No, that is not poppycock. That is exactly what has happened and that is what the auditor general is making us aware of. We should be aware of it so that this kind of stuff will not be allowed to happen.
I am not misleading. I acknowledge that there was not a reservation. I just did not put it in my speech. Am I misleading by saying it is not revenue neutral? I accept the claim that it will generate the same amount of money as is currently being generated by the GST but there is a cost to setting up this new system.
When the Liberal red book stated that they would replace the GST with something revenue neutral, they did not say at a cost of $1 billion or $2 billion or $100 million. There was no cost to it. I assumed and I think most Canadians assumed that they would replace it with something that does the same. If it was supposed to save money in administration and in efficiency and if it saved money for businesses and governments, it should not cost us a billion dollars. We know why it cost us a billion dollars. It was either a bribe, an enticement or a transitionary cost. Any one of those three can be picked. I know the government will take the transitionary cost.
We have never supported harmonization. He and I were on the committee. The minority report of the Reform Party on replacing the GST clearly stated in its executive summary, right from the beginning to the end, that: "Harmonization cannot be fully endorsed. While harmonization does simplify the tax system, it makes no sense to do it in a piecemeal, ad hoc fashion because it simply increases the confusion, the cost and the resentment across the country". That is what the government is doing.
The purpose is to eliminate dual tax regimes but this version retains it for national firms. The Reform Party opposes tax inclusive pricing. This practice violates the principle of open taxation which is essential to efficient functioning of open democracies. The disclosure of taxes paid on cash register receipts preserves an element of openness in taxation but as the experience in Europe has shown, it eventually results in strongly diminished public awareness of the tax.
The Reform Party sees the GST as an unnecessary temporary tax which does not belong in the federal domain, but inasmuch as the tax will exist temporarily, then the Reform Party encourages the government to streamline taxation, remove as many of the significant problems that exist until such time as a much wider tax reform that provides both tax relief and tax simplification can be implemented.
If the government presented a national integrated sales tax with the lowest possible rate on the broadest possible base, the Reform Party would seriously consider looking at such a proposal. However, the government is not doing that. This is a piecemeal, ad hoc presentation. This would be only conditional consideration because the Reform Party's final solution to the GST, as I mentioned earlier, would be to eliminate the GST after the budget is balanced, incorporate the net revenue required into a simplified tax system featuring a dual rate.
I think I have addressed the issues of the hon. member of being misleading and hypocritical. I welcome that. If I challenge them for being misleading and hypocritical they have the right to accuse me of the same. I have, unlike the government, addressed each of those items and have given my answers. I would now like the hon. member, if there is a minute left, to tell me if I am still misleading and hypocritical in light of my answers.