So I guess he will join us in exposing this unacceptable bill, especially considering that Motion No. 11 is proposed by the Liberals. And yet they do not even defend it because that party is obviously led by someone who imposes his wishes, someone who says: "Now we like the GST. We did not like it during the election campaign, but we do now". And everybody says: "We like the GST".
For example, he said during the campaign that NAFTA was bad and that we had to fight against it, but now that he is in power, he is saying: "Let us welcome the president of Mexico and hear him praise us for the hard work we did which made NAFTA a success". That is what the Liberal leader and his government are all about. That is why the credibility of politicians is getting lower and lower in the polls. It is because of that kind of double talk from people like that. That double talk, the one heard during the election campaign and the one heard after the election campaign, is typical of the Liberal Party.
It is nothing new. Remember the campaign against Stanfield in the 1970s. Stanfield said: "We will have wage and price control because it is necessary in order to put the brakes on inflation". Trudeau said: "Never". Six months after the elections, the Liberals, who had been elected, introduced the same wage and price control policy that had been proposed by Stanfield.
In the 1979 referendum campaign, the Liberals said: "We are putting our seats on the line so elect us and we will give Quebec what it has been asking for for 30 years". Then, after the elections, they started to talk about repatriating the Constitution without Quebec's consent. It is the usual double talk. Think about the gasoline tax. The Clark government, which had been in office for nine months, was defeated because it wanted to increase the gasoline tax by 18 cents, if I am not mistaken.
And yet, six months after the Liberals were back in power, they increased it by 65 cents. They have always sung two different tunes. One during the election campaign, with a red book this time, the other times it was a pamphlet. They had answers for everything, but once in power they crumble. They crumble and they let senior officials and deputy ministers steer the boat. It is like a bicycle with a side basket. The Prime Minister takes his place in the basket and the deputy ministers steer first to the left and then to the right, and he sits back laughing and thinks he is setting the course. That is the Liberal government for you.
It is the power trip, the limousine, and as far as the people are concerned, they will keep their promise for the next election and win office again if they can. As a Liberal member in my region said: "We are never so poor that we cannot make promises". That is the Liberal Party philosophy.
We can see tonight with this bill that they have not changed. They have been like this for years. During all the years they held power, we saw these changes of tune. Today, with an election in the offing, people are wondering if they will trust them again. Of course, their popularity is dropping in the polls, of course, Liberal members are no longer able to defend the position of their party. They are ashamed, they have quit talking.
In a bill as important as this, they are almost muzzled. But there is no need. They hide so as not to have to defend such a position, because it is unacceptable from an economic point of view, unacceptable from the point of view of regional equity in Canada, because we are speaking about large regions.
Once again, they attack the region that includes Quebec. It is easy, because everything always goes well for the Liberal Party. What did they say during the election campaign? They said that it would take the fall of a big Conservative project. They looked around for a big project and came up with the helicopters in Quebec and figured that would be a good target to secure the votes of the rest of Canada.
Once elected, jobs in Quebec were next. When it was a question of reducing military spending, they wondered what they could go after in Quebec. It is a popular thing to sock it to Quebec, andthat was what happened with the military college in Saint-Jean. The rest of Canada was delighted and the Liberal Party was able to keep some popularity.
It is always an easy thing for the federal government to sock it to Quebec. We are used to that. No wonder there is a sovereignist movement here in Ottawa. It is because we have had enough of being one among so many others, a province like any other that is always the scapegoat of the federal government.
The member for Trois-Rivières was right in saying that we are once more the victims. The hon. member for Trois-Rivières used the word victims rightly. We are the victims of this reform, which could have otherwise been a major restructuration project inspired by some serious thinking on the part of all parties in this House. Have a look at the amendments proposed by the Reform Party. They are quite acceptable and quite debatable and would improve the bill. The Liberal Party will reject them all. It will reject the amendments from the Bloc, just like the users' suggestions.
Why? I call on this party, which claims to embody Canada, which even claims to embody Canada's two nations. Will it agree to listen to users and the other political parties, which took the time to consult the public. Will it return to committee and forget the IBI study, which is a sham criticized by all who have read it and have anything to do with the area.
So it will dismiss this study and simply rearrange the bill. We say there is a need to give thought to signage, the cost of it is very
high. The cost of ice breaking is very high, the cost of dredging is very high. What we are saying is what the users are saying and Canada's economics interests are necessarily repeating the same thing.
We say that a way must be found to distribute costs so that the taxpayers will pay less but we will maintain our competitive edge against other areas like the United States and Halifax. To do so, before we transfer the Coast Guard to the Department of Fisheries and Oceans, we must consider its role and review all of its operations not for the purpose of making it disappear but for the purpose of transforming it into a service comparable to a private sector business which would do ice-breaking and dredging or provide navigational aids.
We know however that people working for the coast guard are extremely competent. We only have to look at the safety system we have in Quebec and Canada. I am saying that we want to reorganize the coast guard, but we want to keep these people and pay them a decent salary; for years now, they have made a lot of sacrifices in terms of salary freeze, cuts and job losses. We want to keep these competent people who are vital to sound management.
At the same time, we want to consider with them the kind of reorganization which would better serve users and the economic interests of the people, while meeting the goals of the government, the official opposition and the Reform Party, namely reducing costs. But it has to be a through a well structured reorganization, and not by way of a bill rammed down our throat at the end of the session.
In a couple of years, we will see the economic consequences. But will all our ports, all our transportation industry, all our small flourishing industries along the St. Lawrence River have been killed off for the sake of a test? As the member for Trois-Rivières said, if we want a fairer tax from coast to coast, let us base the system on the tonnage of vessels rather than transhipment or unloading, as is done in Halifax or in Montreal.
Let us think also about what the member for Châteaugay said when he referred to extremely important demands and quoted the letter of the stakeholders, of Simon Lacroix, which summarized the situation by speaking about what it meant for Quebec and Montreal. I am happy that the member from New Brunswick is present to hear this necessary object lesson.
For your information, the port of Montreal processes 20 million tonnes of cargo annually and 726,000 containers pass through it every year. This capacity generates 14,000 direct or indirect jobs, as well as revenues of $1.2 billion a year. And the hon. member wants to kill off these economic interests.