Mr. Speaker, today we are debating a bill that has come up very suddenly. It is a bill that, as of last week, was not even on the government agenda, the so-called GST harmonization bill, really the GST hiding bill that the government is trying to now push through as quickly as possible while people in the country are busy getting ready for Christmas and have their minds on other things. It is very typical of this government.
There are four main concerns that Reform has about this bill. One is that this new form of the GST will kill jobs. It is bad for business, it will kill jobs. This is in a part of the country that can least afford to have this kind of action taken against its economy.
Second, this new form of GST that the Liberals are ramming through the House is bad for consumers because it will substantially raise the cost of many goods.
We know our economy is driven 60 per cent by consumer spending. Now we will have even more difficulty, even more of a burden placed on the backs of consumers who are trying to provide the necessities for themselves and their families.
Third, this new form of GST that the Liberals are pushing through in Atlantic Canada is bad for taxpayers because it means that taxes will be increased.
The fourth thing is that this new form of GST being put forward by the Liberals is breaking a Liberal election promise, a strong, unequivocal, firm, clear commitment by this Liberal government to scrap, kill and abolish the GST.
These broken promises continue to disconnect Canadians from the electoral process, increasing the level of cynicism and increasing the level of distrust and disrespect for elected people and for the institutions of government. This is a very worrisome and sad situation in this country.
This bill was put forward and then closure was immediately voted through the House. The government is sneaking this bill through. Invoking closure yet again, as I said the last time I spoke on a closure bill, this seems to be a weekly if not almost daily occurrence by this government. It is disrespecting the democratic checks and balances of our system to simply push its agenda through with as little opposition and as little opportunity for examination as possible. This is not democracy as it was meant to be.
I will not repeat some of the concerns that I raised in my last speech in this House on this issue except to say that Canadians who are watching the proceedings of the House on a daily or occasional basis need to take note of how this government is arrogantly and undemocratically flouting the conventions and the democratic checks and balances that have been put into place. I believe we are going to be paying a heavy price for this increasing erosion of the democratic process in our country.
In 1990 a member of Parliament who is sitting on the government side and also sitting in cabinet said: "The goods and services tax is a regressive tax. It has to be scrapped and we will scrap it". The minister of defence now has a different tune to sing just five or six years later. He had the chance to keep strongly made promises, to act on the outrage that he and many of his colleagues expressed about the Conservative government GST and now he is totally backtracking and not to be heard from in this debate. The present minister of defence did not say: "It must be harmonized and we will harmonize it". No, he said: "It has to be scrapped and we will scrap it".
On May 2, 1994 the Prime Minister said with regard to the GST: "We hate it and we will kill it". Now he is saying "we really like it and we will bring it back in a form that will gouge even more money out of taxpayers and citizens in the Atlantic provinces".
When the government fails to carry out these clear election promises, these clear representations to Canadians who place their faith, trust and confidence in this government and in government members, Canadians feel increased cynicism with their government and their country. This is something that is very disturbing and it is going to be a very difficult situation to deal with as time goes on.
I would like to spend a few minutes talking about an aspect of this new replacement GST of the Liberals called a notional input tax credit. At present when a good or service is introduced into economy the GST is paid on those goods. When the goods go through the economy again in the form of used goods, the GST does not have to be paid on that good because it was already paid the first time it came into the economy. That was in the past.
The Liberals have seen a golden opportunity to vacuum even more money out of the economy to fund its waste and its spending and its inefficient, bloated government. Now when a consumer buys a used product he will end up paying the GST yet again even though the GST has already been paid. In fact, that GST will be paid over and over every time there is a transaction involving those goods. This is something called tax cascading, which is kind of a nice term. Canadians would probably call it stacking the taxes, a tax on tax on tax. In fact, the taxpayer will have to pay tax twice, three times, four times and maybe more on the same goods.
This is nothing more than another Liberal tax grab. It is also sneaky because the Liberals have not introduced this increased tax take. The honest way is to put the tax bill before the House and have it properly debated. It simply changed the definition of what the GST will apply to. The GST will be paid over and over.
This will have a very negative effect on any business dealing with used goods. It will kill jobs, raise consumer prices and suck more tax dollars from the pockets of Canadians. There is very little profit in many of these businesses already.
We know and the Liberals have acknowledged time and time again that taxes kill jobs. For example, the Liberals said that taxes on employment income, taxes such as UI premiums, make it more difficult for businesses to operate at a profit, to expand their
economic activities and for the economy to grow and to create business and employment opportunities for Canadians.
Yet we see that taxes are something that the Liberals simply cannot do without. There have been over 35 tax increases in one way or another from this government in its years in office. Its total tax take has grown by $28 billion over its term in office; $28 billion that the government is taking out of the pockets of Canadians, out of the hands of business people, job creators and entrepreneurs and investors, workers and consumers, and putting it into the hands of politicians and bureaucrats. It is no wonder we continue to have an abysmally high rate of unemployment in the country. It is no wonder that Canadians have to work harder and harder and find less and less discretionary disposable income and find it more difficult to make ends meet.
The standard of living of all Canadians is being lowered. The Liberal government is making a big show, a big production out of caring about the rate of poverty and the children in our country who are living in poverty. At the same time, it is pushing through measures such as this which contribute to the increasing poverty of members of our society, taking more taxes from the most vulnerable members of our society by this type of tax increase and doing it in a very hurried way to make sure that people do not see what is going on.
There is a lot of misinformation, a lot of distortion by members opposite when they get up to speak, trying to cover up what is really happening. However, we need to get the message out to Canadians that this is not the way to attack child poverty in this country. It is not a way to give the poorest and most vulnerable members of our society a leg up. It is only a way to get more money into the pockets of the government.
The harmonization is a red herring, a feeble attempt to convince taxpayers that the Liberals have kept their GST promise. Other provinces have been clever enough to see through this and have rejected this scheme. I urge the House to reject this scheme and to protect the people in the Atlantic provinces from this kind of tax grab on the backs of Atlantic Canadians.