Mr. Speaker, I listened with interest to the negative comments of the hon. member for Glengarry-Prescott-Russell. He quoted a lot. He quoted some Reform statements which I would support. However, most of what he quoted was totally out of context, including the dissenting report on the GST. He said that Reform supported harmonizing the GST.
Harmonization by its very nature means that the provinces and the federal government must be in agreement. We do not have harmonization. The Liberals have not kept their promise of harmonizing the GST. Only three provinces have agreed to harmonize the GST at the expense of taxpayers in the other provinces. They have even refused to compensate the province of Quebec, which had previously harmonized the GST federally with its provincial sales tax.
The member is totally out to lunch. He is not making any sense at all. The harmonization which he talked about will raise taxes.
The hon. member quoted Reform members. I have a letter written by the government whip regarding the GST. The letter was in response to a constituent from Ontario and was dated March 1, 1995. I do not think the hon. member wants to hear his own words, but he is going to hear them anyway.
He wrote one paragraph on the GST: "Lastly, concerning the GST, our government did promise to do away with it". Those are the words of the government whip. This is a member who has some credibility in the House because of his position. The government whip said: "Our government did promise to do away with it". Not to harmonize it, but to do away with it. It is written on this piece of paper. The letter continues: "However, we still have four years left in our current mandate to fulfil this promise and, like the others, it will be kept". Like the others it is being broken.
The Liberals are not talking about doing away with the GST. The hon. member himself will admit they are not talking about doing away with the GST. They are now talking about harmonizing it. They are not really harmonizing it because there is no harmony between the federal government and the provinces. It is a bunch of balderdash from the member.
He quoted Reformers out of context. He should look at his own words and decide if he should resign. At least the former hon. member for Hamilton East kept her word. She resigned when she was unable to fulfil her promise to Canadians. Maybe the member did not promise to resign. Maybe he does not think it is important to resign when he fails to keep his word.
Here it is in black and white: "Our government did promise to do away with it". The hon. member is not fulfilling the promise he made in his own correspondence to a constituent, which is wrong. Would the hon. member consider resigning and going back to face his constituents? He did not even have the courage to face 700 of his own constituents on the gun control bill. He did not even have the courage to go to the meeting to talk to his constituents.