Mr. Speaker, the finance minister seems to be a fairly recent convert to the idea of harmonizing the GST. Going back to the time he pursued the Liberal leadership, he sang a very different song. I will quote from the Calgary Herald : Describing the GST as a tax that discriminates against the regions''-the current finance minister-said he would get rid of it, if possible. However, he said, it would be difficult to do that if the federal tax becomes integrated with provincial taxes''. In other words, harmonization means never having to say you are sorry for failing to scrap the GST.
If the finance minister feels that harmonization will make it impossible to get rid of the GST, why is he continuing to pursue harmonization?