Mr. Speaker, I was speaking about the penny in answering the hon. member's question. I suggested we should view whether or not we need the penny in circulation because it is of an extremely high cost to Canadians because they hoard them.
The real problem why we need the penny is rather ironic. It is because we have the GST which adds 7 per cent to everything. The Liberals promised to do away with the GST. I am sure that retailers and businesses across the country would be happy to deal in increments of 5 cents and we could do away with the penny. But how do they not charge GST on 39 cents or 59 cents of goods? If the government had kept its promise to eliminate the GST, perhaps we could be talking about not only doing away with the $2 currency but doing away with the penny as well and saving considerably more than $250 million for Canadian taxpayers and consumers.