Mr. Speaker, as everyone knows, harmonization presents many advantages for small and medium size businesses; there is only one tax, one base, one document and one administration.
Furthermore, one of the major advantages is for companies, small and medium size businesses and large corporations which must all stay competitive in the business world.
What we did with the GST is give provinces the opportunity to refund any provincial tax paid on inputs. This is the major advantage agreed to by the three Atlantic provinces. Even premier McKenna said his increased competitiveness, compared to provinces which had not yet harmonized, would highly benefit corporations.
We know that Canadian corporations now pay more than $5 billion each year in provincial tax on inputs and the best way to avoid that is GST harmonization or, in other words, a value added tax.
That being said, according to the hon. member who just spoke Quebec corporations stated they were not benefiting from the credit on inputs. They cannot get a refund for the provincial tax paid on inputs.
This is not our fault, the problem lies with the Quebec government which is not reimbursing all of the provincial tax paid by large corporations in Quebec. It is their problem.