Mr. Speaker, I was endeavouring to clear up a misunderstanding, not cast negative aspersions on anyone, let alone on the Chair of the House. I think it is incumbent on all of us as members of Parliament who are trying to represent our constituents to clear up any potential for a misunderstanding.
It certainly was not the intent of the Reform Party of Canada to limit debate. That was not the intent of the motion and the motion indeed did not do that. I want to make it very clear for the people out there who are watching that the motion in no way limited debate on Bill C-71, the tobacco bill.
I make reference to that because of the chain of events which did take place which prevented some members from speaking. The
member for Haldimand-Norfolk made an intervention in that regard. I can sympathize with that because a number of members had intended to speak to the legislation and had important points to bring forward on behalf of their constituents. Certainly the member for Haldimand-Norfolk was one of those individuals, as he indicated, who wanted to make some strong points and represent the people in his riding. The Reform Party certainly did not limit or prevent him or any other member in this place from doing that.
I sympathize with the member. I believe that all of us in this place get tired of preparing presentations only to have some procedural thing prevent us from presenting our views to the House. Indeed from time to time the government elects to enact closure or time allocation and prevents members from all parties from speaking to important legislation. That too is tragic. It is very unfortunate that this morning we had a process which did not fall into place the way it was intended to allow people to speak to that legislation. That was unfortunate for all members concerned.
I want to say that I have a personal point of view on that very important issue. I am a father of three young children and unfortunately my middle child has taken up smoking in this last year or so. I wanted to bring the personal perspective as a parent and that I have struggled for the last 12 or 15 years to try to quit smoking. I know how addictive nicotine is.
I wanted to bring forward how tragic it is for all parents who have to deal with children who have taken up cigarette smoking. I know we are all concerned about that. It is certainly why the Reform Party endeavoured to assist the government in fast tracking the legislation and to do all we could to assist the government in helping the youth of our country who unfortunately are taking up cigarette smoking despite all the education about it.
I will now move on to Bill C-70, the harmonized sales tax. Never before has a particular government initiative, the goods and services tax, caused such fury in our nation. Anyone in Canada can reflect on the debate which took place inside and outside the House of Commons during the days, weeks and months that the Mulroney government was bringing forth the GST. It tried to ram it through despite the polls which consistently showed time after time after time that roughly 85 per cent of Canadians were opposed to this tax.
Why were they opposed to the tax? Obviously people are opposed to any tax, but the reality goes much deeper than that. I made the remark a couple of years ago when we were debating gun control in this place that I believed that Canadians had reached the same point with gun control as they had with taxes. They had reached the breaking point.
They reached that point with the GST. That is why there was such an uproar all across the country against the Mulroney Tories, the Conservatives, and the much hated GST they were attempting to implement. It was so much so that as will be recalled when looking at the history of this tax, Mulroney had to actually go to the extraordinary step of appointing eight additional senators to the other place in order to ram through that legislation against the wishes of the vast majority of Canadians.
What have we got now? I recently wrote an article for the newspapers back in my riding of Prince George-Peace River in which I briefly detailed the history of the GST. I find it more than a bit ironic that this tax caused a couple of Conservative MPs to be thrown out of their caucus because they dared to represent their constituents and that last spring this same issue caused the Liberal Party, which is now the government, to throw a member of Parliament out of its caucus.
Despite the fact that this Liberal government would like to pull the wool over the eyes of Canadian voters that the Liberals are different from the Conservatives who came before them, what we see is that they are exactly the same. And they wonder why Reformers and Canadians from coast to coast are saying Liberal, Tory, same old story. Nothing changes.
On the subject of the member of Parliament for York South-Weston, it is more than interesting that in a speech to the Rotary Club of Toronto he addressed the topic "Honesty, Ethics and Accountability: Does it exist in Canada's political system". In the little time I have left, I would like to quote one thing from his remarks that day:
Removing me from the Liberal caucus accomplished two things. Firstly, it accomplished the government's main objective. It sent a very clear message that the PMO is intent to maintaining control over members of the Liberal caucus. But in addition, separate and apart from the Liberal Party or the GST, it sent a second larger message to the Canadian public. The action taken by the government on this issue has reinforced Canadians' worst suspicions-that political parties will promise anything to be elected, and once in power will not fulfil that promise. That message is the reason people question whether there is honesty or ethics in our political system.
That is a direct quote from the member for York South-Weston on how he was treated by the government on this very issue of the GST and his stand against it.