Mr. Speaker, I attended a conference on the underground economy which was held in Vancouver a couple of months ago and very soon the conference proceedings on this topic should be published by the Fraser Institute. This was a great subject for discussion. The surveys made of Canadians suggested they have become extremely cynical about these issues. The hon. member summarized the argument very well.
At the same time however the evidence presented by those people who have studied it a great deal suggests that the underground economy is not as large as is popularly believed. There are certain industries, such as home repair, shoe repair, home care services and on and on that when one looks at these industries in detail it turns out that they do not represent a very large proportion of national income.
The largest proportion of national income is produced by large industries such as automobiles, banks and so on that do not have an opportunity to evade taxes in the way it was suggested. Nevertheless it is quite clear there is a very great temptation at the moment as a result of the existence of the GST for people who wish to have their houses repaired, who have all kinds of services that are consumed in the home, are finding that producers come to them and say: "Will it be with or without the tax?" For them there is no penalty for suggesting this.
Why not save a buck, especially once the ethical standards about this have been eliminated or have been depreciated as a result of the discontent with overall levels of government spending and deficits.
It may very well be that it will be very difficult in the future to restore this. We may have used up an amount of social capital in trust and in confidence in our government and in our taxation program. There was a lot of worry expressed about that at the conference.
We hope to do that once we get our spending under control and taxes can be lowered, as is the program of some parties, but it will be a long haul.