Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to rise in this House to speak to the motion on this Bloc Québécois opposition day. This motion says that the government should negotiate in good faith with the Government of Quebec to resolve the dispute dating back more than a decade—it is not a new problem—regarding the harmonization of the QST and the GST. This harmonization was carried out by the Government of Quebec in the 1990s. And the federal government should agree to grant Quebec $2.6 billion in compensation.
Why is this motion being brought forward? Why today? This is important because, for me, it is a matter of justice. We expect a government to manage this federation the way a good parent would manage a family. There should be fairness for each of our children. The government is being completely unfair when it comes to harmonizing sales taxes.
On April 1, 1997, the provinces of Newfoundland, New Brunswick and Nova Scotia received their initial $250 million payment to harmonize their sales taxes. Ontario will receive $4.3 billion to harmonize its sales tax. Quebec did not get a cent when it harmonized its tax in the early 1990s. This is the injustice and unfairness to the people of Quebec that our motion today aims to repair.
It seems to us that when Quebec demands its rights, the door gets slammed in its face. Many examples from recent history show just this.
In 1980, Pierre Elliott Trudeau said during his election campaign that the Liberals would put their seats at stake to get Quebec to sign the Constitution. What did we get? Unilateral patriation. We were deceived at a time when we were demanding our rights.
In 1984, Brian Mulroney said that Quebec should return to the constitutional fold “with honour and enthusiasm”. Those were his words at the time. So what happened? The Meech debacle. Over and over again, Quebec demands its rights but ultimately just gets the door slammed in its face.
In 1995, Jean Chrétien promised change. What did we get? The Clarity Act and the sponsorship scandal.
In 2005, the Conservative government promised us open federalism. But they are still not respecting provincial jurisdictions. How many times have I had to rise in the House and condemn the fact that the federal government was constantly spending money in Quebec’s jurisdictions? If we need reminding, it spends $57 billion a year in areas that are not its jurisdiction.
In our view, the fiscal imbalance has only been partially resolved. We think it can only really be resolved through the transfer of tax room.
The open federalism promised to us does not exist.
Quebec companies have been devastated by the economic inaction of the federal government. Since the Conservatives came to power, 64,000 manufacturing jobs have been lost in Quebec.
The refusal to implement the Kyoto protocol has hurt Quebec companies that made the effort to reduce or severely cut their greenhouse gas emissions. The failure to implement the Kyoto protocol with absolute targets and 1990 as the base year is preventing us from getting our much desired carbon exchange, which would reward the efforts our companies have made.
The federal government has also made some major military purchases without any concern for the effects on Quebec’s aerospace industry. It has simply abandoned Quebec.
It is the same in forestry. There is a double standard at work.
What is open federalism? For us, it does not exist. These few recent examples show that Quebec never gets its fair share and that Quebec and Canada are two very different nations. Our goals, objectives and methods are so different that it is difficult to get along. The open federalism that was promised by the Conservative government was nothing but a sham.
Yet, Quebec's finance minister did demonstrate some openness. She sent a letter to the federal Minister of Finance on April 1, 2009 to settle this difficult issue of sales tax harmonization. She wrote the following:
However, the main difference between the QST and the GST involves corporate input tax refunds for certain goods, a measure that would cost Quebec around $500 million annually, which is a little less than 5% of QST revenues.
I hereby wish to inform you that the Government of Quebec would agree to modify the QST to address your concern of a more complete harmonization, in exchange for a just and equitable compensation of $2.6 billion.
Specifically, Quebec would agree to allow all QST corporate input tax refunds for a period of up to eight years, which is what the federal government agreed to for Ontario.
The will is there. We were told that the roadblock to true harmonization was corporate inputs. We now have good reason to wonder what the federal government is waiting for to treat Quebec the same as the other provinces.
It is a matter of justice and fairness, not of political partisanship. We simply think that Quebec should receive $2.6 billion in compensation to harmonize its taxes and that the federal government can move forward quickly on this.