Mr. Speaker, I rise today to address Bill C-70.
However, I would like to make a correction on the facts that were just presented by the member from Cumberland-Colchester. She indicated that the HST-BST committee had gone to Atlantic Canada, when in fact it is not true. That was a prebudget consultation hearing that went to Atlantic Canada. For her sake and the sake of my colleague I would like to clarify that the Reform Party member was correct when he said that the committee did not go to Atlantic Canada, nor did it receive people from there at the hearings.
I would like to refer to a document I got permission to quote quite liberally, from Mr. Mitchel Gray who writes for the Canada Taxpayers Federation, Alberta division. He calls this weekly commentary paper "Let's Talk Taxes".
It is ironic that my little newsletter that I put out through the House of Commons two or three times a year is called "Let's Talk". I like the title. I will stray from time to time but I will give him credit for the gist of the commentary on this issue.
The same people who told us they would scrap, kill and abolish the GST are bringing in legislation now to harmonize the GST, to include the GST in our lives forever with this harmonization in three provinces of Atlantic Canada.
Harmonize is a nice word. Aside from its soothing musical connotation it implies a sense of unity, togetherness and co-operation. When applied to the GST, however, harmonization means coercion, confusion, cost and cover-up. Here is how Mitchel Gray describes these four words, and I concur with his views.
Coercion. Part of the harmonization plan would force businesses to hide the new harmonized sales tax, HST, which our party prefers to call the blended sales tax, the BST, in a price of the product or services being sold.
Shopkeepers who make a mistake and sell a product without including the tax in the price would face fines, jail sentences or a permanent criminal record. That is right. It is off to the gulag. With all these g words these days, between gonads and gulag, we are getting an education in this House.
It is off to the gulag for those brave souls who would reveal how much tax Canadian consumers are paying. When I say gulag I am not kidding. While rapists and robbers can be granted conditional or absolute discharge by a judge under sections 763 and 737 of the Criminal Code, pops down at the corner store will be excluded under these sections and will rot in jail for not including the HST/BST in the price of a chocolate bar. We will need a magnifying glass in case the tax inclusive price is not the right size it is supposed to be. This gets very confusing.
Confusion. It is probably confusing enough to have a combined provincial-federal sales tax in three of Canada's provinces, two separate sales taxes in six provinces and one sales tax in one province.
If members need more confusion, how about this. The HST/BST legislation will exempt some items from the hidden tax rule and allow businesses to show both the tax inclusive and tax exclusive prices as long as the former is displayed. I think people are confused already. I will go real slow in the next part.
Shoppers could conceivably be faced with four different prices for the same marked down item. I will go real slow for the Liberal members because I know this is intended to simplify, clarify and make it a lot easier for people to understand-