Mr. Speaker, I want to begin by thanking the member for New Westminster—Coquitlam for his initial speech in the House. He may inadvertently have a bigger effect on the House than he realizes at this point.
The member had a resounding win in the byelection, with the NDP taking 50% of the vote. We had never done this before in that seat. The major issue in that byelection was the HST.
All of a sudden the government turned itself into panic mode and developed the mess that we see in front of us today. I think the government sees some bad omens, particularly after the responses we have received from the public on this issue, as well as the recent poll I mentioned that came out yesterday, which showed that a whopping 83% of people in B.C. were opposed to this legislation.
In a way, the member for New Westminster—Coquitlam sort of rode the wave. He was the first to identify the HST as a big issue.
The government put its axis of taxes in line with the Liberals and Bloc and proceeded to come in with its closure motion and time allocation procedures to force the bill through before the Christmas holidays, when nobody pays attention, in an effort to save its skin.
The reality is the Conservatives could have saved themselves a lot of grief by simply dealing with the bill in the proper fashion and not draw special attention to it. The bill could have been brought in earlier. They knew months ago they were going to do this. The Conservatives could have gone through the normal process so committee hearings could be held across the country on the issue and still made its deadline of the end of January for implementation on July 1, 2010.
I really believe it was the byelection that short-circuited all of that and then drove the Conservatives into the panic mode we see them in right now. They are attempting to pull one over on the public. The point is the tax would take effect on July 1 and citizens will be even more outraged.
Members here have been around long enough to know the history of the GST and other tax measures taken by governments in Ottawa over the years. We know the public can react in a big way on taxes. They have a tiger by the tail here, the Liberals and the Conservatives, with the enablers being the Liberals. If it was not for the Liberal dupes, the Conservatives could not be doing what they are doing right now. It takes two to tango in this place, and we can see who the dance partners are.
The only part I do not understand is the Bloc. Those members have simply waffled back and forth on this issue. My guess is there is probably some sort of an understanding, that if the Bloc supports the bill, the government will look more favourably on its negotiations with the Government of Quebec, and Quebec will get the money it feels it should get, which I believe is in the area of $2.6 billion.
I want to get into some of the history of the tax.
Our critic from Hamilton Mountain has certainly spelled it out. In addition to using the phrase axis of taxes, she pointed out that this is the wrong tax in the wrong hands at the wrong time. Nothing could be more correct than that statement.
The pattern of pursuing policies that boost returns to privileged corporate elite on the flimsy excuse that they will use those returns to benefit the rest of us continues under successive federal Conservative and Liberal governments.
This whole policy has been written and dictated by Bay Street. The Liberals recognize that if they do not do what their Bay Street commanders demand, they will lose potential support and it will bleed to the Conservatives. The Liberal Party is stuck in the middle and, as usual, it tends to fall in behind what Bay Street and the corporate community want.
Even though the government had brought in restrictions on the elimination of union donations and corporate donations, one would think those parties would be freed from their loyalty to the corporations. It seems they remain very slavish to the corporate agenda.
By the way, we had speeches yesterday from some of my colleagues who have been here longer than I. They pointed out in detail how sad it was that the Reform Party was actually dead across the way and how Preston Manning would be, and must be, totally embarrassed to see how this group operated.
He favoured public participation and referendums on taxes and a lot of things. Those members used to support that approach. To have them now sit here and drive this through in the middle of the night, through time allocation and closure, has to be a big embarrassment to him and all that he fought for all those years. That party has come full circle and is basically nothing more than a mature government that has lost most if not all of its ideals.
Saskatchewan PCs, under Grant Devine, were the ones who brought in the first harmonized sales tax shortly after the GST was introduced in 1991. We should remember back to those days when Brian Mulroney brought in the GST legislation. At the time, his argument was that it would be revenue neutral. It was to get rid of the existing manufacturers' sales tax, which was a tax hidden from the public, but a tax on manufacturers.
It was at a period of time after Ireland, New Zealand and other countries in the world had developed VAT taxes and lowered the manufacturers' sales tax. The idea behind it is to lower the price of one's exports and make them more competitive. When we were growing up, most of us did not know what a kiwi was, but now there are kiwis all over the place in the stores.
When New Zealand got rid of its export taxes, it made the products cheaper to export. That produced some more jobs. Then it put a heavy VAT tax on the public, which could not escape. That was the whole ideology behind it.
Brian Mulroney probably would have been more successful if he had done what previous Liberal governments had done, and that was to make it a hidden tax. However, for some reason, he decided he wanted to make it visible. At the end of the day, that was his undoing.
Nevertheless, the GST was brought in. It was a visible tax. The manufacturers' sales tax disappeared. At the end of the day, I do not think it was revenue neutral. That was the claim at the time, but I think it was proven afterward that this was an untruth spoken.
We recall the Liberals saying that they were going to eliminate the GST. In 1993 Jean Chrétien's red book outlined all those famous promises that he made to get rid of the GST and never kept. The Liberals being Liberals, when they were re-elected in 1993, they proceeded to give up on practically every promise in the red book they used so successfully to win election.
The point is we have a history in our country of both of those parties being involved together in the whole business of getting the GST implemented originally. As I said, the Saskatchewan PCs brought in the harmonization tax in 1991. Roy Romanow of the NDP won the general election before it could be implemented and did not—
