Mr. Speaker, I thank the hon. member for Chicoutimi for praising the Bloc Quebecois. It is not often that we get praise from Conservative members and political opponents, so I am accepting it on behalf of my party.
My colleague was right when he spoke about improving the effectiveness of our tax system.
In fact, if the Conservative Party deserves praise—but let us not forget that criticism may follow quickly—it is for implementing at least a major part of the tax reform, as the member pointed out, by introducing the GST.
At the time, and this is another point raised by the hon. member, those provinces interested in implementing the GST were told to harmonize their provincial sales tax at their own expense, but that they would benefit from a much greater efficiency in the five or ten years that would follow, thanks to a more modern and fairer tax system.
At the time, the Quebec government, which was the only one to harmonize its tax with the federal GST, was not told that, a few years later, the federal government would give $1 billion to the maritime provinces to harmonize their provincial sales tax with the GST. It is totally unfair to treat Quebec like this and the federal government owes us $2 billion. The hon. member was absolutely right when he raised this issue.