Madam Speaker, the hon. member for Kamloops earlier this morning gave a very chilling account of the truth surrounding the GST and indicated what a regressive tax it is.
I pose a question to the members of the House. What would you think of a tax on going to the bathroom? Sounds preposterous doesn't it? The truth is we are just inches away. We pay GST for getting our hair cut. Should this not be a reality check for government? Have we now gotten to the point that we are taxing bodily services? I cannot stop my hair from growing.
He very correctly indicated that it is a tax on low income people. Everybody has to get a hair cut. Everybody has to buy clothing and books for children. He said if we did not have the tax that money would remain in the pockets of the people and the people would spend the money. He should have finished that. When you spend the money it stimulates the economy and it creates jobs. That is the whole point.
The GST is a tax on jobs. It is a tax on the economy. That is why it is regressive. Furthermore it drives a massive underground economy. The very people burdened by the GST are the hard working Canadians, people like contractors who provide services for other people. It is a natural tendency to say “I am so overburdened by the regressive taxation system in this country, I will tell you what. I am going to do that for cash”. They make cash deals. So the GST drives a massive underground economy that results in a lot of lost revenue for the government. If the government would lower taxes, simplify the tax system and make it fair, people would not have an incentive to evade taxes.
Furthermore, the GST is a massive burden on small business. Instead of contemplating ways to expand their business and improve the services they provide to their clients, the guy now has to hire somebody to do accounting to help the government collect its taxes. Then the government has a massive bureaucracy in Revenue Canada to collect it. Think of the downsizing we could do if we did not have to administer this ridiculous tax.
The compliance and administrative costs of operating the GST are extremely high. Why do we not have common sense and say “Let us scrap the GST and simplify our tax system”. It makes perfect sense. Why can the government not see that?