doing, what one commits to defending, and, if elected, one will respect that contract. There is a very ambiguous, and very negative, message being sent to all those who might think of getting into politics: this government says one thing while campaigning to get elected, and does another once in power. It did the same thing with job creation and unemployment insurance. This is totally unacceptable, and very bad for democracy.
In the next election campaign, when the Liberal candidates come knocking on the doors of Quebecers, voters will be entitled to ask whether what is set out in their platform is true, if their actions will match their words, if all their commitments are merely a smoke screen to win votes so they can do as they please as soon as the election is over. The Liberals will have a real problem relating to this question of a systematic lack of respect for the promises they have made on major issues.
The second element, and this is particularly true for Quebecers, is the frustration that is felt when we see one billion dollars in compensation-no one on the other side of the House has questioned the accuracy of this figure-given to three Maritime provinces for harmonizing the GST.
Harmonization is all very well, but I think we should realize that this is a repeat of an age-old practice of Canadian federalism, which is to try and cure the ills of one region in Canada at the expense of the other regions, in an attempt to buy political peace. After introducing employment insurance reform that penalizes the maritimes and eastern Quebec to a considerable degree, a form of compensation has been found, a kind of pacifier for the people of the maritimes. They are offered compensation for harmonizing the GST.
However, Quebec, which proceeded with this harmonization several years ago, did not receive any compensation at all. Quebec did its job and made the system work. All public servants who administer the GST are with the Department of Revenue in Quebec City, and they remit the amounts to Ottawa. It all works without any compensation. Here again, we see the double standard we have seen so often in the history of Canadian federalism.
This has some major economic impacts. We use this, for instance, in the new riding of Kamouraska-Rivière-du-Loup-Témiscouata-Les Basques, where the Témiscouata area borders on New Brunswick. This is one of many measures we are evaluating to find out how federal monies get to New Brunswick and how they get to Quebec, and whether these two parts of Canada are being treated equally. The study we are doing now focuses on all grants and assistance programs currently available.
We have here a clear example of a situation that may lead to unfair competition between two regions. One government will receive funding to harmonize the tax, while the other did not. There will necessarily be additional costs for the Quebec government. Products from New Brunswick will be more attractive because of the federal government's compensation, which was not given to the Government of Quebec. There is an injustice here that warrants our criticism.
In its concern for tarting up the transformation of the GST, the federal government was prepared to pay any price for peace. The people of the maritimes won the jackpot. The people of Quebec, however, did not come begging, saw no need for compensation and harmonized the taxes at no cost to the government. Western Canada did not harmonize.
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The situation has therefore created several Canadas. It does not work. It proves that, when the federal system is allowed to run on its own, this is the sort of monster we end up with. There will be two different types of taxation in two bordering provinces: in the maritimes, the taxation system is subsidized by the federal government; in Quebec, the federal government did not subsidize harmonization. Double standards are still unacceptable.
I would like to take the few minutes I have left to point out that this bill represents what I would call a partial win for the Bloc Quebecois. Those members who represented the Bloc Quebecois before the 1993 election had systematically made representations to ensure that the GST would not apply to books.
After all the representations that have been made, the bill before us today provides that books bought by groups involved in literacy programs, libraries and similar organizations will be tax free. Because of the major cultural impact books have on our society, the Bloc Quebecois feels that all books should be free of tax.
I think we should keep up the fight because, as we can see, this would benefit not only Quebec but all of Canada. English Canadian culture certainly needs help in holding its own against American culture. Because markets are permeable and the fact that the same language is used in English Canada and in the U.S., books are among the main tools used to spread culture. This would have been an opportunity to give books published in Canada an edge, by not subjecting them to tax. Any way you look at it, the propagation of knowledge benefits society as a whole. But this is not reflected in the bill.
I think the government could show its good will by making all books tax-free. I think all Quebecers and Canadians would gain from it. This is a measure that will probably be discussed in the next election campaign. At that time, we will have to make sure that each party will honour its commitments.
This Liberal government will certainly have a major credibility problem during the election campaign, primarily because of issues such as the GST, employment insurance and the promise to create jobs. The current unemployment rate, which remains above 10 per cent, is the highest in a number of years. This figure includes people who are actually looking for work, but not those who have given up because they were unable to find jobs.
There is a shameless waste of human resources in our society. Changing this situation must be our governments' top priority. We have no idea what kind of commitments this government will make the next time. What is more important though is whether or not it will fulfil these commitments.
If the past is any indication of the future, it is not encouraging for Canadian voters, because each time they will have to decide whether or not to believe in a Liberal government commitment, they will remember that the Liberals did not do what they had pledged to do with the GST, and with employment insurance, as they simply implemented the reform prepared by the Conservatives.
As for employment itself, again the commitments made were not fulfilled. The morning after the election, the Liberal government set out to tackle the deficit. This was fine, but in the process it overlooked another obligation, which is to ensure that our society's human potential is being used. In this sense, the bill before us is disappointing. It perpetuates an inequity in the Canadian federal system, which is the fact that different parts of the country are treated differently.
In western Canada, the government is subsidizing an airline company that has trouble making profits because of a major management problem, while in Atlantic Canada it gives a compensation of $1 billion to harmonize the GST. In the middle, there is Quebec, which made real efforts to harmonize its tax, but which is not getting the benefits that other provinces are receiving.
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When will fairness prevail? I do not believe the solution to this problem lies in the current federal system. In any case, I am asking Quebec and Canadian voters to be very demanding, during the next election campaign, regarding the commitments that will be made by Liberal candidates.
The evidence is before us: This government had pledged to eliminate the GST, but instead it comes up with cosmetic changes. The GST is still here and the commitment made during the election campaign was not fulfilled. This is why I feel the House should reject this bill.
[English]
Mr. Werner Schmidt (Okanagan Centre, Ref.): Mr. Speaker, Bill C-70 is the harmonization of the sales tax.
I could not help but think about the word harmonize. It comes from the word harmony. Harmony means to create agreement, concord, to create an apt or aesthetic arrangement of parts. It is a progression of chords, to use a musical definition, to produce a pleasing effect. To harmonize then would be to make a form that is pleasing and to provide a consistent whole, to add notes to a melody to produce harmony and to bring into being or to create harmony.
I thought to myself, I have heard a lot about this sales tax and it seems that none of those definitions really apply to this particular development. I looked up the antonym of harmonize. The antonym of harmonize is discord. Discord means to have disagreement, strife, to disagree or to quarrel, to be different or to be inconsistent.
I thought to myself, which of those two words best describes the harmonized sales tax? Harmony, a consistent aesthetically pleasing whole where the parts agree with one another or discord, where there is disagreement, strife and division. I came to the conclusion that this tax has the wrong name. It should be called the discord tax or government by discord, not harmony. It is creating the opposite.
Does it provide a beautiful, harmonious sound of working together in a melody of taxation? I do not think so. I am reminded of the member for Mississauga West. What did she say? She said that the people hate, they do not just dislike the GST, they hate it. Most people that I know like harmony and hate discord. It strikes me that is probably the situation.
The other word that comes up and is a source with regard to harmony says it creates peace. There is all kinds of evidence that this has done anything but create peace. It looks like it does not even have the potential of creating accord.
This is a tax of discord. It has created conflict among provinces. It has created conflicts between provinces and Ottawa. It has created conflicts among citizens. It has created conflicts between government and business. It has created conflicts between consumers and retailers. How many more conflicts do we want? And they call that harmonization. It is the exact opposite of harmonization.
How is it possible that all these kinds of conflicts could occur? How does that happen? First of all it costs more. Can you imagine, Mr. Speaker, that three major retailers in Atlantic Canada have stated that their net annual deficit will total $27 million once harmonization is implemented? Are you aware that the Retail Council of Canada has said that by forcing stores to bury the new tax prices, the harmonization tax regime will cost retailers at least $100 million a year? That is the implementation of the tax. That is not revenue for the government.
Why? Because there will be a duplication of information systems and the rewriting of software, the repricing of prepriced goods, the duplication of advertising costs as it goes from the various catalogues and the various brochures that have gone out to the various consumers, the warehousing and distribution costs. That is no small cost.
Then a study was done by Ernst & Young. This very reputable national accounting firm said that a midsize national chain with 50 stores in the Atlantic provinces would pay up to $3 million in one-time costs. Those 50 stores would pay $3 million in start-up costs. After that they would pay $1.1 million per year to comply with the regional tax in price sales system, which we know means that the total price includes the tax. The amount of tax paid is hidden in the price on an article when it is taken to the cashier.
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The Canadian Real Estate Association says that harmonization will increase the cost of a new house by $4,000 in Nova Scotia and Newfoundland and by $3,374 in New Brunswick. All the nice young families will just love having to pay an extra $4,000, will they not? The answer is no they will not.
Consumers will pay more for funeral services, for their children's clothing, for auto repairs, electricity, gasoline and home heating fuel to mention only a few of the things that will cost more.
The more severe problem is that it does not abolish the GST.
The member for York South-Weston said it best. He said it quickly and concisely as he is able to do. He said: ``Scrapping and harmonization are not synonyms. Harmonization is a red herring''. How accurate he was and how clearly he described exactly what is going on.
It also makes a lie out of statements such as when in 1990 the current Minister of Finance said: ``I would abolish the GST. The manufacturers sales tax is a bad tax and there is no excuse to repeat one bad thing by bringing in another one''. That was six years ago.
In 1994, four years later, after the Liberal Party formed the Government of Canada, the Prime Minister said: ``We hate it and we will kill it''.
In 1995, a year later, a Liberal backbencher, the hon. member for Mississauga West, said: ``I think the GST is going to become a hot point. I think if we do not do something about it our credibility is gone. People in my riding hate the GST. It is not one of those mild `we do not like it', they hate it. If the GST is merged with provincial sales taxes voters will not be satisfied unless the overall tax take is simultaneously reduced''.
It is already clear that all of those statements have been proven to be false.
I want to move to the next rather significant development which took place in August 1995. Going back to the Minister of Finance
who in 1990 said that it was a bad tax, he said in August 1995: ``I think it is very clear that what small business wants and what consumers want is a harmonized tax''. Was he listening to the people?
Is the minister listening to New Brunswick and Nova Scotia now? Is he listening to the people of Alberta? Is he listening to the people of Ontario? Is he listening to the people of British Columbia? If he were, there is no way he could make that statement and say that he is telling the truth. I do not know to whom he is talking. He is talking to somebody, but it is clearly somebody other than the people to whom I have just referred. It cannot be an honest statement. Either he has been listening to different people or he is deliberately misrepresenting what he heard the people to say.
We need to go beyond that. This harmonized tax violates good government. It violates good management practices like the province of Alberta has put into place. In that province there is no provincial sales tax. Why? Because Alberta was able to balance its budget without a sales tax. That is a lesson not only this government should learn, but every provincial government should learn as well. The harmonization tax does not permit and reward good government and good practice.
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After all that, we also have to conclude that this tax is a bad deal. The Atlantic provinces were bribed with a $1 billion infusion of borrowed money which future taxpayers will have to pay for.
Alberta, Ontario and British Columbia refuse to get involved. They are not even willing to talk about harmonization. The support is weak in Saskatchewan and in Prince Edward Island. That is harmonization? That is harmony? That is accord? That is creating peace? It is the exact opposite. It is divisive. It is conflicting. It is strife engendering. That is what it is. It is a bad deal.
The Ontario Minister of Finance said that the blended sales tax using the GST base would cost Ontarians over $3 billion in extra taxes. He has put the kibosh on any harmonization talk and scheme in this province. That is the issue which is at stake here in this bill.
It was done to give the government the appearance that somehow it has dealt with the GST and that somehow it would make people think the GST has been abolished. How ignorant, how stupid does the government think the people of Canada are? The people of Canada are anything but stupid and neither are they unable to understand what is going on in this issue. It is very significant.
One more thing. How did the Liberals do it? They made it incomprehensible. I draw attention to Bill C-70, 335 pages of what the harmonization tax is about. It is not to say anything about the income tax act which is over 2,000 pages long.
Mr. Leon E. Benoit (Vegreville, Ref.): Madam Speaker, in the little time I have allocated to me today I would like to talk about the so-called harmonization of the GST from two different points of view. I will talk about the deal itself and the fact that it is a bad deal, that it will hurt business and kill jobs in Atlantic Canada and across the country. Also, I will talk about the lack of integrity in government. The more important part of my presentation today will be to point out that this government has completely lacked integrity on this and a lot of other issues and Canadians should find this unacceptable.
First, about the deal itself, it is clearly a bad deal for business. The premiers of the Atlantic provinces had to be bribed with a billion dollars just to accept this deal. Of course Prince Edward Island has not accepted it. The Liberal Government of Prince Edward Island was defeated recently partly because of the consideration of this deal. Alberta, Ontario and British Columbia have completely refused to talk about the issue, while Saskatchewan, Manitoba and Prince Edward Island really have been less than positive about the deal.
To accurately call this harmonization of sales taxes, it would have to apply right across the country. What we have is a deal only for three Atlantic Canadian provinces. That hardly makes for harmonization of the GST. Let us not call it harmonization. Let us talk about it for what it really is.
The Ontario finance minister said that this deal will cost Ontarians over $3 billion. That is a lot of money. I am sure the people of Ontario who elected many of the Liberal MPs on their promise of abolishing the GST must be very upset about what has happened here. Not only has the promise to abolish, scrap, kill the GST been broken, but in an attempt to cover up this broken promise according to the finance minister of Ontario, it will cost the people of Ontario $3 billion just for the deal with the Atlantic provinces. The people of Ontario cannot possibly be very happy about this.
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This policy demonstrates what has already been demonstrated by this government many times before: the lack of a broad vision, the lack of well thought out comprehensive policy on issues. Too often we have had piecemeal legislation, which is the case again here. This legislation applies to only three provinces out of the ten. It is called harmonization but clearly it is not.
What will this legislation do for businesses and jobs? This is the most important issue to consider in terms of this deal. It will be a big job killer. Several people who are involved and who will be affected by this deal have made that clear.
The three major retailers in Atlantic Canada have stated that the annual retail deficit will total $27 million once harmonization is implemented. One private sector retailer in Atlantic Canada was
contemplating opening two more stores in 1997 but has scrapped that plan because of this deal. That means jobs lost.
Both privately owned and publicly traded stores are reluctant to explain the problems they face as a result of harmonization so as not to jeopardize customer confidence and the value of their stock. They must be careful in even talking about the effects of this deal.
However, the Retail Council of Canada has said that in forcing stores to bury the new so-called harmonized tax, the harmonized tax regime will cost retailers $100 million a year. Not only is this so-called harmonization which affects only three Atlantic provinces going to cost the other Canadian provinces $1 billion over the next three years, but it will also cost Atlantic Canada retailers $100 million. That will mean job losses. Business people will have to work even more hours which will mean more time away from their families. That is unacceptable.
An article in the December 4 Globe and Mail discussed the so-called harmonization and some of its impacts. It stated that the major increases will be on items such as home heating fuel and clothing which will be taxed at 15 per cent instead of the 7 per cent GST that is now applied. The tax will increase on essential items that nobody can avoid buying, such as heating fuel and clothing, and this will drive the prices up substantially.
In the Globe and Mail article the Retail Council of Canada said that businesses will have to spend $28 million to get their pricing systems ready by April 7. ``This is a huge blow to Atlantic retailers'', said Peter Woolford, senior vice-president of the council. ``Retail profits average about 2 per cent of sales'', he said, and this is going to cut even further into those narrow margins.
Mr. O'Brien, Atlantic director for the Canadian Federation of Independent Business, said that in the case of one magazine store in Halifax, the owner will have to change the prices on as many as 8,500 journals a week. We are not talking about some megabusiness but about one small business owner who will have to change the prices on 8,500 journals a week. His comment is that he will have to work another seven hours a week when he is already working 70 hours a week. This is completely unacceptable.
It is completely unacceptable to make changes that will make for more totally non-productive work for business owners and that will extend the hours of already overworked business owners, operators and workers in this country. We need less government interference. These people need more time to spend with their families. Clearly this bill will mean just the opposite in Atlantic Canada.
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Of course it has an impact across the country. A billion dollar increase in costs will mean more taxes for Canadians in other provinces. That means more working hours and less time to spend with families. This will damage the already strained situation of families.
I would like to close by talking about lack of integrity in government. I want to begin with some quotes from the Prime Minister and the finance minister in 1990, when they were getting into full gear for the election campaign.
The Prime Minister said in the Toronto Star in 1990: ``The Liberals will scrap the goods and services tax if they win the next general election, leader Jean Chrétien says. `I am opposed to the GST, I have always been opposed to it and I will be opposed to it always'''.
From the finance minister: ``I would abolish the GST'', April 4, 1990.
Then in 1992 as we got into the heat of the election campaign the Liberal leader was quoted in the Toronto Star, December 21, 1992: ``With the federal election only months away Liberal leader Jean Chrétien faces two questions that are being posed with increasing urgency. Does he stand by his word to scrap the goods and services tax? The answer was given by the Prime Minister's communications director, Peter Donalo when he said that the leader is committed to doing away with the thing and to tell Canadians before the election where he would make up the money''. Of course, that has not happened. It is totally unacceptable that has not happened. A promise was made and clearly the promise has been broken.
In closing I would like to quote a comment from the member for Kingston and the Islands at a meeting here in Ottawa. When the member for Kingston and the Islands was asked about the GST and the fact that a promise had been broken, his comments was: ``We changed our minds''. I do not think Canadians will view it with that levity.
Mr. Lee Morrison (Swift Current-Maple Creek-Assiniboia, Ref.): Madam Speaker, before I get into any remarks that I would call GST specific, I would like to comment on something that is happening here today, which is the use of time allocation again by the Liberal government on this debate. That makes 26 times that this heavy handed throttling of Parliament has been practised by this government.
It is a rather curious phenomenon that is taking place. It actually started in the Trudeau years. His was the first government in Canadian history that opposed free speech in Parliament. It was the first government that began to routinely use time allocation and closure. Prior to the election of Mr. Trudeau, these two means of throttling debate had been used only 23 times in the entire history since Confederation. I think it was first used by Sir Robert Borden during the first world war.
Then Mr. Trudeau came along and what did we get? Forty-four uses of time allocation or closure in 15 years. That is a bit of an escalation. Then in the Mulroney years they were used 63 times in
eight years and nine months, a new record, a new champion on the block.
But what is happening under the current Liberal government? It has only been in office for a short time, three years and one month. Already it has used time allocation or closure 31 times. This is unprecedented. It is contemptible that any government would treat any parliament in this manner.
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Today the Liberals are showing their contempt for Parliament in two ways. One is through time allocation. The other is contempt for their fellow members in that only one of them has even bothered to come in and listen to this debate. I refuse to blow air into an empty room. I request a quorum count.
The Acting Speaker (Mrs. Ringuette-Maltais): Please ring the bells.
And the bells having rung:
The Acting Speaker (Mrs. Ringuette-Maltais): We have quorum. The hon. member may continue with debate.
Mr. McTeague: Madam Speaker, a point of order. I find it rather hypocritical of the hon. member for Swift Current-Maple Creek-Assiniboia to call quorum when several members on this side of the House have been sitting here attentively and nothing on the Reform side, including the opposition.
Mr. Assadourian: And the Bloc Quebecois.
The Acting Speaker (Mrs. Ringuette-Maltais): We are resuming debate. The hon. member for Swift Current-Maple Creek-Assiniboia.
Mr. Morrison: Madam Speaker, I suppose I should feel guilty for disturbing the free lunch of the Liberals. In case they follow the usual practice of getting a quorum and then quietly sneaking out like naughty children evading the headmaster, I am prepared to stand here and call quorum all afternoon if necessary.
With regard to the question of closure, it is unthinkable that the government of a democratic country could use this heavy-handed blunt instrument to bludgeon Parliament with the regularity that this government has done. I do not know what the final outcome will be. Perhaps at some point in the not too distant future it will simply dissolve Parliament and say: ``We do not need it any more. Let us have permanent closure, permanent time allocation'' because that is the Liberal idea of the democratic process.
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Remember, 31 times it has moved time allocation or closure in the short period of three years and one month. That is one-third more times than those blunt instruments were used in the entire pre-Trudeau era in this Parliament, back in the days when people actually believed in democracy and when Parliament was still a place where people came together to debate the issues and arrived at conclusions.
With respect to this marvellous HST that is being brought in by this bill in the Atlantic provinces, it is pretty easy to see why the government is so desperate to hide the GST. However, it is only going to be able to hide it in three provinces because nobody else is willing to get on board.
I would like to quote a comment by the hon. member for Mississauga West with respect to the GST. She said: ``I keep hearing from the finance department that Canadians are getting used to the GST and now accept it. If anyone really believes that I do not think they are in touch with reality''. Bravo to the member for Mississauga West because she sure had that right.
Then the hon. finance minister said: ``We have to do something about this GST because we made a mistake. We are sorry, but it was an honest mistake''. That is not good enough. Let us face it, despite their public pronouncements, the Liberals never had any intention of killing the GST. Instead they had this cockamamie plan to run around and hide it, meld it in with provincial sales taxes and then maybe nobody would notice. Long term planning, harmonization of the dreaded GST.
The fact that it is going to cost citizens of the three non-harmonized provinces something in the order of $900 million in subsidies does not bother this government. What does it care, it is only money and this is a Liberal government. It is going to hurt small businesses in the three Atlantic provinces. What does the government care, it is not in business. It is made up of politicians and politicians do not care what happens behind that cash register. We are going to have it because the hammer has been brought down. Democratic debate has again been forbidden in this place which was designed for the democratic debating of the issues.
I see the Speaker is signalling me, my time being up. I do thank all of those good Liberals who allowed their lunch to get very slightly cold. Members will notice that I did not fulfil my threat of continuously calling quorum.
Mr. Elwin Hermanson (Kindersley-Lloydminster, Ref.): Madam Speaker, it is good to hear that Saskatchewan is being heard from in the House of Commons this afternoon. I know Saskatchewan has some pretty strong views on taxation. We know a lot about paying taxes. Like many Canadians, we feel we pay more than our fair share of taxes. We are not very excited about Bill C-70, to harmonize or blend the sales taxes.
We have talked about the Liberals a lot in the House of Commons. It sounds like a broken record but it is not. It is broken promises which are serious business. It is important for Canadians to know that Reformers are holding the Liberals accountable for their broken promises here in the House of Commons. I think this
has been said a number of times but it needs to be repeated because these are important people who have made these statements.
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The current finance minister on April 4, 1990 when he was sitting on this side in opposition said: ``I would abolish the GST''. That is pretty plain and simple. I can understand that. Canadians understood that and they elected a Liberal government because they had a pretty good hunch that the current finance minister would hold that position in a Liberal government.
The current Prime Minister on September 27, 1990, just a few days after his finance minister had made that statement, said: ``I want the tax dead''. I know when something is dead. Coming from the farm I have seen dead animals. We bury them and they are no more. They are gone. They are forgotten and we do not deal with them any longer.
The GST is not dead. It is alive and kicking. In fact, it is growing new hands. It is going to pick more pockets through a blended sales tax, a BST. That is a fitting name for the Liberals' approach to tax reform, call it BST. Again, coming from the farm I know what BS is and this is an accurate name for this sales tax.
I want to tell the House about what is happening in Saskatchewan. We already have a 9 per cent sales tax, one of the higher sales taxes in Canada. There is only a province or two with a higher sales tax. We take the GST of 7 per cent and add it to our provincial sales tax and we have got 16 per cent or actually a little over 16 per cent sales tax on most of the goods we purchase. If it is services, because it is not a blended sales tax, we pay only the GST. As as farmer, if I go to my accountant or if I take a piece of machinery to a mechanic for repair or, as we all do if we have to get a haircut, we pay the GST but we do not pay the PST. It is on goods only.
Liberals think that they are not getting enough revenue from taxes and they have to blend it so that the provinces and the federal government can extract more from us, particularly in the service industry which all of us rely on so much.
What did the Liberals do? They thought the provinces would just jump at this chance of having a blended sales tax. They forgot one thing. Provincial governments also have to get elected. They were concerned and said ``how are we going to sell this BST, taxes going up on new items that currently are not being taxed or at least taxed at as high a level as it would be under a blended sales tax?'' There is a little problem with the provinces. They did not jump on board.
The Deputy Prime Minister could not keep her promise and had to resign, albeit a rather odd resignation, having done a poll first to see whether she could get re-elected before she resigned. I guess that is the way the Liberals think. Put honour at the bottom of the list and check out expediency and pragmatic opportunity first.
In any event, so be it. The Liberals were in trouble over the reform of the sales tax. Killing the GST was out of the question. They were trying to cloak that in some new scheme called blending or harmonizing the sales tax. They finally were able to sell it by offering three Atlantic provinces $1 billion. Whose dollars? A billion of our dollars, taxpayer dollars, to blend this new sales tax.
The Liberal premiers of the Atlantic provinces went along with this buyout. Suddenly they found out that Atlantic Canadians were not so excited about it. They realized that the bottom line is they are going to pay higher taxes. One province did not go along with it because of course that province had to go to the electorate sooner than any other province, the province of Prince Edward Island. The Liberals found out that they were not very popular in Prince Edward Island as that government went down to defeat. I believe that the blended sales tax was a part of the reason the Liberals' ship sank in Prince Edward Island.
We have an NDP government in Saskatchewan. Believe me, NDP governments know how to tax. They like to tax about as much as Liberals do. We have a 9 per cent sales tax in Saskatchewan. We are killing jobs and sending business to Alberta where there is no provincial sales tax. We have high taxes on our phone bills; we have high taxes on our power bills and the rates are going up; we have increased our gasoline tax, meanwhile our roads are in shambles; we have a high provincial income tax; provincial crown leases have increased; municipal reassessment is being done in Saskatchewan, which is increasing the cost to the taxpayers. Of course the taxpayer, no matter what level of government it is, is the same person.
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The NDP got a sudden shock in Saskatchewan the other day when it lost a byelection in North Battleford, a seat it had held for most of the last 40 years. People in Saskatchewan were telling the NDP that they do not like the high taxes. They do not like the NDP nickeling and diming them to death. They are not prepared to pay more and more for less and less. Surprise, surprise. In Saskatchewan the NDP lost a safe seat. A new Liberal MLA was elected in the riding of North Battleford.
The Liberals have also selected a new provincial leader. Of course they have had all kinds of problems. They have been shooting each other in the foot and stabbing one another in the back, as Liberals are prone to do once in a while. Out of the whole mess they had to choose a new leader. What did the new provincial Liberal leader in Saskatchewan pronounce almost at the beginning of his mandate? He said: ``I think we should harmonize the federal and provincial sales taxes''.
I was jumping for joy. That will ensure that Liberals will not be re-elected as members of Parliament for Saskatchewan. Saskatchewans simply do not want higher taxes on services. We are opposed to it. I believe the Liberal leader is already backtracking. In later press releases and interviews he has talked about reducing the provincial sales tax more than he has about blending or harmonizing the federal and provincial sales taxes. Politicians, when they make as big a blunder as the new Liberal leader made, are pretty quick to change their ways before they totally annihilate their political future.
Harmonizing, he thought, would save Saskatchewan taxpayers money. Obviously Saskatchewan people do not think so. That is why he is changing his tune and talking about tax relief rather than a new tax.
Where did he get the idea that tax relief might be sold to Canadians? He has probably looked at Reform's fresh start, for one thing. He has probably listened to the people, the common sense of the common people, who are saying ``we do not want more taxes, we do not want to see how imaginative you can be by introducing some kind of harmonized sales tax''.
What Reform has offered Saskatchewan is not some new program, not a new tax scheme. It has offered tax relief. In the case of the province of Saskatchewan it would mean that $440 million would be left in taxpayer pockets. That is money they would not have to send to Ottawa.
In Saskatchewan we send everything out of the province. We send our young people out of the province. We send our raw products out of the province. We send our opportunity and our future out of the province. We send our tax dollars out of the province. Only Reform has talked about leaving tax dollars in Saskatchewan, in the hands of the people of Saskatchewan, so that they can make the best decisions as to how that money will be spent. That idea is going over extremely well.
We are looking at how we can keep things in Saskatchewan and how we can make that province grow. Reform has put forward a fresh start proposal which would leave $440 million in taxpayer pockets, rather than losing it through the BST, which was so aptly named by the Liberal Party.
My time has just about expired, and so I will set the record straight. The NDP tax high, Liberals tax high, Reform spells tax relief. That is what Canadians want. That is what the people of Saskatchewan want. That is what the residents of Kindersley-Lloydminster want. That is why I am speaking on their behalf in the House of Commons.
Mr. Chuck Strahl (Fraser Valley East, Ref.): Madam Speaker, it is a pleasure to speak on behalf of the residents in my area of the country on the GST issue. It was a very profound issue in the last election campaign.
It is interesting and maybe not surprising that nary a Liberal will stand to try to explain, defend or otherwise obfuscate what they are doing about the blended GST, BST, HST or whatever they want to call it. Liberals today are hiding. They are laying low, hoping this will blow over. Of course it will blow over. It will blow over because the government forced closure again, for a record number of times. It is almost an admission of the incompetence of House management. They say ``we just cannot manage our affairs well enough to get this stuff through the House and what we have to do is force closure so there will not be any debate on these subjects''. We have seen that happen on routine bills, on very divisive bills and on very controversial bills. It does not seem to matter.
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It seems to be that the routine now is bring in a bill. If they cannot manage their House time properly, they can cancel the debate. They do not let democracy interfere with the workings and machinations of the government. They just tell them how to vote in the backbench, cancel the debate and see if they can get away with it.
So far if I could chastise for a moment the national media on this for letting them get away with this, it is beyond me. We stand up here and repeatedly say that this is not right, it is not fair, it is not due process. It is not a chance for Canadians to debate something as significant as the GST.
Think back to when the GST was brought in. The bells rang for two weeks in this place. Things here were held up for two weeks. The Liberals were all in favour of that. Yet here today we are not allowed to debate for two days changes to the GST.
It is a shame. It is a shame on the media, too, for not reporting it. It should be on the Liberals' case saying that democracy is not of interest to these people. It should be broadcasting that from coast to coast. It probably will not. I will leave it to the readers and the media watchers of the world to figure out why that is.
I would like to talk today for just a couple of minutes about the politics of division that are being practised on that side of the House.
My colleagues have gone through what is wrong with this tax per se, about the increased costs to the consumers, about how it is driving business out of Atlantic Canada, there very place where they are trying to draw business in, how it is a half baked scheme that does not have the support of the chambers of commerce and other business groups in Atlantic Canada.
That is already in Hansard. That is in the record but if I could talk a little today about why this bill is symbolic of the type of politics that seems to be acceptable to the Liberals.
What they have done here, of course, is pit one region of the country against the other. It is not a new idea for a Liberal. It is not new at all. They practice that pretty well constantly. ``Let us play Atlantic Canada against the rest of the country. Then we will go back to Atlantic Canada and try to buy its votes somehow. We will try to buy it off somehow and promise it something in the next election campaign. In the meantime, play one part of the country against the other''.
We stand in the House and ask the Minister of Finance to explain himself when it is going to cost so many thousand jobs. He stands up and says ``the Reform Party hates Atlantic Canada''. The proof is in the pudding. This harmonized sales tax is going to hurt Atlantic Canada.
In turn, the Liberals blame it somehow on the Reform Party. Who do they think brought in this tax, but the finance minister himself? Who thumbed their noses at the businesses in Atlantic Canada? The finance minister and the whole front bench.
They do not mind, play one area against the rest. What about last year in my own province of British Columbia. British Columbia was trying to control its welfare costs. It brought in a residency requirement. The federal government said ``no way, if there is federal money involved, you have to have access for all Canadians through this federal program''. It fined British Columbia some $30 some million for bringing in the residency requirement.
It is interesting in Quebec now the fees for universities subsidized by the federal government are twice as high for non-Quebecers as they are for Quebecers. In other words, if someone from my province wants to go to la belle province and get their university education, their tuition fees are twice as high.
Just to rub salt in their wounds, there are 50 countries of the world that can get cheaper rates at their universities than one can if from British Columbia. An argument on both sides of that equation can be made but the issue is why is it okay to punish British Columbia for having a made in B.C. policy. Maybe they should have. It is okay to punish there but do not say a word over here.
When it comes to another province or another region, we will not say it. We will just let British Columbia take it in the ear.
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For that matter on the distinct society question itself, again symbolic of this government it says: ``We are going to push through the distinct society clause and it does not matter who protests. It does not matter whether British Columbia, Alberta and Ontario, the three largest provinces outside of Quebec are dead set against it, we are going to push it through''.
The Liberals pushed the veto through the House of Commons, which makes it virtually impossible to ever change the Constitution. I do not know what kind of idea that was from the Prime Minister. It was made on a napkin at the parliamentary restaurant during lunch break, I guess.
The minister brought in these proposals and said that they are going to be pushed through. The Quebec Liberal Party endorsed by the federal Liberal Party says: ``We have to have distinct society and we have to push it through''. What has that accomplished? The Bloc Quebecois, the Parti Quebecois and Mr. Bouchard all say it is nonsense anyway, that it is not going to solve anything, that it is not going to bring us together and that they are not going to believe in Canada more with this.
They took it out west where I live and asked: ``Will you guys accept this in full?'' Eighty per cent of Canadians in my area of the country said: ``No way. We are not going to discuss this. We will discuss devolution of powers to all provinces, certainly. We will talk about a smaller role for the federal government, certainly. We will talk about areas of jurisdiction where there is overlap and we should get rid of that, certainly. But writing distinct society in our Constitution is just not going to happen''.
The Liberals over there seem to think that by bringing in this controversial idea and by pushing it on the west and on Ontario it will somehow bring us all together, that somehow we are going to sing solidarity forever in 10 part harmony. It is not going to happen but the Liberals continue to do it.
It is the same thing with the harmonized sales tax. The Liberals bring it in and what happens? Right away the premier of Alberta asked: ``What is going on? You gave a billion dollars to Atlantic Canada in order to harmonize the tax? What about Alberta which is paying the bills to harmonize this, in order to buy the favour from the Quebec premier?''
The people in British Columbia rightly said: ``Wait a minute. You are saying a separate program for a separate region of the country with a separate pay off, a buy out and a Liberal handout is going to be paid for by people in our province in part?'' The people of Quebec would rightly say: ``Wait a minute. You have a sales tax over there and we have to pay the bills when right across the border is a province which is getting a pay out in order to blend its sales tax and enhance the reputation of the finance minister?''
This government practices the politics of division. Time and again, whether it is distinct society, whether it is different rules for different regions of the country, whether it is the harmonized sales tax, whether it is the UI system, whether it is how to get a government grant, which region of the country one lives in plays a big part. Probably the icing on the cake is that those who are
heavily connected with the Liberal Party, either a company, a government or their contacts, have a licence into the hallowed halls of power that sit in the throne room.
I hope Canadians will take the government to task over the Christmas break and tell it that special deals for special regions are off and that they should not happen. The national media should be the first to report that.
Mr. Garry Breitkreuz (Yorkton-Melville, Ref.): Madam Speaker, for the past three years I have been sitting here listening to debates. Of course, I have been sitting here all day listening to what has been going on. Madam Speaker, would it be out of order to make a simple request, that I stand here for 10 minutes and say nothing? Complete silence. Madam Speaker you are shaking your head. I wonder why.
If I stand here and talk for 10 minutes it makes absolutely no difference because the government does not listen. In fact the government does not listen to me as an MP and it does not listen to the people of Canada. If we had total silence and did not debate anything, if the opposition was silent, the government would continue to do what it is doing, which is to run roughshod over the desires and wishes of Canadians.
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The government has invoked closure on approximately 30 bills. Each time it does that, one question seems obvious: Why? Why is it invoking closure? I have observed a pattern over the past three years I have been in the House. Each time the government does not want Canadians to know what is going on, when it does not want a topic properly debated, it invokes closure.
[Translation]
Mr. Loubier: Madam Speaker, I rise on a point of order. I do not think we have a quorum in the House. I call for a quorum count.
The Acting Speaker (Mrs. Ringuette-Maltais): We shall proceed with a count of members present.
And the count having been taken:
The Acting Speaker (Mrs. Ringuette-Maltais): We have a quorum
[English]
Mr. Breitkreuz (Yorkton-Melville): Madam Speaker, I sometimes wonder if when we have warm bodies in the House it makes any difference. I still do not think it helps anything. The government is not listening to what we have to say.
We began today's debate with one of the members opposite making some blatantly false and misleading statements. It is interesting that the Liberals continue to propagate this not just within this House but outside this House as well. They continue to make completely false statements. The member also explained that this is the best finance minister, except for the one we had in the mid-seventies who is the present Prime Minister.
If the Liberals are going to set that person up as the best finance minister we have ever had, they are saying that the deficits begun by the Liberal government, the deficits that led to our tremendous present debt were good. They are saying that the past finance minister, the present Prime Minister, who started us on the road to overspending had the right idea. I cannot accept that. To set him up as the best finance minister we have ever had is totally false and misleading. That has to be the sorriest statement I have heard in this House to date.
I made the point that approximately 30 bills have been rammed through the House. Full debate was not allowed on those which indicates this is a very undemocratic institution. The people of Canada must ask what is really going on here. Fundamental to this debate on taxes and on the GST is the question of why we need it. Why does the government need to continue raising all of this money?
I discovered an interesting coincidence. This morning I introduced the people's tax form which is a voluntary tax form that all taxpayers could return with their income tax forms every April. On the forms they could indicate to the government the programs they support and the programs they oppose. It would be an indication to the government of what the people of Canada want.
In light of the debate we are having today, would it not be interesting to include on that form a question which asks people what they would like done with the GST? Do they want it to be a hidden tax as this government is proposing? Do they want it hidden in the prices of products so when the government decides to increase the tax it will not be very visible and the government will not get all the negative publicity it hates? If the government were to ask the people of Canada, I wonder what their response would be.
I believe that Reformers are speaking up on behalf of the people of Canada. The silence of the Liberals indicates that this government does not want to debate the topic.
Each time the government raises taxes, we have already indicated in many previous speeches over the past three years that these taxes kill jobs. It is very simple. As long as people are paying more money in the form of taxes into the government coffers, they cannot spend that money on other things that create real jobs. They cannot buy goods and services which really creates a better lifestyle for all of us. Every time they send millions of dollars to Ottawa it is as if that money is put in a big black hole. It is not an effective way of producing jobs, I can guarantee that. In fact, taxes kill jobs. Studies have been done. They are out there.
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Taxes also hurt families. The GST really hurts our average family in Canada. How do taxes hurt families? Forty-six per cent of the average taxpayer's income now goes to government. It has come to the point where both parents feel they have to work in order to maintain a decent standard of living. One parent works for the government when we have a tax level that is so high. It hurts families because those parents would like to be spending more time at home with their children. Studies have found that the high tax level has really hurt families.
The Liberals then turn around and appear to be compassionate. They are going to have a big program to target child poverty. Who has created the poverty? It has been these very people who now pretend that they are going to help people in some way. Reducing government programs so that we can reduce taxes should be our priority and fundamental to the entire discussion we are having here today.
If we ask Canadians, as I have done, what their priorities are in spending and what things they would oppose, we would get some very interesting answers. If the government actually listened to Canadians, it could scrap the GST because it could reduce taxes which is what has to be done.
I took a survey which has been tabled in the House along with the people's tax form bill that I introduced today. I believe the survey in my riding will not be substantially different from surveys taken across the country. What was the number one program, the sacred cow for the government, that people opposed? Official bilingualism. They felt that the government has been wasting money in this area for decades. The second thing Canadians opposed was funding for special interest groups. In my riding, the third thing they opposed was gun registration. Members may think that is just because I come from basically a rural riding, but I will tell a story.
I spoke at the University of Toronto and half of the audience were young females. It was a good cross-section of the entire population. At the beginning of my speech I took a little survey. I asked them how many thought that gun registration was a good thing and a wise way to spend our money. The vast majority of them raised their hands and said they thought it was a good idea. I then asked if they minded if I explained it to them. I told them how it was going to take quite a bit of tax money to implement and in the end people would have a piece of paper lying beside their gun. To make a long story short, by the time I was done explaining to them what it was all about, I took another survey and the exact opposite happened. There was virtually no support for this.
What happens is that if we properly inform Canadians as to what some of the programs are that this government is implementing, the support drops and they feel it is not a wise way to spend our tax
money. In fact, they would rather spend it on health care, family crisis centres and those kinds of things, not the sacred things this government is implementing.
I wish I could go on longer, but I will conclude. Let us look at the fundamental problem. The government is wasting money on so many things that are totally unnecessary and this could be scrapped if it did away with those things.
Mr. Jim Silye (Calgary Centre, Ref.): Madam Speaker, I rise today to finally address Bill C-70.
I find it ironic that the first thing the government does is it invokes time allocation again. When the Liberals sat here in opposition and the Conservative government did it, the Liberals cried about how it was anti-democratic, how it was restricting freedom of speech, and how it prevented people in all parts of the country from speaking out on an issue that is as important as this one.
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This bill is going to cost taxpayers in excess of $1 billion. The sum total of the bill's ramifications will be in excess of $1 billion. I will get to another amendment on getting rid of exemptions on the ways and means motion in a second.
Why put this kind of pressure on members of Parliament by not allowing proper time to debate an issue? Why push this through the House of Commons real fast? Is it because the government has used an incentive of $961 million to get these Atlantic provinces to buy into a program that is going to cost Atlantic consumers more in the long run? Is it to make three provincial premiers look good today, while in the long run they are going to lose their jobs? I predict what just happened in P.E.I. will happen to the rest of them.
People across the country have one thing in common: if it affects their pocketbooks they get upset. When they find out in Atlantic Canada that this harmonization is strictly helping business, that this tax inclusive pricing will tend to lead to higher prices in the long run without them knowing it, there is going to be a huge rebellion in those provinces in the next election.
How can the government justify invoking closure on a bill like this? It goes back to the March 6 budget of this year and here we are today in December. Does the government not know how to plan an agenda? Does the government not know how to present something in the House of Commons so members can totally debate it?
We have been here for three years and I have counted 26 time allocations and three closure motions. For those people who do not understand the three closure motions, closure allows time to talk out the issue until 11 o'clock that day. That gives more time for members of Parliament to discuss it.
What does the government do? Twenty-six times it has used the hammer of time allocation, not closure. This means the debate ends at the end of Government Orders which is usually around 5.30 p.m. This debate will be over at 5.30 p.m. tonight and it denies us an extra five and a half hours to debate the issue.
Where are the Liberal members from western Canada? Do they agree that we should give $1 billion of taxpayers' money outside those provinces? They are too chicken to say anything. I challenge them to stand in the House and say something. I challenge the members from B.C. to speak for 10 minutes in support of the finance minister on this issue. I challenge all of Atlantic Canada Liberal members to get up and support this and say how wonderful it is. I expect them to do that and justify it.
Twenty-three per cent of the bills that we have been debating in this House have used either time allocation or closure. Let us look at the statistics a little further. One hundred and twenty-three bills have been passed in the three years to date and half, or close to half, of those bills have been supported by the opposition. That reduces it to 62 bills. That means whenever the opposition, either the Bloc or the Reform, puts a little pressure on the government by trying to show how a bill can be better, or tries to improve it through amendments or whatever, the government has invoked time allocation and closure 29 times. That then increases the percentage to almost half.
This government does not appreciate debate. This government does not welcome debate. Its members are hypocrites when they say they listen to the public. They are duplicitous when they tell the Canadians public that members of Parliament are given lots of time to speak. We are not. Our ability to speak out on this issue has been severely restrained and it is time for us to tell the Canadian public what is happening.
A payment of $961 million was made to three provinces in October of this year. It was charged off to last year's budget, to last year's income statement, to last year's deficit ending March 1996. This finance minister is setting a bad precedent. That is not just my opinion, that is the opinion of the Auditor General of Canada. That is in the public accounts.
Yes, the auditor general signed off on the financial statement. He did not have any reservations about them because he felt the bottom line of $28 billion is a true number but not because it includes the $961 million. He would not have included that. It is because there were other circumstances. I got this from the testimony of members of Treasury Board and the auditor general in the Standing Committee on Public Accounts. It is because there were other areas of revenue, small amounts and bigger amounts, that add up almost to the same amount. Because he saw those offsetting amounts he did not have a reservation. If those other amounts had not been understated by the government he would have had a reservation in this last year's presentation.
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Mr. Strahl: Shifty books.
Mr. Silye: Yes. Cooking the books is what it is.
It is a fine line but a lot of people have compromised on it. If we had proper time to debate this, and if the member opposite would sit and listen for a while instead of just jabbering off and trying to interfere with my speech, he might learn and understand that this is a bad precedent. It is bad for Canada.
Politicians cannot be allowed to cook the books. The finance minister needs to stick to generally accepted accounting principles, stick to government precedents and not change the rules as he goes along just to make himself and his government look good on their promise to achieve 3 per cent of GDP and to get this out of the way so he does not have to show it in this year's statement.
That is why we are upset about time allocation. It restricts the time that members have to say what they want to say. We have to waste half our speech to get this message across to the Canadian public that our democratic rights are being infringed on when we are being denied the opportunity to speak.
Another thing that really upsets me when it comes to finances is yesterday, in answer to a member from the Bloc Quebecois, the finance minister bragged that he has not raised taxes in three years, that personal income taxes have not increased in three years.
Mr. Assadourian: Hear, hear.
Mr. Silye: Is that true, hon. member across the way?
Mr. Assadourian: Yes.
Mr. Silye: There is another member who does not understand the facts of what the Prime Minister has done. There are two ways taxes are raised. One way is to raise the rate. The other way is to reduce the exemptions or the deductions or to tinker with the tax base on which one has to pay that rate of tax. He has not raised the rate, but he has surely and often in a number of ways tinkered with the deductions.
Let me give an example. From now on if ever the Prime Minister or the finance minister says that he has not raised personal income taxes-and I dare him right now to say it after I have put this into the record-his nose will grow like Pinocchio every time he says it.
The current rule in the Income Tax Act for labour sponsored venture capital corporations is that you are allowed up to 20 per cent of the net cost not to exceed $5,000. In layman's terms that is what the rule says basically. Now the government is reducing that for this year. There is a transition from 1996 to 1997. It has amended section 127.4 to provide that an individual's tax credit is limited to a uniform 15 per cent of the net cost. That means it has been reduced to $3,500. It means that those people who were putting money away, working for companies that sponsored these RRSP type investments now have to pay tax on another $1,500 that
prior to this they did not have to pay tax on. That is a personal tax increase.
The finance minister has increased personal taxes to the degree of disposable income for families on a personal basis going down by $3,000. I just hope that this finance minister has the courtesy to admit this and never again say in this House that he has not raised personal income taxes. That is as close to the Pinocchio syndrome that we have in this House. I would use another word, but I respect the Chair and I know that I cannot use language like that.
My final comment is that there is a member from Newfoundland who was talking about what I said about harmonization. We are against this nickel and dime, two bit effort to harmonize. If a package was presented to us that harmonized with all provinces we might consider supporting it. We would have to see it first. We have not seen it yet.
Second, if the government is going to harmonize and we do want to have the lowest rate, we have to look at the possibility of taxing everything that we can. This is what the member from Newfoundland will not put in his speech. To help the poorest and the neediest of the needy you have an increased rebate program to make sure that those people do not suffer. This would really tax the rich and that is what the Liberals like to do-
The Acting Speaker (Mrs. Ringuette-Maltais): Resuming debate.
Mr. Dick Harris (Prince George-Bulkley Valley, Ref.): Madam Speaker, we have had a lot of the truth spoken here by the Reform Party members in the last couple of hours, as usual.
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I heard a most astonishing thing in the House. A day or two ago the Minister of Finance said in the House, on national television and in front of all members, that the Liberal government had not raised personal income taxes one cent since it formed the government in 1993. A lot of words went through my mind when he made that statement. The closest description to a term I cannot use in the House would probably be something like stable waste. It was such an outrageous statement. The Reform member has just pointed out in clear terms that the Pinocchio syndrome is present in so far as the Minister of Finance is concerned and other Liberals who harmonize with him on that theme.
There are two things I want to talk about today. One is the recurring scenario of the Liberal government limiting debate on this most crucial subject.
We all understand that the GST is probably the most hated tax, the most railed against tax, the most despised tax in all of our taxation system. That was clear from the minute it was brought it. I wish I could say that it was the Liberals who brought it in. That would make my day. However, I cannot do that because we know that it was the Conservatives who brought it in, under Brian Mulroney, who incidentally still has his protege sitting in the House, the hon. member for Sherbrooke, who now leads the Conservative Party.
We have all heard the hon. member for Sherbrooke say that some day Canadians will realize what a great Prime Minister Brian Mulroney was. We hope he keeps on saying that because we will keep reminding Canadians that it was the Mulroney Conservatives, and the hon. member for Sherbrooke was part of that government, that rammed the GST down the throats of Canadians without a question of whether it was fair or honest or whether the way it was done contained a hint of integrity.
In spite of all the things that Canadians hated about the GST and the Mulroney reign of terror in Parliament, the one thing that they hated the most was the way the Tories used to shut down debate on crucial issues. They used to limit the time that MPs would be permitted, on behalf of their constituents, to put forward their constituents' views.
We watched in absolute astonishment as the leader of the Tory Party did that. He did it time and time again, with the full support of the hon. member for Sherbrooke, who was part of the cabinet and who now leads the Tory Party. He continues to say that the former Prime Minister, Mr. Mulroney, was a great leader. We will remind Canadians of that.
The amazing thing is that the Liberals, when they were in opposition, used to speak in utter outrage at the way the Tory government limited debate. Time and time again Liberals rose, individually and in unison. They railed against the government for this trampling of democracy. They were so self-righteous. They called the Tory government the worst dictator that this country has ever seen. They would rail against it.
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I want to make a statement that the number of times the Liberal government has brought in closure on debate since it moved from one side of the House to the other would make Brian Mulroney look like a saint when it comes to putting closure on debate in the House.
I think it is such a perfect example of hypocrisy when the Liberals spent day after day slamming the Mulroney government and now they are doing it themselves, only twice as bad. It is almost an embarrassment to sit in the House and watch democracy be trampled on. I said before that the ghosts of the great parliamentarians who once sat in this House and represented the great Liberal Party of years past and who knew about democracy must be hanging their heads in shame when they see these Liberal members trample on the sacred ground they laid here. And let us make it clear that there was a time when that party understood the fundamentals of democracy. They fought for that state of democracy only to see this Prime Minister throw it aside like yesterday's
garbage. It is almost an embarrassment to sit in the same House with a party that does that sort of nonsense.
I think we will move on now to the harmonization plan and talk about some of the comments from the provinces about this great Liberal harmonization plan.
The province of Ontario said that if the plan were implemented in Ontario it would cost Ontario consumers from $2 billion to $3 billion more a year in purchases. The Canadian people have seen a decrease in their disposable income over the last 25 years like they could never have imagined or dreamed would happen. They have seen personal income taxes raised by the government in the last three years. They have seen our national debt go to about $600 billion. They have seen our health care and our social safety net gutted, having the heart ripped out of it by the $50 billion we are paying to service the debt. And now the Liberal government has the audacity to present the harmonization plan which is even going to make what disposable income is has left appear to be even less. In fact, it will be less because a tax is a tax is a tax, no matter where it is put or where it comes from; it can only come from one place, the Canadian people.
I share my colleague's thoughts about this harmonization plan. I share the thoughts of the great Parliamentarians who have gone to the great House of Commons in the sky and who look down and see the way these Liberals are trampling on democracy.
All I can say is again, as with many bills in the House, it is truly a sad day for democracy, a sad day for the Canadian taxpayers. We will stay here and fight for the Canadian people. We will fight for their freedom and their tax freedom.
Mr. Bob Mills (Red Deer, Ref.): Madam Speaker, as we have heard, this is a sad day for all of us in Parliament. We have had approximately 30 other sad days like this when the government has used closure to shut down debate in the House of Commons. Not only do we not believe in democracy in the House but we also, as we have seen time and time again, have no vision for the country in this House either.
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This is a despicable act that the government continues to put on Canadians; the lack of vision. I am afraid for our children and our grandchildren.
Having travelled extensively this year, seeing the vibrant, booming economies of the Asia-Pacific, seeing the booming economy of Germany, looking at so many countries that have long term plans, standing in Potsdam plaza and seeing $7.5 million being spent to rebuild Berlin is a vision. This country has none of that.
We have a Prime Minister who is tired, a Prime Minister who has nothing to offer the country, who will come up with a plan because he has a dream to bring himself to some kind of glory and maybe get named by the United Nations or something.
It is a disgrace what this government is doing and how it is mishandling the governing of this country. It is hard to believe that as we close each session, all of a sudden we get to a great rush to get legislation through.
The only legislation that we are going to discuss tomorrow will be a prebudget debate, which is promised in the red book. Everyone is excited to get right to it because, again, it is just Liberal propaganda.
Yet there is an issue like the GST in this harmonized tax which affects every Canadian, men, women, children, seniors. Everybody in this country is affected by this and the government uses closure on it to shut down debate.
What kind of leadership is that? What kind of vision, what kind of plan does this government have for this country? When the other side of the House was over here, it called the PCs everything it could think of in all those many times that they used closure.
It certainly is different how things change when those members cross the floor. Let us all of us stand here and say ``that cannot happen to us, we cannot let it''. Canadian people have lost respect for this place and it is because of those kinds of actions by governments like this one.
We need to reform this place. We need to change this place dramatically. This place is not working. This place is not respected by the people of Canada. The people here are yesterday's people led by yesterday's man.
We are going nowhere into the future. We are going to be out competed by the countries that I have mentioned, by southeast Asia, by the European Community. They will knock us off in terms of our position and our quality of life if we do not learn how to compete, if we do not have a vision that goes longer than six months at a time in this country.
A good example is how many Liberals are not here to listen to this kind of statement. Where are they if this place works? Where are they?
Enough of incompetence, lack of planning, lack of vision, lack of guidance for this country. The Canadian people know that already and will get that message. I am confident in the people of Canada.
We have problems like $600 billion in debt. We have problems like $50 billion in interest payments. We spend $14 billion in education. We spend $16 billion on health care, $20 billion on pensions and $50 billion on interest payments. This country has problems.
We have to turn it around for our children and our grandchildren. We must do that. We must have that vision. What about this GST? We heard lots of comments about it. In my riding we had rallies of
6,000 people and more who said that the GST was a bad tax, a tax that would not work.
We had an association that put out thousands of bumper stickers. Every car in my riding had a bumper sticker on it saying what its owner thought of the GST. The group is called Canadians AGAST. It had rallies. One of the biggest was over 6,000 people who told the politicians what they thought of the GST. Of course, the Liberals were on that bandwagon as well.
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Think of the comments that were made by the now finance minister, the now Prime Minister and the now Deputy Prime Minister. ``We are going to get rid of this terrible tax. We promise we will''. Why have the Canadian people lost their belief in this place? It is obvious why they have lost it. It is because in here members say one thing when they are on this side and another thing when they are on the other side.
Even though interest rates are where they are today, people are not investing in businesses or in their communities. People are going to the underground economy. They are taking their money out of this country.
Let us think about this. One hundred and fifty-three students who have graduated after a five year course are saying they have a job and are thankful to have a job. However, 90 per cent of these students have a job outside of this country. Those faces, which I can see in front of me, have said they cannot stay in Canada. There were 700 graduate students hired in Sweden in the last couple of years. Those are people who are potential taxpayers and the future of our country. Why are they leaving in droves? It is because they would have to work at McDonald's if they stayed here.
There is no future for this country without a vision. We know we have a country today that has the potential to be the very best and stay the very best into the 21st century. However, it is promises that are not kept and the changing of one's position all the time that have caused us all concern.
People in the Liberal Party are no different than the Kindys and Kilgours of the last Parliament. We can now throw in the Mills and the Nunziatas. If Liberal members disagree with their party they are out on their heels.
There are so many people in business who are disgusted with this tax. There are also many people in Atlantic Canada who are disgusted with this harmonization. In my riding, we have many people in the service industry who are fed up with the administration and the nature of this whole tax called the GST.
We must keep our promise and not harmonize but eliminate the GST.
Mr. Darrel Stinson (Okanagan-Shuswap, Ref.): Madam Speaker, Okanagan-Shuswap is probably the best place in Canada and maybe even in the whole world. It is a great place to live.
Unfortunately we have the same problem as most people in Canada have. We are here today to speak to Bill C-70. In case people out there do not understand exactly what this bill entails, here it is. It is totally unbelievable. It contains 335 pages on how to harmonize a tax. I would hate to figure out the cost of each page. Believe me, Madam Speaker, you probably will not make that much in your lifetime nor in mine nor in a number of other lifetimes in this House.
This government has spent hundreds of hours and days trying to figure out how to broaden the tax base in this country.
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Let us take a look at what they mean by broadening the tax base. I want the people who are listening and every member in this House to understand that whenever a politician talks about tax that means they are going to raise the level of tax. That is what it means, no matter what they say.
The Liberals spent days, weeks, months trying to figure out a way to soft sell this to the people. They spent millions of dollars to figure out one word that the public might just accept: harmonize. All they had to do was look it up in the dictionary but I suppose that would have been too simple.
So now we are looking at this harmonization of taxation. We try to debate this issue but the government has decided that we do not need any more debate in this House. It does not want any debate in this House. The government would not like the people outside this House or off the Hill, those people who have a life outside of these walls, to even know what goes on in this House and therefore will invoke closure.
An hon. member: You mean we cannot debate it?
Mr. Stinson: The government says ``No, we will put a time allocation on you people. We will see that you only debate it for a certain length of time, and that's it. You will be curtailed to a certain length of time''. This is in Canada, in the House of Commons. I do not know what is going on here. I know a lot of people did not spill their blood and die for this type of set-up. And I call it a set-up because that is exactly what it is.
The other day I mentioned a parasite, a bug we have out west. It is called a tick. It latches on to human beings and sucks the lifeblood out of them. Likewise there is politickitis, a two legged insect that is found in government. Ninety per cent of all politickitis sit on the frontbenches; 10 per cent sit on the backbenches. I will not deny that.
A politick is a politician in power who latches on to the taxpayer and sucks the living blood out of them just as this government has been doing since it got in here. And there has been no change.
I well remember the 1993 election campaign. I remember how we were going to be rid of this GST. Since the Liberals have come to power there is a new name for it. It is called ``get stuffed, taxpayer''. That is exactly what it is and that is exactly what the Liberals are telling the average taxpayer. ``Get stuffed, we're not interested in it''. And they get away with it.
But it will stop. The taxpayers will make sure it stops. Sooner or later taxpayers are going to throw this bunch out. It is only a matter of time. They are tired of politicians knocking on their doors every four years. They are tired of politicians getting down on their knees and begging the electorate to put them back in power. They promise they will not do it again.
I have a question for you, Madam Speaker. Name for me one policy, one tax that a government put in which defeated that government and that an incoming government got rid of? There is none. The new government just expands upon it. It raises more money.
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As I sat and thought about how the government is broadening the tax base, I came to one conclusion. The main reason it has done this has to be, beyond a doubt, that it needs money for its pension plan. It has to be. The MP pension plan has to be in serious trouble. It is the million dollar pension plan which members opposite will take. That is what it is going to do with the money. That is what harmonization is all about. It has absolutely nothing to do with the word harmonize.
In most places that is called legalized theft. That is exactly what it is. Liberals said it was not personal tax. Every tax in this country is a personal tax. When I buy something, whether it be a shirt, shoes, fuel for my car or for my house, the tax on those items is a personal tax. When they say it is not a personal tax they are snowing the public. It goes on and on. They get away with it because they implement time allocation and closure. Is that a democratic society? No. We have long past the point of being a democratic society.
As a matter of fact, I would probably characterize us, along with many members of the House-and I am sure many members opposite would agree with me-as having probably the greatest dictatorship in the free world. It sits right here in this Parliament. I cannot believe it. I cannot believe that we have allowed it to go as far as it has. What is happening in this country is absolutely ridiculous. It is being fostered by many members opposite. When those members disagree, they are kicked out of the caucus. ``Do not come back into our caucus. I will not sign your papers''.
An hon. member: They think it is funny.
Mr. Stinson: Yes, they think it is funny over there. They think this is the way to do business. They tell their members that if they disagree with them they should keep their mouths shut. ``Get out of here. We will disband your organizations and you will never be allowed to come in here again''. Is that democracy? I think not.
I have a feeling that underneath the propaganda machines that sit over there some of them could make what happened many years ago look very tame.
It has to make us wonder exactly how far some hon. members will go in order to get elected. It does not take me long to picture these people ringing the doorbells come the next election. They will say ``We got rid of the GST, we harmonized it. It is still there. It is still sucking your paycheque, but we harmonized it''.
When they go back to the people and say ``trust me'', I want everyone to understand that for sure their fingers will be crossed. They have not done anything above board yet.
Mr. Mike Scott (Skeena, Ref.): Madam Speaker, before I start I would like to congratulate my colleague for his most excellent speech. We can always tell when a Reformer is speaking from the cacophony of bleating babble which comes from the other side.
We are talking today about another Liberal broken promise. There is a whole bunch of them. We have referred to them over and over again in our interventions on this bill and other bills.
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First of all, we are talking about the promise to scrap, abolish and get rid of the GST. We are also talking about the Liberal promise to introduce democracy into this House. The people on the other side of this House yelled, screamed and ridiculed the Tory government for doing exactly what they are doing today.
I would like to respond to some of the comments made by the hon. member for Gander-Grand Falls. I have respect for this member and I am aware that on many occasions he has had the courage to stand up and challenge his own government, to challenge his own leader when there was an issue that was going to affect his constituents. He knew and realized that the government was wrong and he challenged it. I congratulate him for that. If more backbenchers in the Liberal government did that then possibly we would get better government. Unfortunately most do not have that courage.
During the intervention of the member for Gander-Grand Falls he was trying to paint this wonderful rosy picture of how great a job this government has been doing for the last three years. He referred to statistics with regard to the deficit and other industrialized nations. For the life of me I cannot understand why this member, who has been very lukewarm to his own government for the last
three years, is all of a sudden on side with it. I imagine he has his own reasons for that.
In a valiant but vain attempt he painted his government in the best light that he possibly could. He said the government's record is good. We know what the government's record is on the GST. We know what the government's record is on invoking closure. Let us talk about a couple of other issues, issues that are not only near and dear to me but near and dear to many people in my constituency.
Let us talk about the broken promise of the North American Free Trade Agreement for a few minutes. When this government campaigned in 1993 it said it would abrogate the North American Free Trade Agreement unless it worked for Canadians. It had some concerns about the agreement and it wanted to make sure it could go back and renegotiate it and make sure it worked for Canadians.
Let us examine the government's record on the North American Free Trade Agreement. What is the single most important trade issue between Canada and the United States? What is the single biggest net export to the United States that means the most jobs in Canada? It is Canadian softwood lumber. Canadian softwood lumber is the single biggest net export to the United States.
What has this government done in renegotiating NAFTA and standing up for Canada's interest in the North American Free Trade Agreement? When Mickey Kantor talked to the Prime Minister or his office or the minister of trade and said he wanted to do a deal that is going to limit Canadian imports into the United States, the minister said ``how high do you want us to jump and when can we come back down again?'' The government rolled right over on it.
This is an issue that affects four provinces significantly and every province either directly or indirectly. There are hundreds of thousands of jobs hanging in the balance. This government and this Prime Minister who promised Canadians they were going to make the North American Free Trade Agreement work for us have turned their backs on these people and allowed American trade officials, Mickey Kantor in particular, to dictate to us how we are going to run our softwood lumber industry.
I want to talk for a minute on who benefits from this. Most of the timbered land in Canada is owned by the crown and is granted as tree farm licences. Various sawmills and pulp mills get rights to harvest in these areas but the land is owned by the crown.
In the United States it is different. Most of the timbered land in the United States is owned by private individuals and corporations. Incidentally, most of the timbered land in the United States is owned by a handful of wealthy corporations that have the money and the power to go to Washington, D.C. and lobby for their interests. They are the ones who are benefiting. They are the ones whose asset value has increased as a result of this quota system. They are the ones who are able to demand more money for their timber in the United States.
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And who is losing? The first big losers are the consumers in the United States who on average pay $3,000 more now than before the quota for the construction of a new home. The American consumers have been held up by their own lobby groups and by the wealthy timber owners in the United States. And the other big losers are the Canadian producers and the people who are employed in those industries. They are the ones who are paying for this.
I cannot understand for the life of me where the leadership is from the government benches, the Prime Minister and his trade minister. They allow the North American Free Trade Agreement to be abrogated by the Americans so that it works in favour of the Americans at every step and turn when it becomes an issue that is important to them. But when it is an issue which is vitally important to Canada, there is no leadership whatsoever. They roll over and play dead. This is another example of a Liberal broken promise.
The Prime Minister takes these trade junkets all over the world and spends millions of Canadian taxpayer dollars doing it. He goes to South America, Europe and Asia, all the while telling people he is there to promote Canadian business and industry. He hands over millions of dollars in subsidies, grants and no interest loans to well heeled companies like Bombardier. However when it comes to an issue that is vital to British Columbia, Alberta, Ontario and Quebec, what does the Prime Minister do? He just rolls over.
A lot of potential jobs will be lost as a result of this. Sawmills in my riding, in Terrace, Smithers, Hazelton and Prince Rupert are on the verge of closing. They have announced closures and are cutting back or laying off people just before Christmas because of the lack of leadership from this government.
It reminds me of another Liberal promise. Does anyone here recall the promise about jobs, jobs, jobs? Well the jobs, jobs, jobs in my riding are going gone, gone, gone because this Prime Minister and his trade minister cannot represent the interests of Canadians when it comes to trade with the United States. That is the track record of the government.
I cannot believe it. I am ashamed as a Canadian. I am absolutely appalled and ashamed that the government is so weak-kneed and so willing to accept what Mickey Kantor and the trade department of the United States demands of us rather than standing up for our interests.
While we are talking about Liberal broken promises, the promise to scrap, abolish and kill the GST, the promise to introduce more democracy into Parliament and do away with votes on closure so that we would have the ability to debate these issues at length, there are other broken promises as well which are costing Canadians jobs
right now. Broken promises are costing my constituents their livelihood.
This is totally unacceptable. The government should demonstrate leadership. The Prime Minister should demand a meeting with the President of the United States and put this issue at the top of the agenda and work for the interests of Canada for a change instead of going on golfing holidays with his friend Mr. Clinton while Mickey Kantor beats up on our trade officials.
I am appalled and ashamed of being a Canadian today when I look at how easily American interests have rolled over us and forced us to do their will.
In closing, when the government brags about keeping its promises, when the government brags about how well Canada is doing economically, it is totally ignoring the unemployment rate in this country. It is totally ignoring the people who are concerned about losing their jobs, and there are a lot more of them now as a result of the softwood lumber issue. It is totally ignoring the cost to the people of Atlantic Canada for paying the harmonization cost of the GST. It is totally ignoring the fact that the rest of Canada is going to foot the bill for this billion dollar bribe.
The government is totally ignoring many of the most serious and important promises it made during the last election campaign. We will be reminding Canadians in the very near future of all these Liberal broken promises.
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Mr. Jay Hill (Prince George-Peace River, Ref.): Madam Speaker, I must say at the outset that it is going to be a really tough act to follow. My hon. colleagues from Okanagan-Shuswap and from Skeena who immediately preceded me have done an absolutely superb job of representing their constituents and the views of Canadians on this very important topic.
I might hasten to add that there is a real problem in this House of Commons when we see the Liberal government bringing forward time allocation 26 times in this Parliament. This is the 26th time we have gone through this to date, where this government has limited debate, shut down debate, shut down the democratic process to ram through a piece of legislation.
And the Liberals have the audacity to go before the Canadian people and talk about democracy. And they will have the audacity in the next election to try to tell Canadians that they have lived up to their red book promise of restoring integrity, restoring credibility in Parliament and in the political process in this country. The Canadian people will reject that as the nonsense it has become.
When that party, the Liberal Party of Canada, was on this side of the House, its members ranted and railed. They criticized the Tories every chance they got for bringing in time allocation or closure. Yet, 26 times the government has used time allocation and four
times it has brought in closure for a total of 30 times it has shut down debate in this place in just a little over three years. Actually it is in under three years because the 35th Parliament did not start sitting until January 1994. It has shut down debate 30 times on 123 bills.
I am sure that at some point in time someone is going to do the arithmetic and figure out that on a percentage basis, this Liberal government in the 35th Parliament of Canada has used time allocation and closure more often than the Mulroney Tories. That is despicable. It is a disgusting record for a government that said it was going to restore integrity in the system.
On to the GST-
Mr. Cannis: Finally.
Some hon. members: Oh, oh.
Mr. Hill (Prince George-Peace River): I can hear all the heckling going on over there. They are amazed because they cannot face the truth of what has transpired in this Parliament. They cannot face the truth. That is the problem that exists over there.
Mr. O'Reilly: Tell us the truth.
Mr. Hill (Prince George-Peace River): Okay, the GST. The hon. member says he wants to know the truth. I am here today to tell the truth, to tell the people in TV land exactly what the truth is.
What did the Liberals say during the 1993 election and in the time leading up to it? I will tell you what they said. Did they say they would harmonize the GST?
Mr. Solberg: No.
Mr. Mitchell: Yes, read the red book.
An hon. member: Page 22.
Mr. Hill (Prince George-Peace River): No, of course not. Did they say they would hide the GST? No. Did they say that they would blend the GST? Of course not. That is not what they said.
Mr. Mitchell: Read it into the record.
The Acting Speaker (Mrs. Ringuette-Maltais): Resume your debate, hon. member.
Mr. Hill (Prince George-Peace River): Thank you, Madam Speaker, for attempting to restore the decorum in the House. It was getting a little loud on the other side.
I am sorry that the government did not decide to use the term blended sales tax. I am quite sure of the reason it decided to go with the harmonized sales tax instead of the blended sales tax. I am kind
of sorry about that because they would have had the BST. Canadians would have really appreciated having the letters BS attached to tax, the BST, especially in regard to the promises made by this government during the 1993 election. That describes exactly their promise to get rid of the GST. They should have called it the BST.
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Now that we know what the Liberals did not say, what did they really say on the hustings, on the doorsteps and in the all-candidates forums during the 1993 election campaign? We know what they said. They said they were going to kill the GST. They said they were going to abolish the GST. They even said that they were going to get rid of the GST totally. That does not sound much like harmonizing to me.
It is ironic that the Liberals are no different from the Tories. That is why we hear Canadians from coast to coast to coast saying Liberal, Tory, same old story. It does not matter which party they vote for. Once they get into power they do exactly the same thing. There is no difference.
Do we want to see exactly how much difference there is? Let us refer to the notes from a speech by the hon. member for York-South Weston.
I am pleased to see you in the chair, Mr. Speaker. Perhaps we will see some decorum restored to this Chamber. I am pleased to see you there.
The member's speech was entitled ``Honesty, Ethics and Accountability: Does it Exist in Canada's Political System''. This is what the member, who used to be a Liberal, said:
So the problem with today's political system is not the people we have in place, but rather the problem with our system in Canada is the system itself. The system is what is fueling public cynicism and distrust.
My removal from the Liberal caucus in April is the perfect example of the reward/punish system I have referred to. I was removed for voting against the federal budget because it failed to fulfil the Liberal Party's election promise to replace the GST. Prior to the vote, I wrote to the Prime Minister to advise him that I would be voting against the budget. I reminded him that while we were in opposition our efforts to eliminate the GST was one of the most significant battles we fought during the Mulroney administration. While in opposition, the Liberal Party vigorously opposed the GST in the House of Commons. Liberal senators undertook an unprecedented effort to kill the legislation and we forcefully campaigned against it in the last election.
It is trite to say that every government has a moral obligation to keep its major election promises. In my view, the last federal budget represented the final retreat from the promise to replace the GST. I think that the government's announcement that it intends to harmonize the tax has verified this. Voting against the budget was the only way that I could reconcile what I had said and done in the past in the House of Commons and what I had said to my constituents on their doorsteps with the fact that the government-The Speaker: I thank the hon. member for his compliment to the Chair generally in his remarks. The four of us are very appreciative for any compliments that come our way.
As it is now almost two o'clock, we will proceed to Statements by Members.