Mr. Speaker, I wish to state that the official opposition will support the amendment presented by the Reform Party. It does not happen
often, but since this amendment is in line with our thinking, we shall be very pleased to support it.
The amendment asks the House to decline to give second reading to the bill, since the principle of the bill does not seek to abolish the GST, and the Reform Party members are right. We have been discussing this bill for a number of days, and we pointed out that when the Liberals were in the opposition and also when they were on the campaign trail, their platform included a promise to abolish what they referred to as the bloody GST.
Three years after the Liberals came to power, we hear that the Minister of Finance has just signed an agreement with the maritime provinces to harmonize the GST and provincial sales taxes and that, in a generous gesture, the Minister of Finance will take nearly $1 billion out of the pockets of Canadian taxpayers outside the maritimes to compensate the maritime provinces for caving in and accepting this political agreement with the Minister of Finance, just to give Canadians the impression the federal government was doing something about the GST and that there have been improvements.
They would have us forget that the Liberals led a heroic struggle against the previous government to abolish the goods and services tax. We on this side of the House are getting used to a situation where the government rises every day to renege on its promises. Other promises were broken by the government as well.
For instance, the government spent part of its election campaign shouting: "Jobs, jobs, jobs. We are going to create jobs". That promise was broken. It will take another 900,000 jobs to get back to the labour market conditions that existed before the last recession. When they said jobs, jobs, jobs, it was just window dressing. They never made any formal commitment to the public to create the jobs that are so badly needed by Quebecers and Canadians.
The unemployment rate is at 10 per cent, and they shout: "Jobs, jobs, jobs". Some campaign promise. A promise that was trashed. A promise to restore a healthy labour market was not kept.
During the election campaign, they also said that poverty must be eliminated, and so forth. Since they came to power, the situation has gotten worse. The latest statistics on child poverty are outrageous. Child poverty is worse in Canada than in any other industrialized country. One more commitment that bit the dust.
The same goes for the GST. In this case, no problem, they are going to harmonize it. They are going to hide it in the price, in the maritimes. It will cost taxpayers outside the maritimes $1 billion. The government acts as if it had always promised an agreement with the maritimes, plus political compensation, compensation it will take out of our pockets to put a good face on the way this government is handling the GST.
The Deputy Prime Minister put on a show of her own not long ago. She resigned on a matter of principle, because she had promised the public that if her government did not abolish the GST, she would resign. So she resigned. Her show cost taxpayers a half a million dollars, so she could be reelected in the same riding.
When you have principles, when you have certain beliefs, and you stake these during an election campaign and even before, when you are in the opposition, and when you come to power, you do the exact opposite, you resign outright. You do not run again in the same riding, for the same party and come back to the same position three months later. That is cynical and arrogant in the extreme.
However, the Deputy Prime Minister has broken more promises. Radio Canada International is about to disappear. The decision has been made. During the election campaign and quite recently, she promised to maintain Radio Canada International. She even put her seat on the line with her commitment to the survival of Radio Canada International. Today, it is as though it never happened. The government lacks credibility, and the Deputy Prime Minister lacks twice as much credibility. It is time this government cynicism stopped.
That is why we support this motion for the bill not to proceed to second reading, because it does not contain any clause on abolishing the GST. That is what the government had promised. When we say promises, we do not mean idle promises, but promises that have been written down, recorded on video, like the events involving National Defence.
During the 1993 election campaign, the present Prime Minister was saying: "We will scrap the GST". The Prime Minister also said on May 2: "We hate this tax and we are going to get rid of it". What good is the Prime Minister's word? The Deputy Prime Minister's? What is this government's word worth?
Perhaps it is high time for the public to wake up, for them to realize that this government is thumbing its nose at them, that this government has no respect for the people, that this government is elected only to serve rich Canadian taxpayers, the very rich who transfer family trusts worth $2 billion out of the country tax-free. It is time for people to realize that, with this agreement on the GST, they are thumbing their noses at all Canadians.
It is not, moreover, only in Quebec that people are voicing opposition to this agreement. Everywhere else, in Ontario, the Prairie provinces, British Columbia, people feel that this agreement is absurd. Moreover, the Minister of Finance has been asked many times to produce the formula used to calculate his billion dollar figure, with no response. The minister refuses to make this formula public.
Questions arise about the government's honesty and its ability to really carry out the commitments it made during the election campaign. I am not talking about shows where they over inflate promises kept, as the Prime Minister did at the last Liberal Party congress, but actual accomplishments. The GST was one of this government's main promises, and look what they did with it.
Jobs were one of the government's main promises, and the government has fallen some one million jobs short.
The government can boast about the interest rates being very low. Do you know why the interest rates dropped, basically? The first reason is the American economy; the second, the Canadian economy and the third, the fact that people are not working. When they no longer have a job, they no longer spend and there is no more inflationary pressure. At this point, there is no need for the Bank of Canada to strike at non existent inflation by increasing the interest rate. These are the basic reasons for the lower interest rates, and not good management by this government. This government manages nothing.
This government has managed nothing since taking office. It allowed itself to be swept along by the wave. Things went well, they drifted along and forgot the commitments they had made with respect to jobs and the fight against poverty. The Prime Minister and Minister of Finance's gang preferred to make a show of it and look after the interests of rich taxpayers. This is the reality of this government.