Madam Speaker, in the House of Commons we call it the Canadian Alliance. The chief electoral officer, I think, calls it the Canadian Reform Conservative Alliance. It is rather confusing to a lot of us what it calls itself. The former Prime Minister of Canada called it the Reform Party in pantyhose. It becomes more confusing day by day.
I want to remind the House that a very distinguished gentleman, Ernest Manning, and another very distinguished western politician, Tommy Douglas, a number of years ago always said to us “He who pays the piper calls the tune”. We should always watch to see who pays the piper, who contributes to political parties and who pays the bills for political parties.
We are now seeing on our left a party that is going through a metamorphosis. It originally started as a grassroots party. Now we are seeing the extremely wealthy people in the country paying $5,000 for an afternoon of sipping champagne and eating caviar with Tom Long. It is a party that has changed its rudder and its direction. That tells us an awful lot about what it really stands for.
What we are seeing is a direction in which the Canadian people do not want to go. The majority of Canadian people, the polls have shown, want the GST to be cut back. The most popular tax cut in the country would be to get rid of the GST, to scale it back.
We suggested taking the GST off things like books. We suggested taking the GST down one point, from 7% to 6%, as the beginning of a process to get rid of it. That is what the Canadian people want. In fact the federal government's own polling, done by the Earnscliffe group, which is very close to the Minister of Finance, reported just a few months ago that the tax cut of choice—and we do not hear this from the Canadian Alliance—would be to scale back and eventually eliminate the GST, a tax which last year picked up some $23.1 billion from the Canadian people. It is the most regressive tax that we have.
Not only is the GST unfair to ordinary citizens, it is a tax that is unfair and very difficult for business, particularly small business. When we go up and down the main streets of our small towns and cities—and I am sure that even the premier of Prince Edward Island would be willing to admit this—we hear many business people talking about the paper burden of being a tax collector for the Government of Canada. It becomes a real burden for the small business person who has only a handful of employees, or the farmer who, compared to a large business, because of the economy of scale, can do this with much less difficulty. Indeed, it is a very bad tax for small business.
Again, the Canadian Alliance members are silent on this. The silence is really deafening when we do not hear them complain about the GST, when we do not hear them calling for the elimination of the GST and when we do not hear them asking to roll back the GST. The GST is a very regressive tax that hits ordinary Canadians and middle class Canadians the hardest. It is a bad tax for business. It is a bad tax for farmers. It becomes a paper burden. Of course, that is something which Canadian Alliance members do not complain about whatsoever.
It is also not a good tax for medical doctors. The physicians of this country cannot, contrary to what some other professionals can do, claim the GST tax refund. That makes it a difficult tax for them. In fact the Canadian Medical Association has spoken out against this and has asked for some changes in terms of how the GST applies to the medical profession.
The reason is that the designation of medical services is tax exempt under the Excise Tax Act, which means that physicians are in the position of being denied the ability to claim a GST tax refund. That of course is for input tax credits, which many other professionals and many other organizations can claim.
These are some of the inequities about the goods and services tax, some of the things that should be changed and some of the things that reflect what the Canadian people want.
The member from Kamloops is very anxious to say a few words, so I will conclude by saying that the main thing we need is a more fair and a more progressive tax system that is based on ability to pay.
If we knock on doors or if we walk down the main street with ordinary people, the people who go to Tim Hortons, to McDonald's or to the corner cafe, the ordinary people who shop on a Saturday morning at Canadian Tire or who go to the wheat pool elevator in Winyard, Saskatchewan, those ordinary people do not go to Tom Long's $5,000 per person affair in the Muskokas with the wealthy people. The ordinary people of this country—