Since we are talking about GST, let us go back to the beginning of the GST. We will go back to the Quebec National Assembly on December 14, 1990. What I find strange in this vote is that Quebec decided to harmonize its tax. The Bloc Quebecois and the Parti Quebecois have always told us that this was a unanimous vote by PQ opposition members.
I will tell you this evening that there were several PQ members missing in the National Assembly. They were not there to vote against the GST. Several of them were missing. As a Quebecker, I thought it was a unanimous vote by the Parti Quebecois in the National Assembly.
In his speech, the Minister of Revenue, Raymond Savoie, told the National Assembly:
The GST strikes me as a fairer tax because it is based on the consumption of goods and services. And the more goods we consume and the more services we use, the more justified it is to opt for this method of taxation as opposed to the traditional one based strictly on revenue ratio.
But the funniest thing—because we are still talking about the GST, we will stick to that—is that when Ms. Marois, now a minister, but then the member for Taillon, spoke to this bill, she was completely opposed to the opposition party, to her party, and said that for her, the important thing was that businesses should be more competitive. For her—Ms. Marois—it was more important that our businesses should be on an equal footing with other sectors in the United States. In that sense, she was in favour of this harmonization, or the movement, and the minister was very happy to hear that.
There is another thing that should be pointed out about the GST, because we must go back to where it all began, in 1990. It is important that Quebeckers and the people of Abitibi understand what the GST was. Why is the motion today coming from the Bloc?