Madam Speaker, I thank my colleagues for this extension. I will conclude my remarks quickly.
I think I have made my case. We can say this is the most dreaded tax in the country. What is more important than what I have said so far is the fact that in my judgment the imposition of the GST and now the blended sales tax, the HST, is the straw that broke the back of the Canadian taxpayer.
People knew that our tax system was unjust, unfair and biased. There is no question about that. People realized that they had to pay taxes in order to get many of the programs we value in our country, but the GST was too much. It pushed people too hard. It broke the will of people to comply with the tax system of our country so the economy started to move underground in a serious way.
The most popular books for about three months of the year on Canada's news stands are on how to beat the tax man, how to evade taxes. Look in this morning's paper. On the financial pages there were a number of seminars on how to move taxes offshore, how to set up an offshore tax haven. These seminars are being held in the capital city. People have lost faith in our tax system so they are finding ways and means to avoid paying taxes.
Although I have seen no empirical evidence I suspect a lot of Canadians these days are not paying the taxes they are actually obligated to pay, in the underground economy or whatever. I am loath to say these are bad citizens because they know our system is so corrupt.
As my friend said earlier, people in Atlantic Canada know the tax system is wrong when there are folks who buy expensive yachts and get tax breaks while they now have to pay extra taxes on their children's winter clothing, on their books and school supplies and on heating fuel. It penalizes the working poor, the jobless and the victims of an economic downturn. They are punished and treated more cruelly under this blended sales tax.
I look at my friends across the way in the Liberal Party. They are nice people but why do they continue to perpetuate this cruel tax on us? Why do they keep telling people they are going to tax children's clothing and books? We would have to look long and hard to find a a country around the world that says, “What we are going to do now is we are going to tax reading material, books”. It is silly and regressive in a knowledge based economy to be taxing literature and books.
I realize my time is up and I do not want to abuse the privilege that my colleagues have given me to conclude my remarks. Suffice it to say that we are not at all keen on the GST. If the government is going to listen to Canadians, listen to what they said on the weekend when they responded to the poll that asked: If there is a tax decrease planned in the next budget, what kind of tax decrease should it be? Overwhelmingly, some 80% of Canadians said to begin to lower the GST. That would put money in every community in Canada tomorrow.
With the money being taken out by increased GST premiums, increased payroll taxes and so on, every dollar we can put back into the small and medium size communities and rural areas of Canada would be helpful, to say nothing of the urban areas. If we reduce that level of the GST tomorrow, it means that every single Canadian citizen would actually have extra money in their pockets to spend. Maybe $1, maybe $5, maybe $20. Most people we know spend the money. They are not putting it into savings accounts. They need it simply to live.
We think that the enthusiastic endorsement of the Government of Quebec on the blended sales tax was wrong. We believe that the bribe to Atlantic Canada was wrong in principle. Therefore we obviously are not supportive of this motion that would simply give another bribe to Quebec to say thank you for joining in this rather odd and peculiar tax scheme.
With that I will say, obviously we are not going to be supporting this initiative put forward by my friends in the Bloc.