Mr. Speaker, your chance to review the Reform Party amendment is most appropriate and in order, as is the concept of having an open and true debate in the House of Commons on the GST. Canadians are sick and tired of the attempt by the Liberal government to shut down open and honest debate. It is very unfortunate.
The debate gives me an opportunity to remind the constituents of the Liberals sitting in the House of what was said on the campaign trail about the GST.
We are going to play a little game called recall for a few moments. First let us recall the words of the Prime Minister when he was a candidate for the Liberal Party. He said: "We hate it and we will kill it". He did not say: "We hate it and we will harmonize it".
When the Minister of Finance was campaigning as a Liberal candidate he said: "I would abolish the GST". Pay careful attention to the word "abolish". According to my reference material it means get rid of, to lose sight of, to bury. That does not sound anything like "I would harmonize the GST".
The Minister of National Defence said when he was a candidate: "The GST is a regressive tax. It has to be scrapped and by golly, if we are elected to government we will do just that. We will scrap it".
All across the country as the campaign went on Liberal candidate after Liberal candidate knocked on doors, spoke at public meetings and said in unison: "We will kill the GST. The Liberal Party will kill the GST if we become government after the next election". Everyone heard it. We heard it on talk radio shows, we heard it on platforms at all-candidates meetings, we heard it at the doorstep, we heard it from coast to coast.
It is sort of fun to go back in time and reminisce about what happened in the 1993 election but there is a very serious part to all of this. The bottom line is that the Liberal candidates prior to the 1993 election deliberately misled the Canadian people about what they were going to do with the GST. They deliberately misled the Canadian public.
In venue after venue in the 1993 election, Liberal candidates across the country told the Canadian voters that they would scrap, that they would kill, that would abolish the GST. Those are the facts we are presented with today. Taxpayers are going to remember because we are going to keep reminding them that they are going to pay for this Liberal promise. This is yet another Liberal broken promise to the taxpayers of Canada.
The taxpayers are going to pay for this harmonization scam of the Liberals. It will hurt every Canadian taxpayer because to get the Atlantic premiers, the ones who agreed to the harmonization, the Liberals will have to give the Atlantic provinces a cash payment to induce them to come on board this scheme. This payment to the Atlantic provinces, the ones that have joined on, that have been duped into it by the Liberal Party, is going to amount to about $1 billion a year just to satisfy the whims of this government to make it look not quite so bad.
They can once again try to fool the Canadian people, but they will not get away with it. Canadians in certain regions of the country and reasonable people do not think they should be asked to subsidize a tax cut for the maritime provinces that came in on this plan because of the Liberal harmonization scam. The Liberals are using $1 billion of taxpayers' money to sell the GST to Atlantic Canada so that they can keep an election promise. That simply is not going to sell to the rest of the country.
This Liberal bribe of the Liberal Atlantic premiers is truly despicable. Canadians will not be hoodwinked by Liberal trickery and sleight of hand. Atlantic Canadians will also suffer because while they may pay a lower tax rate in this harmonized taxation scam, they will pay taxes on a greater range of goods and services.
I was told as a youngster that there is no such thing as a free lunch. No one gets something for nothing, particularly when a Liberal government is running the country. If people think they are
actually getting something from the government, they should keep their hands on their wallets in their back pockets. The government will not give what it has first not taken away.
It has become abundantly clear that the government was very opportunistic in discussing the GST and suggesting to Canadians that when it came into power somehow the GST would magically and mysteriously disappear. Just to remind hon. members across the way exactly what their record is on this, let me refer to some quotes that came from government members over the last several years with respect to the GST. I want to remind them how far they have gone astray from their original promise.
Let us go back to the government members when they were in opposition in the wake of the GST coming into this place under the Conservative government. I begin by quoting some members who now hold prominent positions in the cabinet of the Liberal government.
First let me quote the current House leader back in the days following the GST coming into place under the Conservative government. He said: "Not only do the Liberals oppose the GST now, that opposition will continue even when the bill is passed. We are not interested in tinkering with the GST. We do not want it at all".
Meanwhile, the current finance minister said: "I would abolish the GST". The Prime Minister said: "I want the tax dead". One of the quotes that came from the Toronto Star back then was: `The Liberals will scrap the goods and services tax if they win the next general election. The leader of the party said that he was opposed to the GST.I have always been opposed to it and I will be opposed to it always'''.
We saw the climax of the quotes that came from all the various members in October 1993 of the eve of the election when the current Deputy Prime Minister on national television-that image will be frozen in my mind forever, and I am sure in the memories of many in this House as well-when she said: "If the GST is not abolished under the Liberal government I will resign".
The hypocrisy of the Liberal government is astounding. Members say one thing and they do another thing. If it is not the GST, it is the CF-18 contracts. I could go on for hours and hours about the flip-flops of this Liberal government in the past three years. There are so many flip-flops it is hard to keep track of them all.
What about the flip-flop on limiting debate and using closure? In opposition, the Liberals railed against closure. Democracy, it appears now, is irrelevant to our Liberal colleagues across the way. All they care about is lining their pockets and rewarding their friends like Bombardier. When it comes to politics they ram things through the House, forget about the people of Canada, forget about democratic principles and forget about returning integrity to this place. It is a shame that they do this.
They all care about pretending to keep promises. They do not care that their public relations campaign comes at the expense of taxpayers outside Atlantic Canada and at the expense of democracy and free speech in this place where free speech is held so dearly.
Canadians should know that this bill should be opposed. Limiting debate should be opposed. This Liberal government should be opposed and will be opposed by the people in the next general federal election.