Yes, Mr. Speaker, of course I withdraw the word "lies".
This party, these members have been caught in their own misrepresentation when they went door to door all across this country and told the people of Canada, rank and file hardworking Canadian taxpayers that they were going to give them some tax relief by killing the GST.
I said earlier telling the truth first means never having to say you are sorry. The minister of heritage had to say she was sorry about her promises on the GST. She had to resign and seek election again in her riding. The Minister of Finance on record has said: "I'm sorry. We promised to kill the GST. It was a mistake and we apologize for it".
It is absolutely unbelievable that two ministers in this Liberal government have come forth and said they were sorry, not having to do so, not willingly. They were dragged kicking and screaming to that apology, kicking and screaming by the mounting pressure from the Canadian people and the Reform Party, which led the charge. While these two ministers have come forward and made public apologies about their GST misrepresentations, the Prime Minister of this country, the person who has been elected to the highest office in this country, who is supposed to display the highest form of integrity and honesty, has not come forward even though the Prime Minister has been shown several times on video tapes from the 1993 election to be saying: "We will scrap, kill and abolish the GST. I promise you that".
He has said that many times and he does not have the integrity to come forward and say "I am sorry, we made a mistake. I got caught up in the election furore of 1993 and I said some things that perhaps we could not keep, some promises we could not keep". He does not have the integrity to do that.
This is the Prime Minister of Canada we are talking about. What kind of an example does that send to the Canadian people when the Prime Minister of Canada cannot stand up and say "I was wrong, we were wrong, we should not have done it, we should not have said it"? What kind of an example does that send to Canadians? What kind of an example does that send to the Canadian youth who look to their parliamentarians for direction? They are told that the parliamentarians in this House of Commons are people of integrity and honesty. What kind of an example does that send?
Be sure about this fact. The Reform Party will stand here day after day and we will hold the feet of the Prime Minister of Canada to the fire on the GST misrepresentation, as we have done to all the members here; as we did to force the minister of heritage to say she was sorry and resign from her seat; as we did to force the Minister of Finance to say "I'm sorry it was a mistake"; and as we will continue to do into this next election. Hopefully the Prime Minister will show some integrity and take his position at the apology table and tell the Canadian people "I'm sorry, we should not have said that".
The provinces across Canada recognize exactly what kind of a scam is going on in this House, what kind of a scam is going on in this GST harmonization. Ontario has said that the plan would cost its consumers between $2 billion and $3 billion extra per year in their purchases. Ontario's premier has gone so far as to say that the subsidization package given to the maritimes was in fact a bribe. Alberta's premier has said the compensation component was a bribe put forward to get Liberal premiers in Atlantic Canada to sign on to the deal, and sign on they did. Why? Because their Liberal premiers-