Madam Speaker, I am getting to the point. My hon. friend is calling for relevance. Let us go to the Liberals.
Bill C-24 is a little bit of fiddling around with the GST. We are anxious and glad that the fiddling took place. We support this fiddling, but let us face it. What the government should have done was phase out the GST, and make a little change here and a little finicky switch there and so on. And we applaud that, but for goodness sake, what did the Liberal members do when they campaigned across the country?
I heard from countless candidates in the election campaign that the minute they were elected they were going to do away with the GST. I do not know if they actually said that, but they said they were going to deal with the GST. The Liberals said the GST was unfair. They said the GST was biased. They said the GST was unjust and if people elected the Liberals, they were going to change all of that. Where people made the mistake was they thought the Liberals meant they were going to abolish it. The Liberals did not. When they got elected they said they would keep this tax.
Once again a certain cynicism builds. Quite frankly I wonder why it is not even greater because again, going back to my friends in the Liberal Party, they even campaigned against the NAFTA. The Liberals said that if they were elected, they were are going to do away with NAFTA. Of course, not only did they not do away with NAFTA, they have become the free trade cheerleaders of the world. They are trying to get us into NAFTA now with almost every country going. We could debate the merits of NAFTA, but the point is they said they were going to abolish NAFTA. The Liberals said they were going to get out of NAFTA but they did exactly the opposite.
No wonder people are cynical. No wonder people ask if anyone can actually believe what the Liberals say.
That same group said if they were elected they would introduce a national child care program. Have we seen a national child care program? Whoops. They forgot about that. The Liberals promised that if they were elected they would introduce a national child care program. They did not say, “If you elect us, we are going to have negotiations with the provinces”. They said, “A child care program is a national priority for us”. We are still waiting.
There is a long list and I could go on but I think I have made my point. No wonder people are a little cynical about this business. If we are going to deal with the GST, as my friend from Regina said, the only way to deal with it is to reform the tax system from top to bottom. A complete overhaul of the tax system is needed. The tax system right now is out of control. It is meaningless. I do not think a single member or Canadians anywhere in the country could say, “I understand our tax system”.