moved:
That, given:
(a) the House has great respect for provincial jurisdiction and trust in provincial institutions;
(b) the people of Quebec are burdened with completing and submitting two tax returns, one federal and one provincial;
(c) the House believes in cutting red tape and reducing unnecessary paperwork to improve the everyday lives of families; therefore,
the House call on the government to work with the Government of Quebec to implement a single tax return in Quebec, as adopted unanimously in the motion of the National Assembly of Quebec on May 15, 2018.
Mr. Speaker, I am truly proud to rise in the House to talk about the motion we moved today. I want to thank my colleague Pat Kelly, the member for Calgary Rocky Ridge, for seconding it. He is also the Conservative revenue critic.
To begin with, allow me to read out the motion, so that everyone can understand the sizeable impact it could have on Quebeckers if the government finally decides to drop its paternalistic, centralist approach and instead start listening to the public, the way we on this side of the House listen to the public.
The motion that we moved today is fairly simple, and I cannot understand how anyone could be against it.
I would like to give some background for those watching at home. This is not something we made up. It is a fact. The only place in Canada where people still have to fill out two tax returns is Quebec. This is a critical moment in Canada's history. For the first time, all of the political parties in Quebec—the right, the left, the federalists and the sovereignists—and members of the National Assembly from the regions and urban centres voted unanimously on May 15, 2018, to say that they want to do the same as the rest of Canada and fill out only one tax return in the spring. No one likes filling out their tax return, but we all have to do it.
That is what we heard from people on the ground. That is what MPs, senators and our leader, Andrew Scheer, heard. Our leader kicked off his “Listening to Quebecers” tour last April and wrapped it up two weeks ago with a 75-plus-page report. I myself tabled the report, which details what the people of Quebec's 17 administrative regions told us. We are not making any of this up. We are just moving a motion that addresses the concerns and the wishes of the people of Quebec and those elected to represent them in the National Assembly.
Acting on that evidence, at our first general council in Saint-Hyacinthe last May, the vast majority of Quebec members of the Conservative Party of Canada voted to pursue this matter even further.
Last August, during our national convention in Halifax that brought together 3,000 members from across Canada, Conservative Party of Canada members unanimously voiced agreement with this resolution to support Quebeckers and the National Assembly's call to make their lives easier.
Is it not our job to simplify things for people, cut red tape and ensure that government is working for the people? Surely we are not here to serve the machinery of government and the Prime Minister's ambition, though that is apparently what the Prime Minister and the Liberals opposite would prefer, given how freely they spend our money. Does our money belong to the government? No, it is the people's money. Maybe we can talk about this more later, but the Prime Minister's never-ending deficits speak volumes.
The Conservative Party of Canada leader, Andrew Scheer, clearly stated—