Mr. Speaker, I do not want the member to put words in my mouth. I did not say at any time that the solution to the GST issue is to harmonize. What I said is, that is indeed what happened in some parts of this country, particularly on the east coast. It is something that has been rejected in the province of Ontario, which is the largest province. It does a tremendous amount of business. That is because the business community has said “Don't make more changes to the tax system which are going to drive up our costs so we will have to try to keep up with you”.
I said that if we could lower the rate of the GST, businesses would like that.
The fact of the matter is that this government did make a promise and that promise was to eliminate the $42 billion deficit. We have done that. We have balanced the books. We have started to pay down the debt and we will start to relieve the tax burden on Canadians.
It is the Canadian people who have paid the price, who have suffered and who have worked with this government to abolish the deficit and start paying down the debt.