Mr. Speaker, as this debate winds its way to a close, the member for St. Paul's earlier said that this is an occasion for marvellous sound bites and it is. It is an occasion for the Liberals opposite to rest uncomfortably in their chairs as the odour of this particular piece of legislation wafts through the country.
The hon. member for Ontario, who just concluded his comments, suggested that this is legislation that is really very good for the country, that it has no detrimental effects and that the rest of the provinces should get on with it and harmonize the GST.
As Canadians know, this bill will put the legislation through the House to finalize the deal with the three Atlantic provinces. The three Atlantic provinces are the barber shop trio. They are singing in harmony with the federal government. They are singing in harmony with the Liberal government because they have been bribed, as earlier speakers have indicated, with our money.
The problem is this. The reason this issue raises the ire of Canadians and has raised the ire of the opposition is that the Liberal government has a majority. The majority is in good measure because of the government's promise during the election campaign to scrap and abolish the GST. The number of seats that the Liberals were able to achieve during the last election and the number of votes they were able to achieve, which may well have swayed some of the other votes, which would have affected the official opposition in the country, is the direct result of the Liberal promise to scrap the GST.
The Liberals were very vocal about it in the 34th Parliament. They knew full well when they made the promise to scrap the GST that they could not. The country had to have that revenue. If they went on the hustings and were elected on a promise to scrap the GST, to abolish the GST, the hated tax, which they failed to do while in opposition, then it logically follows that the government was elected on a fraud. It should not be sitting here in the first place.
Our responsibility is to ensure that Canadians understand full well that the Liberal government did not tell the unvarnished truth during the election campaign and it should not get away with it.
In politics in our country we should expect our politicians, when they knock on the door, and our Prime Minister, when he looks us in the eye on television, to tell the truth. Is it too much to ask that our politicians, the highest elected officers in our land, tell us the truth?
A few months ago I read an article in a newspaper which said that Canadians do not really expect the people who they elect to tell the truth. Therefore, why should we be surprised when they do not? That article was written by a respected pundit of this country. It went on to say that people should not expect politicians to keep their promises because circumstances and situations change. The situation and the circumstance of the GST did not change after the election. The circumstances were exactly the same. That promise should have been kept.
What kind of a country do we have when the end justifies the means? Should we not go into an election prepared to tell the voters exactly where we stand, exactly how we feel about an issue and then be held accountable for it? That is what the real issue is. The real issue is not the harmonization of the GST. It is the fact that the Liberals were elected on a promise to scrap the GST. They did not, and now they are trying to crawl out from under it.
It will cost us roughly a billion dollars in a bribe to the Atlantic provinces. It will cause untold grief, untold extra work all across the country, but that does not matter. What matters to the Liberal government is its ability to say that it kept a promise, to whitewash this whole issue.
I would hope that when the Liberals come knocking on the door asking for the support of Canadians in the next election, every single Canadian will look them in the eye and say: "Did you keep your word? Did you do as you promised to do prior to the last election?" They will say: "Oh yes, we harmonized the GST". Then, Mr. and Mrs. Canadian, look them in the eye and say: "Where in your election platform did you say anything about harmonize? You said scrap. You said abolish. You said get rid of. You did not say harmonize".
Every single Liberal should be taken to task, even the member for Broadview-Greenwood who is certainly no friend of the GST, whether harmonized or not. Even the member for Ontario who spoke so recently is no friend of the GST and neither is the Deputy Speaker who changed political parties because of the hated, despised GST. Members can imagine how uncomfortable that hon. gentleman feels as he stomachs that hated GST.
There are two aspects to a consumption tax. Most people, in fairness, will say that a consumption tax is not a bad way to tax. It is incremental. It is broadly based. It means that everybody pays on everything. People cannot get out from underneath paying the tax. However, there are two aspects to it. There is the rate, that is, whether 8 per cent or 7 per cent.
That was the problem with the old manufacturers' sales tax. People were afraid to go to sleep at night because they knew the federal government would raise the tax because it was hidden. That is why it has to be visible.
There is the rate and there is the base. The base means to what is the tax applied. This is never brought up. The problem is that the base, the products to which the taxes are applied in the provincial sales tax is quite a bit narrower. Not nearly as many products are taxable under a provincial sales tax.
When the tax is harmonized, it becomes a question of applying it on as broad a base as can possibly be done so that the rate is as low as it can possibly be. It is a combination of low rates and wide base that makes sense. To apply it on a narrow base but at a very high rate is counter productive.
As this debate winds down-I recognize that I may be the last person to speak on this-I want once again to make sure that all Canadians are reminded of the hypocrisy, the duplicity, the outright lie on which the Liberal government was elected. It should be ashamed and ashamed for a long time to come.