That, frankly, as one of my colleagues says, is shameful. They are trying to deceive the public into thinking that things have been achieved and promises have been kept when they really have not.
One of the favourite promises was to scrap, kill and abolish the GST. The Prime Minister and the Deputy Prime Minister made good use of that on the campaign trail. Boy, did they whoop that one up. When they were asked how would they do it, they just said: "Wait till after the election. Do not ask me now. Ask me after the election". My goodness they did not take long to break that promise.
Now we have this unsuccessful attempt to have every province buy into a scheme to harmonize the GST with the PST and create all sorts of new distortions and dissatisfactions like the tax on books. We are faced now with all manner of new problems instead of curing the basic problems that are there with the most hated tax
in Canada, the GST. That just came from yet another broken promise of this government.
I know there is one here that strikes a cord with a number of people in my riding. One of the broken promises is stable multi-year funding for the CBC. What a joke.
The Reform Party was attacked during the 1993 election for telling the truth about the subsidies to the CBC and the need to cut some of the fat out of that organization. What happens? The government says it will never cut a thing, and cuts much more than the Reform had ever said it would cut. How the government gets away with breaking these promises I do not know.
Promise number six was to renegotiate NAFTA, red book, page 24. Two months after taking power the Prime Minister signed NAFTA. Thank goodness he did. If we had not had free trade helping this country stay afloat we would be in deep trouble today. However, the Liberals made a promise and they did not keep it.
Then we have-my goodness, this is a hot one that we have had fun with the last couple of weeks-a code of conduct for politicians, red book, page 95. There has not been a new code. The Prime Minister only uses his secret ministerial guidelines when it suits him to do so. In the U.K. the guidelines are made public. In fact the whip of the Reform Party had a copy of the guidelines from the U.K. in the House just a week or so ago. It is a large book that sets out all of the rules to which ministers of the crown have to adhere in order to be ethical. What a change it would be here if we had something like that.
If the Prime Minister wants to claim that he is keeping with the traditions of parliamentary democracy, let him produce his ethical guidelines for ministers. Let the public read them so that everyone can understand what is happening on that side of the House.
Then we have number eight, appointments based on competence, red book, page 92. I do not want to embarrass anybody by naming names in the House. I know there are a lot of people can identify a couple of hundred Liberal patronage appointments. I know the member for Swift Current-Maple Creek-Assiniboia mentioned this amazing thing that happened in his riding. Two people who were Liberal supporters suddenly were qualified to take up amazing jobs on parole boards and receive wonderful rewards for their loyalty to the Liberal Party. We see that happening right across the country. It happens in my riding. Liberal supporters are being rewarded with blatant patronage appointments.
The number nine promise was more free votes with which I already dealt earlier. I should mention the red book page number in case there is anybody out there who has not used the red book for firewood yet. They can read it on page 92. The Prime Minister has only permitted one free vote in three years-