Madam Speaker, if the hon. member wants to know who was there, I can send the list to his office. I can tell you that I have the list of those in favour and those against. Not bad for a member in Ottawa.
Let us talk about the memorandum of understanding between the two levels of government. On August 30, 1990, the Government of Quebec and the Government of Canada announced the signing of an agreement whereby the federal government fully transferred administration of the GST to the Government of Quebec which, in return, would harmonize the tax base of the provincial sales tax with the federal tax until January 1, 1992.
It had become necessary to replace the federal sales tax. Before the GST, the federal government had a manufacturers sales tax, a tax which had become obsolete in many ways, but was never mentioned by the hon. members opposite. That old tax had 26,000 exemptions. There were so many gaping holes in that legislation that the government of the time had to do something, hence the GST. With the replacement of the manufacturers sales tax with a more modern sales tax and the decision to harmonize the two taxes, Quebec was putting its economy in a better position to compete with the other provinces.