Mr. Speaker, usually we say it is a pleasure to rise and enter into the debate. Frankly, I wish I did not have to give this speech today because it is one of such distress to Canadians. It is the one that turned the previous government on its ear and turfed it out. Primarily it was the imposition of the GST on the Canadian people that turned the people against the government of the day.
I would like focus on what this means to business. In order to do that, I have chosen to back into Hansard . It will be four years in March that the GST was being debated in the House. There was a bill brought forward which amended the GST rather substantially. That generated a lot of debate.
At that time the Liberals were in opposition. I went to Hansard to see what the Liberals said in the last Parliament about the GST, particularly about how it affects business.
There were several members who spoke about this. There are three people I would like to draw attention to. One is the Deputy Minister, another is the member for Broadview-Greenwood and the third is the member for York South-Weston.
I cannot help but have a great deal of sympathy for the voters of this country when they feel cynical about government. These three people very distinctly and explicitly gave the Liberal position on the GST. In fact, every one of these people took action on the side of the government when the GST had not been rescinded the way they promised during the election campaign.
I do not know whether the logic escapes Canadian people but, for example, the Deputy Prime Minister told the voters in her riding that she would resign if the GST were not abolished. There are really only two possibilities here. The first is that she, like millions of other Canadians, did not read the red book and the fine print in it. Therefore she actually fell into the group that really did not fully understand the Liberal policy. In that case, I recommend that she be considered quite incompetent because on such a major issue during the election campaign she should have known her party's policy. The second is she tried to deliberately deceive the voters in order to gain their vote without telling them the actual truth. We do not want to believe that but it is a possibility which should not escape our consideration.
I would like to talk about the member for Broadview-Greenwood who, previously in this Parliament, actually left the Liberal fold for a short time to sit as a Liberal independent, or whatever the name was that he chose, and then later on returned. I challenge him personally and all Liberal members to live up to what they committed themselves to in the campaign on behalf of the Canadian people in order to restore the trust and confidence that Canadians ought to have in this institution.
I will quote from Hansard of March 12, 1993, pages 16902 and following. This what the hon. member for Broadview-Greenwood said: This whole GST operation by the government has been the worst initiative that any government has ever perpetrated on a people''. He said that the GST isa tax that has done a great deal to dampen and suppress entrepreneurial spirit and consumer confidence in this country. I know in my own riding it has practically cut the restaurant business in half, not to mention what it does to students who tend to work their way through either high school or college by working in restaurants part time. They count on not only this type of work in the restaurant-tourism business but on the tips. It has just gutted the hopes for half-decent, part time income for tens of thousands of university students right across Canada''.
Earlier today in question period we were talking about jobs and the jobless rate in Canada. The fact is that 17 per cent of our youth are actively looking for jobs. I know what that means. I have a son who for over a year has been looking for a job. He cannot find one. The economy does not say to him to come and work because it is
so depressed. Partially it is because of the pervasive effect the GST has had on it.
The hon. member for Broadview-Greenwood said: "It has throttled people with this bureaucratic nightmare of a GST". Those are the words spoken by that member almost four years ago. The hon. member for Broadview-Greenwood quoted the leader of the Liberal Party of the day, the current Prime Minister, by saying: "My leader three weeks ago said that this GST will be scrapped. Make no mistake about it, the GST will be scrapped if we are given the trust to run the Government of Canada". That is a direct quote from Hansard . Here is another one: ``This GST has done much damage to the retail business in this country. It has done much damage and caused much unemployment and welfare''.
When the hon. member for Broadview-Greenwood was on this side of the House, he identified the true implications of the GST. He made a great point of expressing those sentiments. He went on to say: "If you developed a fair tax system in this country and if you put 400,000 or 500,000 people back to work, you could find $15 billion within four or five months, not to mention the fact that we would start giving people back their dignity. We have to understand that there are close to two million people in this country who are out of work".
Listen to these beautiful words from that member. I am happy to quote him because he is right. It is unfortunate he has changed his mind. He said: "I cannot imagine a single member of Parliament in any party in this House of Commons wanting to defend the status quo in terms of tax law in this country. In fact I have not met a member of Parliament who believes that the tax act of this country is fair, simple or efficient. We all agree that this 2,400-page document with its rules and regulations and its exceptions and its exceptions to exceptions is no longer intelligible. This tax act combined with the GST has caused an underground economy of cash deals in this country. Experts estimate that right now there are over $100 billion of cash transactions in this country".
He continued: "All kinds of schemes are going on in this country right now. The underground cash economy is just out of control". He then went on to discuss this.
It is very clear to me from this sample of three that there must have been many other members of the Liberal Party, but particularly these three, who said explicitly that they were going to scrap the GST. The fact that they have not done so and have changed their views, their words and their actions since they were elected to government is unconscionable.
The member for Broadview-Greenwood said that the tax act is so complex. He went on to say:
The GST has exacerbated that. No matter how many amendments or refinements the government brings in on this bill it cannot make a silk purse out of a sow's ear. The GST is a sow's ear and the Canadian public is never going to accept it.
I agree with that. I still continually hear complaints about the GST, about its draining of much money from our economy, of its preventing people from getting jobs and of the great complexity and annoyance of having to file the rebate statements and all of the administrative costs that are associated with it.
I will quote again from Hansard . At page 16906 the same member said:
We have a situation today where the government wants us to support a bill to refine the GST. I am totally opposed to the GST. It is an inefficient, unfair tax. Small businessmen despise the GST. They want it replaced. They definitely want to make sure we do it in a responsible way. We cannot just snap our fingers and pull something out of the hat. There has to be a serious debate on tax reform, but they do not want us to defend the status quo which the Conservative government wants to defend. We are not going to defend the status quo. There is no way. There is absolutely nothing that could ever make me change my attitude toward the GST.
Well it appears that being elected to the government side actually did change his attitude to the GST. He of all the members made one of the braver attempts to change it.