Mr. Speaker, I listened with interest to the member for Calgary Centre. There is just one aspect of the harmonized GST that the hon. member possibly did not touch on and that is the whole concept of the ability to remove provincial sales tax from export sales.
Members will know that Canada is a major exporting country. Indeed, a big section of our job growth has been related to the export sector. Much of the financial recovery that we are going through right now is related to exports. The maritime provinces, in particular, need to rebuild their economy so that they move into the 21st century. Exporting will be a big feature of that.
For example, in my riding General Motors manufactures cars and sells them on the U.S. market. Every car that is shipped into the United States from plants in Oshawa will have a certain degree of provincial sales tax embedded in the selling price. That makes our exports less competitive with some of the other competitors that are involved, such as OECD countries and southeast Asia. One of the main aspects of the GST was its ability to remove taxes from export sales.
We have provided these three provinces in particular-and the province of Quebec already has a harmonized GST-with a tool to rebuild their economy and a tool to enter into the 21st century with a more dynamic economy zeroed in on export sales.
Why would the member and his party try to frustrate the whole concept of building a new and better economy for the people of the maritimes to create jobs in the future?