Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to have the opportunity to speak to Bill C-70 which deals with the GST harmonization in Atlantic Canada. The word harmonization reminds me of the song "I said it but I didn't really mean it", a very famous song.
It also gives me an opportunity to remind the Liberals in the House and, most important, their constituents, the Canadian taxpayers, of what was said on the campaign trail about the GST by the very Liberals who are sitting as the government today.
This is a little game called recall. First, let us recall the words of the Prime Minister when he was a candidate for the Liberal Party. He said: "We hate it and we will kill it". He did not say: "We hate it and we will harmonize it".
The Minister of Finance when he was campaigning as a Liberal candidate said: "I would abolish the GST". Pay careful attention to the word abolish. That means to get rid of, to lose sight of, to bury. That does not sound anything like: "I would harmonize the GST".
Our very own minister of defence said when he was a candidate: "The GST is a regressive tax. It has to be scrapped and, by golly, if we are elected to government, we will scrap it".
All across this country as the campaign went on Liberal candidate after Liberal candidate knocked on doors, spoke at public meetings and said in unison: "We will kill the GST. The Liberal Party will kill the GST if we become government in the next election". That is what they said. Everyone heard it. I was on radio shows with Liberal candidates and they could not wait to say "we will kill the GST".
It is sort of fun to go back in time and reminisce about what happened in the 1993 election. But there is a very serious part to all this. The bottom line is that the Liberal candidates in the 1993 election, prior to it, deliberately misled the Canadian people about what they were going to do with the GST. They deliberately misled the Canadian people.