Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to rise to speak to Bill C-70, which has come back from the Senate with the amendments we had proposed as the elected members of this House forming Her Majesty's official opposition, but that the government had refused to hear.
And so, after a short trip to the Senate, where 104 non elected individuals made recommendations that mirrored the ones proposed by the official opposition and by my friend the member for Saint-Hyacinthe-Bagot, the bill is back, and the inclusion of the GST in the cost of consumer goods is delayed accordingly.
The official opposition contested the provision to include the GST in the price for the simple and valid reason we gave the government: "Face up to your obligations. When you advocate something, at least have the courage to say it was your idea". The fact that the cost of the GST will now be hidden in the price of the product is something public opinion, with the avalanche of information it is buried under, tends to lose track of. This is what the Liberal government was hoping for in starting to include the amount of the GST in the selling price immediately.
What still leaves me a bit perplexed is the fact that, when we in the Bloc proposed this amendment to the bill, nobody listened. And now 104 non elected individuals representing the parties in power more than the Canadian public, these honourable individuals are proposing to the government what we proposed. In a gesture of submission to a non elected authority, the government proposes to pass the bill as returned to this House with a provision for delaying the inclusion of the GST in the selling price.
Let me tell you, Mr. Speaker, and through you, tell the Minister of Finance-who I know understands and approves what I am saying-that it leaves a bitter taste in our mouths because it flies in the face of democracy.
When we go to the people seeking to get elected, we tell them that the House of Commons is where the decisions are made and legislation passed, the show place of democracy where ideas are tossed about in a spirit of camaraderie and unfailing honesty. Now we have a situation where a proposal was rejected out of hand when originally put forward by the official opposition, but reinstated after consideration by the Senate, these 104 non elected representatives who impose their will on this House. The worst of it is that, while number of senators is almost the same as the number of members of the official opposition and the third party combined in the House, the Senate has more influence. That was my comment regarding the fact that the bill was sent back to the House.
This week, my colleague, the hon. member for Saint-Hyacinthe-Bagot, asked the Minister of Finance, who was here at the time, when he would be compensating Quebec for harmonizing the GST. At second and third reading, Bloc members had raised and discussed this issue repeatedly and at great length. In response to another question by my collegue from Saint-Hyacinthe-Bagot at
the beginning of the week, the minister said, again rather evasively, that Quebec had not lost anything by harmonizing and he therefore did not feel the need to compensate Quebec for losses that were not incurred.
The Minister of Finance knows full well that the provinces have the power to levy taxes on commercial activities, on the provision of goods and services, and so on. Within their jurisdictions, the provinces have the power to levy taxes, and it is always up to the provincial government to decide, for example, whether or not to increase personal income tax so that the sales tax can remain somewhat lower, which, in turn, promotes trade and boosts the economy. It is up to the provincial government to decide not to hit the taxpayers with an excessively high sales tax, but rather to draw its revenues from income tax.
In other provinces, like the maritimes, where unemployment is high and the labour force is much smaller than in central provinces like Quebec and Ontario, taxing the income of workers was not producing enough revenue, as opposed to sales tax. They therefore chose to keep income tax relatively low, but to make up it with a very high sales tax.
The minister contends that harmonizing their sales tax with the GST, which involved lowering their sales tax, created a 5 per cent shortfall. That is a totally arbitrary figure. I ask the Minister of Finance: Why 5 per cent? Why not 4 per cent or 8 per cent? Why 5? Because that is what he has agreed to with his friend, Premier MacKenna. They worked out the McKenna formula together and decided on 5 per cent to get a round figure of approximately $1 billion.
This government hit the maritimes hard, more specifically in the fisheries sector and when it reduced personnel on military bases. Since it now wants to make up for this before the upcoming election, it has decided it would be 5 per cent. It could also have set the rate at 4 or 6 per cent. The government never really explained why it opted for 5 per cent. Where did that 5 per cent come from? Did it come out of the blue, or is it the result of some accounting method? We were never able to find out. The minister said to the hon. member for Saint-Hyacinthe-Bagot that God probably told him to set the rate at 5 per cent, and I do not doubt that for one moment.
In any case, this is profoundly unfair to Quebec, which willingly harmonized its tax with the federal GST, but did not get any compensation for doing so. Yet, this Liberal government has made all kinds of cuts in Quebec, just like in the maritime provinces. It did a number on Quebec, notably by closing the military college in Saint-Jean, thus depriving the local economy of millions of dollars. This decision was just as devastating to the residents of Saint-Jean as the downsizing of military bases in Nova Scotia and New Brunswick was to the people in those provinces, but Quebec was not compensated. Quebec is not compensated because it is Quebec. It is the Prime Minister's home province. The Prime Minister can do anything he wants without being accountable to Quebecers. He took for granted not only his riding of Saint-Maurice but also Montreal's West Island, from west of St. Laurent Street all the way to the Ontario border, and that was enough for him.
So, Quebec was never compensated for the blows and the cuts it had to put up with. However, it is a different story for the maritimes. Thirty-two of the 33 seats in these provinces are currently being held by Liberals, and the government wants to keep them. It got a warning last fall when, contrary to all expectations, a Conservative government was elected in a maritime province. This is basically the reason why the Minister of Finance opted for that5 per cent.
Quebecers must understand that. The decision whether to increase income taxes or the sales tax rate is a political one made by the provincial government. Quebec chose to increase income taxes, because it has a much larger workforce than all the maritime provinces put together. Therefore, it had the option of increasing income taxes while keeping its sales tax as low as possible, so as to revitalize the economy. However, this is not what happened.
From this point of view, the official opposition will never ask this government for enough. It is simply a question of justice. I have trouble understanding how a federal finance minister, such as the current one, can back the decision taken by certain maritime provinces to hang on to a separate sales tax and stand in Quebec's way when it prefers to raise income taxes and go with a lower sales tax.
But it amounts to the same total. Arbitrarily, without consulting, arrogantly even, the minister says: "No, Quebec has lost nothing; Quebec is losing nothing by having harmonized, so I owe it nothing". In reality, he wanted to win points with Acadians and Maritimers who were extremely disappointed because of lowered fishing quotas and EI reform. People in the maritimes are the hardest hit by EI reform because they have the highest unemployment rate in Canada.
So he had to do something with the election coming up; he had to be able to tell Maritimers: "It is true, you have lost some ground with respect to UI, because now you will have to work more hours for less UI, and in many cases you will not receive any at all because you will not have accumulated enough hours to qualify for benefits". All this left people pretty frustrated and irritated. I remember seeing the present Minister of National Defence heading off to speak at a public meeting in his riding and having to be escorted by RCMP officers who were armed because they were
worried about a popular uprising in the riding. When a minister has to travel with a quasi-military escort in his own riding, that is proof enough that people are not happy.
I also saw the member for Beauséjour make a speech to people in his riding and get treated to quite a chorus of boos. People were unhappy because they felt they had been taken advantage of, cheated. With an election coming up, the government had to try to turn the public's attention elsewhere and the ingenious solution it came up with was to tell the maritime provinces: "Harmonize your sales tax with our GST and we will give you a cool $961 million that you can dole out to try to pacify a bunch of unhappy people".
This is why I am among those predicting that an election will be called this spring. It is the same with a Christmas present. You remember it on Boxing Day, but come May or June, something you received the previous December 25 may have fled your mind.
In many cases, you can ask someone, even right after the holidays, what he got for Christmas. He will try to recall, but may have forgotten. It is the same with the government: it hands over $961 million-my, but we are generous-and then decides the time is right to call an election.
It is like someone who wants somebody to forgive him for something. I have handled many matrimonial cases in my time and sometimes had to play the role of umpire. For example, I would often see a husband who had treated his wife rather violently, and she would be threatening to leave with the kids, and to demand division of the family assets. Then the guy would suddenly wake up and say to himself "Oops, it is time to do something". So he would send her roses, along with a card asking for forgiveness of course, and then everything would be fine.
That is a bit like the attitude of the present government. I do not wish to be vulgar in this House, but it gave the Maritimers a real kick in the pants, and now it is saying "If I want to be able to go back there and walk unashamed in the streets, I am going to have to buy back favour somehow". That is the explanation for the $961 million.
Quebecers can learn a lesson from this, particularly those who are represented here by Liberal members, from the West Island for the most part: that a vote gained is a vote gained. They have no need to earn that vote, no need to deserve it, no need to gain these people's confidence, it is a given. They do not need to make any promises to them, to be nice to them in any way; they can even thumb their noses at them, for they know they will get their votes anyway.
That is the attitude the present Liberal government has toward those Quebecers who have what I consider the misfortune of having elected Liberal MPs. Madam Speaker, you are indicating that my time is coming to an end, but I still have enough time to tell the Quebecers who voted Liberal out of fear, fear of the threat of secession, fear that the sovereignists were a bit too strong, that they have shot themselves in the foot. Perhaps it is time for them to start thinking that they too are important, that they too ought to be involved, that they too need to be able to have an MP who is up to the challenge of representing and defending them.
Where were the Liberal MPs in October 1994, the Liberals representing the West Island of Montreal, when there was an unprecedented attempt by Ontario members to break the Drug Patent Act regulations? Not a one was visible. They all disappeared into the woodwork. They were no more talkative than the fish in my aquarium: not a single word.
And where were they when raw milk cheese was being discussed this past spring? There was even a cheese tasting here in the rotunda, and the Quebec Liberal MPs were so scared to commit themselves that they would not even show their faces and taste the delicious cheeses the Caron family from my riding had brought in. They were absolutely magnificent cheeses, but what the Liberals would like to see on our tables from now on, as our premium cheese, is Kraft Cheez Whiz.
These attitudes must be spoken out against, but these folks do not make a move, because people will vote for them anyway. We know that people in certain ridings are so scared of the sovereignist threat that they will vote for them. They often add insult to injury by dozing off in their seats. I would ask them to reconsider Quebec's request. You owe us $2 billion, when are we going to get it?