Madam Speaker, I rise today to finally address Bill C-70.
I find it ironic that the first thing the government does is it invokes time allocation again. When the Liberals sat here in opposition and the Conservative government did it, the Liberals cried about how it was anti-democratic, how it was restricting freedom of speech, and how it prevented people in all parts of the country from speaking out on an issue that is as important as this one.
This bill is going to cost taxpayers in excess of $1 billion. The sum total of the bill's ramifications will be in excess of $1 billion. I will get to another amendment on getting rid of exemptions on the ways and means motion in a second.
Why put this kind of pressure on members of Parliament by not allowing proper time to debate an issue? Why push this through the House of Commons real fast? Is it because the government has used an incentive of $961 million to get these Atlantic provinces to buy into a program that is going to cost Atlantic consumers more in the long run? Is it to make three provincial premiers look good today, while in the long run they are going to lose their jobs? I predict what just happened in P.E.I. will happen to the rest of them.
People across the country have one thing in common: if it affects their pocketbooks they get upset. When they find out in Atlantic Canada that this harmonization is strictly helping business, that this tax inclusive pricing will tend to lead to higher prices in the long run without them knowing it, there is going to be a huge rebellion in those provinces in the next election.
How can the government justify invoking closure on a bill like this? It goes back to the March 6 budget of this year and here we are today in December. Does the government not know how to plan an agenda? Does the government not know how to present something in the House of Commons so members can totally debate it?
We have been here for three years and I have counted 26 time allocations and three closure motions. For those people who do not understand the three closure motions, closure allows time to talk out the issue until 11 o'clock that day. That gives more time for members of Parliament to discuss it.
What does the government do? Twenty-six times it has used the hammer of time allocation, not closure. This means the debate ends at the end of Government Orders which is usually around 5.30 p.m. This debate will be over at 5.30 p.m. tonight and it denies us an extra five and a half hours to debate the issue.
Where are the Liberal members from western Canada? Do they agree that we should give $1 billion of taxpayers' money outside those provinces? They are too chicken to say anything. I challenge them to stand in the House and say something. I challenge the members from B.C. to speak for 10 minutes in support of the finance minister on this issue. I challenge all of Atlantic Canada Liberal members to get up and support this and say how wonderful it is. I expect them to do that and justify it.
Twenty-three per cent of the bills that we have been debating in this House have used either time allocation or closure. Let us look at the statistics a little further. One hundred and twenty-three bills have been passed in the three years to date and half, or close to half, of those bills have been supported by the opposition. That reduces it to 62 bills. That means whenever the opposition, either the Bloc or the Reform, puts a little pressure on the government by trying to show how a bill can be better, or tries to improve it through amendments or whatever, the government has invoked time allocation and closure 29 times. That then increases the percentage to almost half.
This government does not appreciate debate. This government does not welcome debate. Its members are hypocrites when they say they listen to the public. They are duplicitous when they tell the Canadians public that members of Parliament are given lots of time to speak. We are not. Our ability to speak out on this issue has been severely restrained and it is time for us to tell the Canadian public what is happening.
A payment of $961 million was made to three provinces in October of this year. It was charged off to last year's budget, to last year's income statement, to last year's deficit ending March 1996. This finance minister is setting a bad precedent. That is not just my opinion, that is the opinion of the Auditor General of Canada. That is in the public accounts.
Yes, the auditor general signed off on the financial statement. He did not have any reservations about them because he felt the bottom line of $28 billion is a true number but not because it includes the $961 million. He would not have included that. It is because there were other circumstances. I got this from the testimony of members of Treasury Board and the auditor general in the Standing Committee on Public Accounts. It is because there were other areas of revenue, small amounts and bigger amounts, that add up almost to the same amount. Because he saw those offsetting amounts he did not have a reservation. If those other amounts had not been understated by the government he would have had a reservation in this last year's presentation.