Mr. Speaker, this is a bill which, according to the motions tabled, deals with the GST harmonization process in three Maritime provinces.
Where is the harmonization? What do they mean by harmonization? There is no harmonization in this bill, in this agreement with the Maritimes. It is a local agreement.
When it comes to harmony, we heard from witnesses in the finance committee recently that they are far from having harmony in the three Maritime provinces. This is particularly true for the businessmen who are, at the present time, furious with the government because of one of the so-called harmonization clauses, which would include in the product price the 15 per cent tax rate decreed by the government, which replaces the GST in these three provinces and the numerous sales taxes that were in place until now.
Imagine the terrible headache this represents for businesses which distribute their products to other Canadian provinces, or have branches in those provinces. It is already difficult for a business to manage a price structure when a number of different products are involved, so imagine managing not one price structure but two, with all that this involves in the way of computer programs, stock management plans and so on.
Businessmen in these three provinces have asked the government to review this section of its bill in order not to include the new tax in the price, because they no longer know which side is up. This is the first point in any discussion of harmonization: that there is no harmonization.
Second, when we speak of harmonization, we must speak of true harmonization. In 1991, Quebec harmonized its sales tax with the federal GST. Quebec even collects the GST on behalf of the federal government.
Quebec has never demanded, nor has it ever received, compensation for losses or costs incurred because of this harmonization. The three Maritime provinces have come to the aid of the Minister of Finance on the GST, accepting the so-called harmonization, which is supposed to serve as a model for all of Canada.
However, this gesture costs $1 billion or thereabouts, $961 million, if I remember correctly, in compensation. This is nearly $1 billion our generous Minister of Finance paid, using our money, the money of taxpayers who are listening, to compensate the maritimes as part of a purely political agreement which does nothing to deal with the problem of the GST and especially not the problems Canadian Liberals have with the GST.
The Prime Minister, his Minister of Finance and the Deputy Prime Minister made a solemn commitment in 1993, in 1992 even before the election campaign and as far back as 1989, when the GST was coming on stream, to scrap this hated tax. That is how the Liberals referred to the GST. They ranted and raved. They said:
"We will strike the GST".
Those are the words of the Prime Minister. The Deputy Prime Minister said: "We hate this tax and we will scrap it". They have not scrapped it, and now they want to harmonize it. It will costs us $1 billion for a harmonization that in fact does not exist and which is not what the Canadian public understood those guys opposite would do.
They served us up a pack of lies, and they have been doing that for three and a half years. A few days ago I was listening to the Premier of New Brunswick, Frank McKenna. I must admit I was shocked, upset and even insulted by the way he behaved on his trip to Asia with Team Canada. I think it is inconscionable that on his Asian trip, the Premier of New Brunswick, instead of recruiting local companies or attracting potential customers, governments and big corporations, was trying to recruit companies from Quebec and get them to move to New Brunswick.
Do you know what Mr. McKenna's message is when he does this kind of recruiting, when he tries to steal from his neighbour on a trip intended as an opportunity to find new international markets and not to steal companies from Quebec? Do you know what he told those companies? He told them what he told companies from Ontario: "If you move to our province, for the next two or three years, your corporate tax burden will be reduced by $400 million". So where will those $400 million come from?
What a coincidence: it just happens to be New Brunswick's share of the compensation paid by the federal government for harmonizing the provincial sales tax with the GST.
What this means, and this is absolutely crazy and unfair to boot, is that federal money, one quarter of which comes out of the pockets of Quebecers, is used to finance a corporate raider, Mr. McKenna, so he can attract Quebec companies and in the process transfer Quebec jobs to New Brunswick. That is the spirit of federalism. Amazing. I never saw anything like it.
New Brunswick is no longer the poor little province from the maritimes. New Brunswick is building itself an industrial force in the high tech sector with our money and, what is more, its premier had the gall in Asia to raid our firms in an effort to attract them to New Brunswick. This is unacceptable and it is an indirect effect of a supposed political harmonization of sales taxes in the maritimes that our show off Minister of Finance presented as a revelation he received from somewhere or other to get out of the mess the government was in with the GST.
This minister, who claims to be a strong federalist and who would thus normally treat all the provinces in Canada the same way and co-operate with them, ends up subsidizing one province to dip into another, its neighbour, and draw business away. It makes no sense. This kind of behaviour is unacceptable.
If the approach used in the case of the famous compensation of nearly $1 billion, which comes out of our pockets to buy three maritime provinces in the GST-sales tax harmonization process, were applied to what Quebec did in 1991, the federal government ought to pay Quebec $2 billion.
If it insists on paying this compensation of nearly $1 billion, it should pay the Quebec government $2 billion. "Out of the question", say government representatives, "have you lost your marbles?" We have not lost our marbles. If we used the calculations and the logic the Minister of Finance put forward in signing the agreement with the maritime provinces, then, if the maritime provinces are entitled to nearly $1 billion, Quebec is entitled to nearly $2 billion for the harmonization it has done since 1991. This is in addition to the other bills we have often sent the government, but this one, I must admit, is particularly hard to take.
In Quebec in 1991, we were good boys and girls. We decided we were going to make things easy for our businesses and set an example as well by harmonizing and thus lead a movement in the other provinces of Canada toward a harmonized system to facilitate interprovincial trade. Billions are involved. Trade between Ontario and Quebec in particular represents $36 billion. Our reward for this vision is nothing. We are being treated as if we are worth less than
nothing. The maritimes get $1 billion. We are entitled to $2 billion, instead we are sent packing as if our request were unwarranted.
So, clearly, in the motions in Group No. 2 on harmonization, we totally disagree with the unreasonable, unfair and unacceptable scheme in the three maritime provinces.