Madam Speaker, I suppose I should feel guilty for disturbing the free lunch of the Liberals. In case they follow the usual practice of getting a quorum and then quietly sneaking out like naughty children evading the headmaster, I am prepared to stand here and call quorum all afternoon if necessary.
With regard to the question of closure, it is unthinkable that the government of a democratic country could use this heavy-handed blunt instrument to bludgeon Parliament with the regularity that this government has done. I do not know what the final outcome will be. Perhaps at some point in the not too distant future it will simply dissolve Parliament and say: "We do not need it any more. Let us have permanent closure, permanent time allocation" because that is the Liberal idea of the democratic process.
Remember, 31 times it has moved time allocation or closure in the short period of three years and one month. That is one-third more times than those blunt instruments were used in the entire pre-Trudeau era in this Parliament, back in the days when people actually believed in democracy and when Parliament was still a place where people came together to debate the issues and arrived at conclusions.
With respect to this marvellous HST that is being brought in by this bill in the Atlantic provinces, it is pretty easy to see why the government is so desperate to hide the GST. However, it is only going to be able to hide it in three provinces because nobody else is willing to get on board.
I would like to quote a comment by the hon. member for Mississauga West with respect to the GST. She said: "I keep hearing from the finance department that Canadians are getting used to the GST and now accept it. If anyone really believes that I do not think they are in touch with reality". Bravo to the member for Mississauga West because she sure had that right.
Then the hon. finance minister said: "We have to do something about this GST because we made a mistake. We are sorry, but it was an honest mistake". That is not good enough. Let us face it, despite their public pronouncements, the Liberals never had any intention of killing the GST. Instead they had this cockamamie plan to run around and hide it, meld it in with provincial sales taxes and then maybe nobody would notice. Long term planning, harmonization of the dreaded GST.
The fact that it is going to cost citizens of the three non-harmonized provinces something in the order of $900 million in subsidies does not bother this government. What does it care, it is only money and this is a Liberal government. It is going to hurt small businesses in the three Atlantic provinces. What does the government care, it is not in business. It is made up of politicians and politicians do not care what happens behind that cash register. We are going to have it because the hammer has been brought down. Democratic debate has again been forbidden in this place which was designed for the democratic debating of the issues.
I see the Speaker is signalling me, my time being up. I do thank all of those good Liberals who allowed their lunch to get very slightly cold. Members will notice that I did not fulfil my threat of continuously calling quorum.