Mr. Speaker, it gives me great pleasure to participate in the debate this afternoon.
We have before us a motion presented by our friends in the Reform Party, a motion, which, incidentally, is not votable, and in which Reformers tell us that the promises made in the 1993 election campaign were, in their view, not kept, particularly with respect to the GST.
They refer to the resignation of the former Deputy Prime Minister, who will be re-elected, I predict, in very short order with an overwhelming majority. Then the Reform Party condemns the government, if you can believe it, for betraying the trust of Canadians, and so on. They finish with a comment about the harm done to public institutions, governments, politicians and the political process.
There is not much truth in that. First, let us talk about the commitments of the government which can be found in the red book. Mr. Speaker, I am sure you are very familiar with that book and you will listen to this with the objectivity, neutrality and the unbiased view that Mr. Speaker gives to these things. Let me read from page 22 of the red book:
A Liberal government will replace the GST with a system that generates equivalent revenues, is fairer to consumers and to small business, minimizes disruption to small business, and promotes federal-provincial fiscal co-operation and harmonization.
Remember the word harmonization. What did the Minister of Finance propose some months ago? He proposed exactly this: a system to harmonize the tax with the provinces. That is exactly what was said in the red book. Not all provinces have opted for that yet and I regret that. The Minister of Finance has announced that he regrets that. But Mike Harris, the premier of Ontario who had previously said he was in favour of harmonization, will have to answer to that in the future and that is very unfortunate.
The member across the way asked why the Deputy Prime Minister resigned. I will get to that in a minute. I ask him to be patient, the way people should be. He will find in very short order that his party is wrong, just as wrong as the Reform Party.
Mr. Speaker, you will probably know that the finance committee had hearings on the issue of the GST. Do you know what the Reform Party members recommended? They had a dissenting report and in it they recommended that the GST be replaced with a harmonized system with the provinces. Would you believe that? No less than the member for Calgary Centre signed those recommendations.
The member for Calgary Centre is not just anybody. The member for Calgary Centre is someone we know very well. At one time he was the whip. He was the second whip for the Reform Party in this Parliament. Some people will recognize him as the fourth whip because the Reform Party has had five so far. He was the second and fourth whip. Anyone who can hold that office twice within the same Parliament and not be there on two other occasions is obviously someone who knows what he is saying, otherwise why would he have the confidence of his party so many times?
This is the member for Calgary Centre speaking here. Page 118 of the document states: "We commend the government on its attempt to harmonize the tax with the provinces". Let me read that again. This is amusing: "We commend the government on its attempt to harmonize the tax with the provinces". This is the member for Calgary Centre speaking. That is enough to make hon. members across the way in the Reform Party blush. Even worse, it is enough to make them silent. The Reform Party document goes on:
John F. Bulloch from the Canadian Federation of Independent Business put the harmonization issue into stark terms when he said on March 8, 1994:
"-you do not have a technical problem. There is nothing that is not known about this tax. You have one big political mess on your hands-the problem is how to build a political consensus".
It goes on to say that they support the need for harmonization of the tax. Who said that? The member for Calgary Centre.
That is precisely what the government did. I know we followed the advice of the Reform Party. We do not do it very often but this time we did and we promise not to do it too often in the future.
Having done that, the Reform Party came back to the House and said that the Deputy Prime Minister had not lived up to her promise and therefore she should resign. They asked for her to resign and she did. I hope that she will shortly be re-elected. Then they criticize her for having resigned which is what they asked her to do to start with. She resigned because her government adhered to the policy that the Reform Party had proposed. That is another contradiction.
It gets better. The Reform Party blue sheet said on taxation: "The Reform Party will work toward a simple, visible and flat system of taxation". Later on they proposed the flat tax: "The flat tax is not new to Reform nor is Reform following the American lead. Quite the opposite. The Reform initiative led the way on American tax reform, ahead of the Americans and way ahead of
any other political party". This is the member for Calgary Centre who said that harmonizing the tax for the province was a good idea.
The member for Calgary Centre also said a number of very good things that are worth quoting. He spoke about the way other Reformers were behaving. This is an article from the Ottawa Sun dated May 13, 1996. I am again quoting the hon. member for Calgary Centre who said: ``Would you vote Reform, for a party as disorganized as this?'' He was talking about the fact that the leader of his party had asked the member for Calgary Southeast to resign. She was booted out of the caucus or put in some sort of purgatory.
This is what happened. The leader of the Reform Party found that remarks from two Reform MPs were unacceptable and that they should be turfed out. However, the member who pointed out that the remarks were unacceptable was turfed out because she said that the remarks were unacceptable even though the leader agreed and did throw them out.
This is a little hard to follow but this is the way it worked. If Reform Party members denounce something that is wrong, they are criticized for denouncing that which is wrong even if the leader recognizes it himself by turfing out those who were wrong to begin with.
Here is what occurred next. The member for Calgary Southeast then said that since they were going to turf her out for a little while she did not want to be part of the gang at all and she walked away. The member for Calgary Centre looked at all that and exclaimed: "Would you vote for Reform, for a party as disorganized as this?" The member for Calgary Centre was quoted in the Ottawa Sun and if it is in the Ottawa Sun it is obviously true, as we all know.
Let us quote some more about the Reform Party. This is the party that today talked about ethics and so on. I have in my hand a little book. I will not put it in front of the camera because I do not want to use it as a prop. It is the little green book of reform. I want to read a few quotes from the book because some of them are pretty good.
There is a little quote by the member for Beaver River. She said: "Women are just trying to lift themselves up to the detriment and expense of men". Let us find another one here. This is good stuff on the ethical behaviour of MPs and so on. Here is a great quote from the leader of the Reform Party: "It is a mistake to meet immigrants at the boat or plane and offer them a grant to preserve their culture".
Let us move a little further. We now have the member for Capilano-Howe Sound. This is what the member said: "Having programs in support of single mothers causes mothers to be single and in need of support". Let us have another one. The MP for New Westminster-Burnaby when he was running in his campaign said: "Old age security is welfare for the aged". It gets better. I will read some more. It really gets good here.