Deborah Grey

[Goods And Services Tax, April 18th, 1996]

What happened in China?

[National Defence, April 15th, 1996]

Mr. Speaker, there are a lot of people who do want to state their cases. Instead they have been stifled, which is the unfortunate part of this whole thing.

I guess it is easier to blame subordinates than it is to fire a hand picked appointee. If this minister had done his job the military brass would not be leading him around by the nose. If this minister had done his job, General Boyle would not even have been named

chief of defence staff. If this minister had truly done his job the Somalia inquiry would not be scrambling around looking for operational logs and missing documents.

Since the minister is obviously incapable of doing his job and has lost the confidence of absolutely everybody but the military brass, will he resign?

[National Defence, April 15th, 1996]

Mr. Speaker, this trouble may have started before but what we need is for this minister to truly get to the bottom of it and clear it up once and for all.

The lawyers for the Somalia inquiry were quite clear in who they think is responsible for this whole mess: the Somalia inquiry liaison team, the public affairs division of DND and this Liberal government.

The lawyers did not say that General Jean Boyle is the common link between all three of these problem areas. He had a hand in SILT and he headed up public affairs at DND before he was hand picked for this current position by this minister.

Will the defence minister ask his friend, General Jean Boyle, to step aside until the Somalia inquiry gets to the bottom of his role in this attempted cover-up?

[National Defence, April 15th, 1996]

Mr. Speaker, this morning's revelations in the growing Somalia cover-up are deeply disturbing.

Documents from Two Commando Unit have miraculously reappeared in a Petawawa filing cabinet. Vital operational logs from One Commando were apparently the victim of a Mogadishu mud puddle or Somalia sea water, and the RCMP is now examining DND's tampered with hard drive for electronic fingerprints.

Given all of this, how could the Prime Minister still have full confidence in the chief of the defence staff and his own Minister of National Defence?

[Goods And Services Tax, March 25th, 1996]

Mr. Speaker, what amazes me is that when the Liberals fall back on the red book now, the member from Niagara Falls, in his local newspaper last week, said: "I guess I could say that we were a little over-zealous and little over-anxious. I guess you could say it has haunted me". Those are words from a Liberal MP, not me.

I ask the Prime Minister this. How many Liberal MPs has the Prime Minister haunted with his promise to scrap, kill and abolish the GST and then totally turn around on that? It makes no sense.

[Goods And Services Tax, March 25th, 1996]

Mr. Speaker, yes we did say that and we still say that it should be phased out. We need to cut spending, that is the problem. We stand by that.

Liberal candidates across Ontario ran on the promise of killing, scrapping and abolishing the GST. Once they were safely in power they broke that promise. Now they are busy trying to bury the evidence.

After the minister of immigration gets through shredding her predecessor's pamphlets, there are 98 other ridings of Liberal propaganda and broken promises for her to get to work on with the shredder.

I ask the Prime Minister this question. Why did the Liberals break their promise on the GST? How many other Ontario Liberals are going to have to start shredding their campaign pamphlets?

[Goods And Services Tax, March 25th, 1996]

Mr. Speaker, across the province of Ontario, Liberal MPs have been trying to convince their constituents that what they really meant was harmonizing the GST, not eliminating it.

There is only one problem with that. Canadians still have copies of the Liberal campaign pamphlets from 1993. Two weeks ago the member for Niagara Falls said he did not promise to scrap the GST but his election flyer has just surfaced from 1993 and he promised in it to fight to eliminate the GST.

My question is this. Which Liberal is telling the truth? The Liberal candidate for Niagara Falls or the Liberal MP for Niagara Falls?

[Goods And Services Tax, March 22nd, 1996]

Mr. Speaker, these people know exactly what they campaigned on in the last election. It is on tape. We saw it on television last night. Unlike Richard Nixon's, these Liberal tapes cannot be erased. Over two years have passed and nothing has happened.

How can the Deputy Prime Minister lie awake at night knowing that she has broken promises?

[Goods And Services Tax, March 22nd, 1996]

Mr. Speaker, the provinces will certainly talk about harmonization; their answer will be no. They want no part of harmonization. They made it very clear.

When the government talks about page 22 of the red book, that it will replace the GST, it is the same letters, the same meaning. GST perhaps means "give Sheila time". How much time does the Deputy Prime Minister need?

[Goods And Services Tax, March 22nd, 1996]

Mr. Speaker, the unfortunate part is that the Liberals used to be interested in scrapping it when they sat on this side of the House before they formed the government in 1993.

It is evident here that desperate men do desperate things.

The Deputy Prime Minister knows the voters of Etobicoke North and Newfoundland and Labrador will be thinking about the Liberal's broken promise when they go to the polls on Monday. They will not be fooled by talk of harmonization.

The government is so desperate that it willing to spend truckloads of taxpayer dollars to get the Atlantic on side. When the minister says the rest of the Canadian public will harmonize gleefully, he is dreaming. The government is so desperate that the Prime Minister might just pop up in Etobicoke North on Saturday right at the end of the campaign.

Instead of spending millions on harmonization, instead of engaging in PR exercises for the byelections, why does the Deputy Prime Minister not simply live up to her word and kill, scrap, abolish the GST?