Mr. Speaker, I would like to congratulate the member on his sensitivity to the cost benefit analysis of the GST. I also share his view that the GST has been a disaster, especially for the 1.9 million registrants, most of them small businesses. It costs them about $3,000 to $5,000 a year just to administer it, not counting the paper burden.
I want to deal with research and development. I know it is a sensitive issue with members from Her Majesty's Loyal Opposition. I want to recognize first that there is a little bit of a disadvantage on the pure dollars of research and development that do not go into the province of Quebec. The member quoted 50 per cent, but when analysing the research and development component the Ottawa region cannot be ignored. We had this discussion before.
The Ottawa region includes many research and development facilities in which many constituents from the province of Quebec participate. When one sees the amount of research and development that goes into the Ottawa region one will find that on a per capita basis we are a lot closer to a more reasonable share of the research and development dollars.