Mr. Speaker, I repeat.
Here in this House-and the Prime Minister happened to be here- I was speaking for the government. When a minister speaks in the House, he does so for the government. I gave the circumstances, and I made the statement.
Once again, I think that we should look at what the Prime Minister said during the election campaign, even in the interview cited by the member. The Prime Minister said, in English:
We will look at other alternatives. All sorts of systems are being proposed. We wanted to take the time to sit down with the provinces. That is what we did. We wanted to listen to business people. That is what we did. We wanted to listen to citizens. That is what the Prime Minister said and that is what we did.
That is what we did. The House finance committee took two and a half years to look at 20 options. In the end, they heard from small and medium size businesses, those that create the most jobs, and we did what they wanted to do, which was to institute a process for creating a harmonized tax, which is much simpler and more effective when it comes to job creation.