It does not hurt, it is ridiculous. It is not true. The member opposite chirped and I will respond to him because I actually intended to raise the issue. I am not afraid to talk about the GST brought in by Brian Mulroney.
Business people in my riding will say please stop already with all the changes. “I have already converted all my cash registers and my accounting procedures and my ledger sheets. I already have a system in place to handle the debits and the credits on the GST. I would not mind if you would lower the rate to make the cashflow a little easier but please do not go through another major overhaul”.
We have attempted to harmonize and we have successfully done so in eastern Canada. The response in Ontario from the Chamber of Commerce, the retail associations and the consumer was do not do that, it will just to complicate business lives.
I hear members talk about great success in other parts of this country. I spent five years suffering in opposition as I watched Bob Rae and Floyd Laughren attempt to spend their way to prosperity. Imagine, they attempted to intentionally spend $10 billion more than they were bringing in so they could run deficits and then increase the total debt of that province to the point where there was a very serious problem. Now the other extreme has come in. They can pretend to be Tories in there but the reality is they are closer to their Reform cousins. It is only because they made a deal not to set up a Reform Party in Ontario that the Reform backed off, Harris was elected and now he has gone to the other extreme.