Madam Speaker, I am always greatly pleased to participate in these debates and today we are obliged to respond to this Bloc motion, with which they are trying once again to cause instability.
When one is a member of the Bloc, things are easy. One makes all sorts of motions. All that one has to do is to say it is the federal government's fault—
Today we are talking about harmonization, and, once again, the Bloc Quebecois is looking for a lifeline. With all they have done in recent weeks, the issues of the biker gangs and drinking water, their flailing away in the water, they are looking for something to cling to. They think they have found one more life raft to cling to called the harmonization of the GST and the QST, and they say they need compensation.
I am not an economist, but I know how to count. In 1990, the governments of Quebec and Canada announced they had signed an agreement. In agreeing to harmonize, they realized over the years that revenues increased by over $2 billion.
You seek compensation because you have been misled. You seek compensation because you have lost something. Perhaps they lost their credibility, but for sure Quebeckers gained a lot.
They started by setting up a Quebec sales tax. This tax cost them over $1.3 billion. They understood that harmonizing would make things a lot more attractive for businesses. They would become more competitive. What happened? Harmonization was indeed a positive thing.
They are still going after the government, and we certainly know why they are. Why? Simply because elections are coming up in Quebec. We have seen the disastrous state the PQ government is in. It does not know how to administer its own funds and has to come up with something. They need to find ways to get elected.
What is in the PQ separatist stew every time? It is the federal government's fault. In order to win votes, they say it is the federal government's fault.
We had a federal election in 1997. What happened? In 1997, the Bloc Quebecois lost 500,000 votes and 11 seats. If the Bloc were so strong, if it had the absolute truth, it would have won.