Forget's recommendations and made more generous counter-proposals. In the event, Employment and Immigration Minister Benoit Bouchard rejected both Forget's report and the committee's response and did not undertake any significant UI reforms during this parliament. Rodriguez also described newly appointed committee chair Claude Lanthier as unfit for the position in late 1987, after Lanthier announced his support for work-for-welfare schemes. Rodriguez criticized aspects of the Mulroney government's new lobbyist registry in 1988, arguing that it would not adequately cover the leaders of industry associations. He nonetheless acknowledged, two years later, that the registry had changed Ottawa's culture of lobbying for the better. He was skeptical about the FedNor initiative launched in 1988, noting that the northern Ontario agency was created with only limited advisory powers. Rodriguez was re-elected in the 1988 federal election, as the Mulroney government was returned to office with a reduced majority. He was appointed as his party's consumer and corporate affairs critic, and in this capacity he became a prominent opponent of the Mulroney government's Goods And Services Tax. He took part in a committee filibuster on the issue with fellow MP Dave Barrett and tried to have public hearings on the tax across Canada. Rodriguez was also strongly critical of the severe anti-inflationary policies pursued by Bank of Canada governor John Crow, arguing that the recession of the early 1990s was exacerbated by high interest rates that undermined consumer confidence. He called on the federal government to set credit card interest rates in 1989, after a series of dramatic increases at several major banks. Rodriguez criticized the Mulroney government's austerity reforms to unemployment insurance in its second term, arguing that the greatest burden of the changes would fall on those who could least afford them. He also opposed the 1991 Bank Act, Trust and Loan Act on the grounds that it would allow major banks to eliminate smaller competition. Along with other MPs, he criticized the government's $4.4 billion bailout of Central Guaranty Trust in 1992. Notwithstanding his criticisms of major banks, Rodriguez spent a week observing the inner workings of the Bank of Nova Scotia in the summer of 1991 as part of an immersion program for MPs arranged through the Parliament Business and Labour Trust. Scotiabank senior vice-president Geoff Bellew said that most bank leaders were impressed with Rodriguez, who in turn said that the experience expanded his knowledge base. He rejected claims