Mr. Speaker, I welcome this opportunity to speak at second reading of the bill about the GST.
First of all, I would like to say to the hon. member for Gander-Grand Falls, who so eloquently described his affection for the Minister of Finance, that I previously found him to be more objective in his analyses than he was a few minutes ago.
When we say the best Minister of Finance, I think we should qualify that statement. He just went with the flow. Even Mickey Mouse would be a better Minister of Finance than the one we have today, considering the economic climate. This is a Minister of Finance who maintains the tax loopholes for the rich.
Is that what the best Minister of Finance is supposed to be like? The hon. member for Gander-Grand Falls usually comes down hard on giving preferential treatment to the wealthy. However, his government, for which he now seems to act as a yes-man, maintains the privileges of the wealthy. Is that what being the best Minister of Finance means? The best Minister of Finance after the one we had in 1977, who is now the Prime Minister?
Remember that the Minister of Finance we had in September 1977 ran up the first major federal deficit. Is that what the best Minister of Finance in 1977 was supposed to be doing? I am very disappointed in the hon. member for Gander-Grand Falls. He is usually a better analyst.
As for Canada's performance, I may remind him that the Canadian unemployment rate is around 10 per cent and that we will need more than 900,000 jobs in Canada to revert to the same labour market conditions we had before the recession. Is that Canada's best performance? We just received some statistics indicating an increase in the rate of child poverty. Is that Canada's best performance? We have one of the poorest records in the world in overcoming poverty, and all the while we maintain the privileges of the rich. It is awful to hear such things.
Is the best Minister of Finance the one who signed the political agreement with three maritime provinces that will cost us $1 billion? Is the best Minister of Finance the one who wasted $1 billion on an agreement that will not resolve the GST? If that is the case, it is time we woke up and it is time for the yes men on the other side to wake up as well. The arrangement is less and less justifiable before the voters, in my opinion. The farce has gone on long enough.
Canadians outside the maritimes are going to have to pay about $1 billion for an agreement that settles nothing and that scuttles a promise the Liberals made even before the last election campaign. They told everyone they would abolish the GST, the bloody GST. They lied to the people. It is a horrible thing to do. And the people believed them and voted for them.
What do we end up with today? A monumental farce, an agreement worth $1 billion to harmonize the GST with the taxes of three maritime provinces. It really takes the cake when they present it as an extraordinary accomplishment by the best Minister of Finance, who is second only to the 1977 Minister of Finance, who is now the Prime Minister. It is quite a show.
Canadians have not been fooled. They know very well they are going to have to pay for this agreement, which resolves nothing. It is nothing more than a local agreement with three maritime provinces. In Quebec, we will pay $250 million for this agreement. Worst of all in this story is the fact that Quebec harmonized its provincial sales tax with the GST at no cost whatsoever to the government. It did not cost a penny.
We did it because our intentions were good, because we wanted to improve trade and because we wanted transactions to take place as smoothly as possible. We did not want small business to be stuck with two completely different systems operating in parallel. We did all that. We even administer on behalf of the federal government the infamous goods and services tax. And we did not get a penny in compensation for it, not a single penny.
Now the government is presenting us with this agreement reached with the three Atlantic provinces. They are buying off the people in the maritimes for $961 million, that is nearly $1 billion.
It is a disgrace to present such a bill, and particularly to impose a gag order to limit debate on this bill.
They do not like to hear the truth, to hear that they have been deceiving the public. Their commitment was not to hide the GST nor to sign an agreement with three Atlantic provinces, hoping that it would be used as a model nation-wide. That is not was they promised in the election campaign; they ran on the promise of scrapping the GST.
We all witnessed the show the Deputy Prime Minister put on when she resigned and, half a million dollars later, made a triumphant comeback, having cleared her name. It is terrible to put on a show like that, and the people have had it. After spending $500,000 on this show, we are now spending nearly $1 billion on a historic agreement with the maritimes.
The worst part is the incredible lack of transparency in all this. After this historic agreement-historic mainly for its cost of nearly $1 billion-was signed, the provinces, not only Quebec, but also Ontario and British Columbia, asked the Minister of Finance what formula was used to work out this huge amount.
The Minister of Finance obstinately refused to make it public, knowing full well that this formula, if it exists-which is doubtful because this is a political agreement and political agreements do not require formulas-was not tailored to the specific situation of the three Atlantic provinces.
I am convinced that the federal mandarins who were present when the harmonization agreement was struck with Quebec, in 1991, must have thought: "We must be careful, because Quebec is the only province to have completed this harmonization process and it did not ask anything from the federal government". Quebec is so nice that it did not ask anything from the federal government. Therefore, once Quebec decided to go along with harmonization, these mandarins must have devised the formula so as to completely exclude the Quebec situation. But let them make it public. If they have the courage of their convictions, if their formula is so good, then let them make it public, so that we can see how the finance minister managed to find $1 billion in his pockets and generously give that money to the maritime provinces. One billion dollars.
Liberal members are boasting that books are exempt from the GST. This is great, and I want to congratulate Bloc Quebecois members, because they are the ones who, from the beginning, with the eight founding members of the Bloc Quebecois in this House, and out of all the members of all the parties in this House-and I see the hon. member for Longueuil-rose to ask that the GST not be imposed on books.
In Quebec, there is no provincial sales tax on books. This tax was eliminated. The finance minister tells us: "All the books that will be bought by educational institutions and organizations promoting literacy will be tax exempt". We say great, but the government must do more. Culture should not be taxed. All books should be exempt from the GST, as called for by the eight founding members of the Bloc Quebecois. I see my colleague, the member for Rosemont, who is also in the House and who used to rise almost every other week, because we did not have many opportunities to speak back then, to demand that the GST be taken off books.
Members of the Bloc Quebecois were the only ones to meet with representatives of the literary community, all of them. The Liberals refused. The Conservatives refused; I understand. We were the only ones to do so.
So I congratulate the minister for this small part of the bill, but I would like to see him go further, and heed the Bloc Quebecois's call to stop taxing culture and literacy.