Mr. Speaker, I understand that the Prime Minister and the Deputy Prime Minister have been busily writing a new dictionary. I do not know whether it is going to have a red cover or not but I suppose it will. It is going to be called "The Liberal Lexicon of Misinformation and Mendacity". They have come up
with some new synonyms for scrap, kill and abolish. These are hide deviously, infuriate citizens, kill jobs-not a tax but jobs.
This is supposed to be, or at least I thought it was when I came down here, a place where we sit down and reason together. Boy, did I get an education.
It is sad. The member for Calgary Centre is one of the few people in this House who has the competence to understand the ramifications of this bill and who actually looks at taxation from the point of view of the victim. When he tried to make his points he was subjected to the usual yahoo comments from the people in the Liberal nosebleed section. However, when it comes to real debate only three members from Atlantic Canada have been willing to face the wrath of their constituents by speaking on behalf of hiding the hated GST.
The members for Cumberland-Colchester, Carleton-Charlotte and Halifax should be commended for volunteering to commit political suicide. Their Atlantic colleagues are wisely keeping their heads down.
Some place in the rubble I have an editorial which I would like to share with the House. Believe it or not it is from the Saint John Telegraph Journal . The last time I looked Saint John was in the maritimes. It says: `To keep the GST hidden from Canadians is despicable,' said Robert Nault, a Liberal opposition MP to the Conservative government in 1989. The government is telling Canadians,trust us'. There is no trust in this government and there is no integrity in this government''. My, my, how things stay the same.
"Seven years after Mr. Nault's righteous tirade against hidden taxes, a principle championed by the Liberal opposition in those days, the government of the Prime Minister is demanding that its own sales tax be hidden in retail prices". Imagine.
Consider this. The harmonized sales tax legislation would make not hiding the tax a criminal offence. In spite of what one of the members opposite said a while ago, it will still-even with the amendments brought in at committee-make hiding the tax a criminal act. The only difference is that now it will be possible to get an absolute discharge if you do not remember to show the tax when you sell a chocolate bar.
I quote again from the editorial: "Any law that hides the tax from those who are paying it is draconian and any government that opposes such a law is practising deception. In the moments when we all stop giggling at the government's silly contention that it only wants to hide the HST in prices to make it easier for shoppers to know how much things cost, it's clear that the only people who will benefit from a hidden GST are the politicians who are doing the hiding".
I am really gratified that there are people in Atlantic Canada who can speak so eloquently to this subject. They bring the views of ordinary Atlantic Canadians to this House even though they have to do it through a member from Saskatchewan. Of course their own members do not have the fortitude-if I may use that semi-parliamentary word-to stand up for their constituents. They are too busy polishing the apple of the Prime Minister.
I return to this wonderful editorial: "The government, which has no proof that consumers are crying for a law to impose tax inclusive pricing, cannot deny that Canadian business is uniformly against a hidden HST". The government should be listening to people who think about these things, like the Canadian Federation of Independent Business, the Canadian Labour Congress, the Canadian Chamber of Commerce, all of whom say that the hidden tax should be withdrawn.
Is it not interesting that way back in 1990 the now minister of defence rose in this House as a Liberal finance critic, attacked the government's GST bill and said that this tax should be withdrawn. How times do change. Apparently there is a big difference between being here or over there. It is a sea change in attitudes; it is a sea change in integrity.
Integrity is what we are talking about here. We are not talking about taxation. We are talking about a government which cannot be trusted, which does not stick to its principles and which does not keep its word.
Getting back to the nitty-gritties, the Retail Council of Canada has studied this BST-HST at great length. It states that forcing stores to bury the new tax in prices will cost retailers at least $100 million a year. The Retail Council of Canada has no vested interest in telling a government how it should collect its taxes. It has a very large vested interest when the government's proposals are going to crucify its members in Atlantic Canada by forcing all this new and unnecessary bookwork on them. It is going to cost jobs. I do not know how many people have brought this up today.
The Halifax Chamber of Commerce, which I believe is also from Atlantic Canada, predicts that the harmonized sales tax will push up the prices on new housing by 5.5 per cent. It will also force municipalities to raise property taxes. The Canadian Real Estate Association says that harmonization will increase the cost of a new house by $4,000 in Nova Scotia and Newfoundland and $3,374 in New Brunswick.
To get all these wonderful benefits, we are going to send almost a billion dollars of federal tax funds, taken out of the hides of the rest of us, preferably western Canada I presume since we are the usual whipping boy, to bribe, if you will, the premiers of those Atlantic provinces to accept the fiat from Ottawa.