Madam Speaker, last week, just after the Minister of Finance announced the federal government was harmonizing the GST with the provincial sales tax of three Atlantic provinces, but before the Deputy Prime Minister resigned because the Liberals had broken their election promise on this issue, I had the opportunity to question the Minister of Finance about the harmonization scheme.
The government knows this is the most hated tax in the history of the country, and Canadians remember well that in the 1993 campaign the Liberals campaigned strongly against it. We all remember well the candidates on our doorsteps, the literature in our mailboxes and the words of the high profile members of the Liberal Party stating that if elected, the Liberals would get rid of the GST.
When he announced the harmonization package last week, the Minister of Finance apologized to Canadians. He said the Liberals were wrong to promise they would get rid of the GST. With the Minister of Finance and the Deputy Prime Minister we now have two senior government ministers acknowledging the Liberal's mistake. Perhaps it is time to acknowledge that the replacement harmonization program is also a mistake.
Harmonization is clearly a shift in the wrong direction. It shifts an even greater share of the tax burden from the corporations to the consumers.
New Democrats think it is time to acknowledge that what the country needs instead of harmonization is meaningful tax reform. In reality it is the consumers who need the tax break, not the corporations.
When I posed my question to the minister I pointed out he had already boasted that the GST harmonization would be good for business. At the same time I pointed out the provinces were saying harmonization would end up costing them money because at the present time the corporations pay provincial tax but under the new harmonization scheme they would not. In Saskatchewan that shift is pegged at around $400 million in losses to the province.
It has already been readily acknowledged outside the Chamber that harmonization is a fabulous giveaway to the large multinational profitable corporations doing business in Canada. For this giveaway the corporations have had to do absolutely nothing.
Did the corporations have to agree to lower prices? No, they did not. Did the corporations have to agree to create any new jobs or even maintain the ones that exist today? No, they did not. Did the corporations even have to promise to keep their profits in Canada for investment in jobs or investment in our communities? No, they did not. The corporations get this huge windfall for absolutely nothing.
When we look back at what the Mulroney Tories did when they first introduced the GST, we see they provided a great deal of documentation to substantiate their claim. Much of that documentation was subject to debate. Nevertheless the documentation was made public.
Today we have the Liberals introducing the harmonized tax but nowhere is documentation provided to substantiate the new claim. The Liberals say the economy will boom, jobs will be created and prices will be lowered. However, they have introduced or produced absolutely no evidence, no studies to back this up.
The Minister of Finance seems to want Canadians to trust him, to take him on his word on this one. Surely the minister understands that when he said he would get rid of the GST Canadians did trust him. When he said he was wrong, when he said he made a mistake, Canadians lost their trust in him. He must now rebuild and regain that trust, which will be very difficult.
Surely he has reviewed the issue of harmonization and the tax shift from corporations to consumers very carefully. Surely he has done his homework and has the evidence to support the claims he is making to the Canadian public.
Surely in the interests of public trust he can produce this material and at the same time outline for all Canadians to see how much of the current tax burden is being transferred from the corporate sector to the ordinary taxpaying consumer. That is what I asked in my question of last week.
Canadians are tired of being treated like uneducated, unthinking children. Let us admit that harmonization is wrong. Stop the process and begin to address the real issue of tax fairness.