Madam Speaker, first I should tell you that I will be splitting my time with the hon. member for Jonquière—Alma.
The main issue in this emergency debate on the price of oil is: Why is this government not taking action, considering the urgency and magnitude of the situation? After all, oil prices have doubled over the past six months.
Earlier, the hon. member for Montmagny—L'Islet—Kamouraska—Rivière-du-Loup explained the situation very well. He found the right words to discuss the oil price increase. He explained very clearly that the price of gasoline is the result of the addition of four factors, namely the price of crude oil, the refining cost, taxes and the retailer's margin. He also explained that the concentration of refining activities during the 1990's resulted in a price increase. We now know that, on average, refining plants are operating at 95% of their capacity.
The hon. member for Mégantic—L'Érable and the hon. member for Argenteuil—Papineau—Mirabel both made remarkable presentations on the profit increase enjoyed by oil companies.
This is worth repeating: in 2004, the after-tax profits of the five major oil companies in Quebec and Ontario, namely Petro-Canada, Shell, Husky, Suncor and Esso, totalled $7.2 billion. According to Bloomberg, these profits should be close to $9 billion this year.
Since 2002, the net profits of oil companies have increased by over 100%. Oil companies are increasingly richer, at the expense of consumers, small businesses, cab drivers, independent truckers, logging companies and agricultural businesses. This is sort of a diversion of wealth.
Of course, there is a geographical component that comes into play, including recent natural disasters such as Hurricane Katrina. However, oil companies took advantage of the situation to put even more money into their pockets. Someone said very appropriately that they are white collar looters.
This government is not doing anything. Why? We do not know. It refuses to see the situation.
However, the people in my riding of Saint-Bruno—Saint-Hubert are well aware that the price of gasoline is increasing, and this is nothing new. They have known this for ages. Long ago, they realized that the price of gas went up on Friday evening and went down on Monday evening. Likewise, this is not the first year that they have noticed that the Friday before the mid-July vacation in the construction industry, the price increased and, when everyone went back to work, the price went back down. They do not need big theories, explanations or analyses in order to see this.
My colleague from Montmagny—L'Islet—Kamouraska—Rivière-du-Loup did a realistic analysis of the situation, as I said earlier, and an excellent job of presenting the Bloc Québécois' action plan. This action plan is a excellent initiative by the Bloc. We were very insistent about meeting with the oil companies, which the Standing Committee on Industry, Natural Resources, Science and Technology did last week.
We presented an extremely well structured, intelligent action plan based on common sense and that answers a number of aspects of a problem with multiple origins.
What was this government's response? It said nothing. In fact, it said that something could be done. It started to timidly consider a few little things, as we heard earlier during the presentation by the Minister of Industry. He said that perhaps something could be done for tax credits or the Competition Bureau could have oversight. However, these little things have not been fleshed out. We do not know the details. When? What is the timeline? How many? How? There are a number of questions that have yet to be answered.
The Bloc's action plan is very detailed and very well structured. I want to give a quick overview.
First, we want to give consumers some respite and create a refundable tax credit that would minimize the impact of the high price of gasoline. We want to encourage people to move away from fuel oil and implement a tax credit for public transit, which corresponds to the bill introduced here in the House by our colleague from Longueuil—Pierre-Boucher.
What we also want—and my colleague from Jonquière—Alma will also speak on this—is to help the people in the outlying regions, to expand the coverage of the $3.75 daily fiscal deduction, up to 10% of income, already available to regions that are at a very great distance from major centres. It would be a very good thing if this government were to heed us and implement some of these measures.
There are others. We want to help the economic sectors that have been affected, particularly the taxi drivers or cab owners. Independent truckers, farmers and forest industries are all heavily impacted by the rising oil prices and need to be helped.
The industry needs disciplining as well. It makes no sense. As my colleague from Argenteuil—Papineau—Mirabel has just said, the oil companies are lining their pockets thanks to the profit margin in refining. An oil sector monitoring body needs to be created.
It is my sincere belief that giving new powers to the Competition Bureau will be insufficient. Of course the Competition Act needs strengthening, resources need redistributing, $500 million need to be added to the taxes on oil companies in order to fund these assistance measures and reduce our dependency on petroleum products.
We must admit that we have all become keenly aware of the environment in the present circumstances. We are, of course, attuned to the use of oil products. We try not to use too much of course, but we also each in our own way are trying to find individual solutions to the collective problem of our environment and asking ourselves how we can each do our own little bit toward reducing our oil dependency.
There may be something the government could do to help consumers find solutions: encourage the building and purchase of vehicles that consume less fuel. That would be an excellent solution.
Why does this government not recognize the seriousness of the problem and why does it not try to find some solutions? Why is this government holding on to its position and insisting on doing nothing?
The member for Burnaby—New Westminster has already described the situation as incomprehensible. I do not think that is the case. In fact, I think there is indeed a reason for it all. I have some trouble formulating that reason, however, because this is a sad situation I want to see changed. This government is more attuned to the greed of the major oil companies than to the real financial difficulties being experienced by consumers and small business. If there is anything that needs to be changed, that is it.