Mr. Speaker, I wish to present a petition pursuant to Standing Order 36. The petition comes from the Christian Booksellers Association of northern Alberta.
The petitioners say that we should not have to pay a tax to read. They say that the GST is the first federal tax in Canadian history to apply to the Bible and other reading material. They say that taxing reading material is unfair and wrong, that literacy and reading are critical to Canada's future and that removing the GST from reading material would help to promote literacy in Canada.
They urge Parliament to remove the GST from books, magazines and newspapers, and they ask the Prime Minister to carry out his party's repeated promise to remove federal sales tax from reading materials.
Of course I would take it one step further. It seems to me, and I was convinced, that they wanted to remove the GST, scrap, kill it, abolish it from everything, so I think this would be a great idea.