Debates of May 10th, 2010

The Deputy Speaker Andrew Scheer

The Chair will take this matter under advisement and will report back to the House in due course, I am sure.

Ed Fast Abbotsford, BC

Mr. Speaker, it is good to get back to the real business of this House, which is to protect consumers.

When I was last speaking, I was discussing the bill that we tabled in this House called fairness at the pumps act. The whole purpose of the bill is to ensure that the consumers who purchase gas at the pump are protected and that the weights and measures that are used in determining how much gas has flowed through the pumps is accurate.

We know for a fact that there is somewhere around a 1.2% difference between what consumers actually receive and what they should have been receiving at the pump. In other words, there is about a loss of 1.2% of the quantity of gasoline that goes through the pumps, and this concerns Canadians. When we add up the price of gasoline in Canada and look at that much gas going to waste and being charged, that should be of concern.

In this bill we have also introduced administrative penalties, not only a Criminal Code offence, which is already there, but we have introduced administrative monetary penalties that would allow the measurement advocate to impose financial penalties, which are not as severe as criminal penalties. Let us face the fact that some offences that take place are actually fairly minor in nature. We want to ensure we are able to address those as well and get people back on the right track and ensure that Canadian consumers get what they are purchasing.

Dan McTeague Pickering—Scarborough East, ON

Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to hear the hon. member for Abbotsford talk about real issues. I want to ask him a couple of questions about real issues.

Could he explain to me the 15° Celsius temperature compensation ripoff, which his government continues to allow, that allows as much as a litre for every 80 litres dispensed to simply be lost by some calculation that has no meteorological or scientific bearing to the temperature in Canada?

Could he also explain why the wholesale price of gasoline in Abbotsford is 65¢ a litre, and that is for every player there? If he believes that is not a relevant issue, perhaps he could also explain to us why he does not focus on the promise that he and his party made, concomitant with that argument two years ago about dealing with gas pumps, about dropping the diesel tax by 2¢ a litre.

I have a concern about the member of Parliament making a number of comments, which he probably has very little knowledge of, with respect to, and more specifically, the fact that the price of fuel at any given time is overinflated by as much as 40% as a result of hedge funders and the manipulation of the commodities market, very similar to what we saw in the stock market last week. Would he like to comment on some real issues presented by this party, yes or no?

Ed Fast Abbotsford, BC

Mr. Speaker, there were many questions there and, as the House knows, we do not have all day to answer one member's questions.

However, the member raised the issue of Abbotsford. One of the most frequent complaints I receive from the people of Abbotsford is about the price of gasoline. Some residents complain that different gas stations have different prices and they wonder why that is. Others complain that the gas stations all have one price and they wonder if some kind of collusion is going on.

In 2006 our government made a pledge to look at the whole issue of pricing and fairness when comes to weights and measures. What surprises me about the member's question is that he was part of the Liberal government during those 13 dark years and the sponsorship scandal. The Liberals had 13 long years to remedy the issue of temperature but did they actually do it? Of course they did not do it. In fact, today they will probably make the argument that all they needed was a fifth term and then they would have done it.

Our government is fulfilling the promise we made in 2006 to look at this whole issue of weights and measures and ensure we brought accountability into the retail sector, which is exactly what the bill would do. We are actually moving forward and fulfilling our promise.

It would not surprise me if there were more to come to address all of these loopholes and all of these failures by the Liberals to deliver on over 13 years and which we now need to deliver on.

Jim Maloway Elmwood—Transcona, MB

Mr. Speaker, I take exception to the member's attack on my Liberal friend from Pickering—Scarborough East. If the Conservative member had been around for the last number of years he would know that the member took on his own government consistently over many years on this very issue and others. The member has always said that the problem with high gas prices is that the Competition Act needs changing.

One hundred and twenty-five studies have been done by various governments over the last few years and they have all come to the same conclusion, that no price fixing is going on, when we know there is. The definition in the Competition Act needs to be changed and if it were changed we would see actual convictions. The member knows that.

The member is fair in attacking the Liberal Party but I would ask him to be very careful about that one particular member who has done a very admirable job on this issue and others over the years.

Would the member consider--

The Deputy Speaker Andrew Scheer

Order, please. I must stop the member there. The member for Abbotsford has less than a minute left.

Ed Fast Abbotsford, BC

Mr. Speaker, the member has spent his whole time defending the Liberal-NDP coalition, so it is alive and well. The reality is that there is only one government that actually steps forward and protects consumers. By admission, the Liberal member must admit that his party would not even listen to him, which is probably a reflection of the kind of influence he has within that party.

The NDP member should know that it is this government that actually fulfills its promises. We are promise keepers. We delivered on a promise we made back in 2006. Today we know consumers are going to have protective legislation--

The Deputy Speaker Andrew Scheer

Order, please. Resuming debate. The hon. member for Burlington.

Mike Wallace Burlington, ON

Mr. Speaker, I thank the member for Abbotsford for sharing his time with me today. He is a leader not only in Abbotsford but within the Conservative caucus. I appreciate the effort he has put in today and every day.

It is a pleasure to speak today in support of Bill C-14, the fairness at the pumps act.

I am proud to stand before members as my government takes decisive action to protect Canadians from inaccurate measurements at the gas pumps and other measuring transactions across the country. We pledged in our 2008 election campaign to expedite the issue of measurement inaccuracies, and today we take an important step toward making good on that promise.

The Weights and Measures Act has for many years set the measurement rules for the purchase and sale of products that Canadians enjoy every day and the Electricity and Gas Inspection Act sets rules for the purchase and sale of electricity and natural gas, critical commodities for sustaining our Canadian way of life.

Bill C-14, the fairness at the pumps act, would amend those two pieces of legislation to protect Canadian consumers and retailers from inaccurate measurements. The bill is just one more instance of the Minister of Industry's energetic commitment to ensure fairness in all business practices across the country.

Bill C-14 may strike some of my hon. colleagues as a housekeeping law, but I can assure them that it represents far more than that. When measurement inaccuracies occur, whether deliberate or inadvertent, they represent a great potential liability for Canadians. The fairness at the pumps act attacks this critical and compelling consumer issue by increasing the onus on retailers to take charge of their measurement practices and ensure all customers get a fair reading of their product purchases.

The act would accomplish this by imposing fines on non-compliant businesses and by calling for mandatory inspection frequencies. This means that businesses would be required to have their measurement equipment inspected by a third party every one to five years, depending on the industry. If the equipment does not operate accurately, the business must have it repaired.

I refer to this consumer issue as critical and compelling because it has been top of mind with Canadians since 2008 when the news media reported on how very often gas pumps inaccurately measured the fuel they were dispensing. Canadians also learned from those news stories that the consumer was the loser in three out of five instances of incorrectly measured fuel.

Understandably, Canadians have become increasingly concerned about whether they are getting their money's worth at the pump. They wonder if they are being overcharged because they have no means of judging for themselves the accuracy of the neighbouring gas pump in question. It is a situation that is completely unacceptable, which is why the Minister of Industry and his predecessor have followed such a decisive course of action in developing this bill.

Despite the bill's name, the fairness at the pumps act, it extends well beyond gasoline retailers. It calls for inspections in other sectors, including downstream petroleum, dairy, retail food, fishing, logging, grain and field crops, and mining. My government may add additional sectors to this list in the future according to the needs of Canadians.

One great strength of Bill C-14 is that it has been carefully crafted to anticipate a wide range of offences, from the relatively minor to the serious. The fairness at the pumps act would ensure not only that retailers have their measurement scales inspected frequently enough to guarantee accuracy in nearly all cases, but it would also impose stiff penalties on retailers who fail to comply.

As my hon. colleagues know, some people will only make the effort to comply if there is a criminal charge to be had, only if circumstances are dire. By raising the fine of non-compliance from $1,000 to $10,000 for minor offences, from $5,000 to $25,000 for more serious offences and up to $50,000 for repeat offenders, the Minister of Industry is sending a strong signal to gas pump operators and retailers across this country: comply or pay.

Canadians are tired of being victimized by lax measurement standards. This new legislation would protect them from that. At the same time, Bill C-14 offers a means of penalizing offenders without actually prosecuting them as criminals.

Although the bill calls for swift punishment when necessary, it also recognizes that some measurement offences are relatively minor and inadvertent. As such, Bill C-14 offers what we have called a graduated enforcement approach, which means the penalty can fit the offence.

Canadians believe in appropriate justice and this legislation reflects that ethos. Indeed the fairness at the pumps act approaches the very issue of enforcement in the spirit of fairness and constructive encouragement rather than casting all offenders as hardened criminals.

Not only does Bill C-14 protect consumers and make allowances for minor offenders, it is also a boon to small business operators who will act as government appointed inspectors under the legislation. One of the media's principle criticisms of Measurement Canada's performance in 2008 was the organization's lack of capacity to protect consumer interests. My government has addressed this issue by requiring businesses to manage their own inspection schedules in compliance with this new legislation.

The fairness at the pumps act calls for the use of private sector operators as authorized service providers. These businesses would conduct inspections under the Weights and Measures Act on behalf of the government and charge for their services according to supply and demand.

Rather than imposing a top-down government-driven inspection regime, Industry Canada will train small businesses to undertake this important work. It will evaluate them every year to ensure they are doing the job correctly and then trust them to carry out their job with accuracy and integrity. If they violate that trust, Industry Canada may revoke their authority.

Will Bill C-14 put undue strain on small business operators required to comply? My government believes it does not. There will be minor additional costs for small businesses, but the conveniences inherent in the new system may well offset those costs.

For example, authorized service providers, the inspectors who the Minister of Industry will designate, could also service and repair measurement devices as they perform their inspections. In this way, small businesses will find that they can kill two birds with one store and keep their equipment working at an optimally at all times.

Gas and food prices continue to be a concern of all Canadians. With these price pressures comes a great responsibility to ensure that the quality of the product is near perfection. No purchased good can approach perfection if its weight or volume has been calculated incorrectly.

This reality rings especially true for the single mother who is feeding her family on a shoestring budget, for the small business landscaper whose company has to pay onerous gasoline bills to reach rural customers and for working parents who have to heat their home with increasingly expensive natural gas through a bitter prairie winter.

I call on my hon. colleagues to recognize that on the issue of measurement standards, these Canadians cannot afford anything less than the protections in Bill C-14. If retailers fail to comply with the perfectly reasonable stipulations of the fairness at the pumps act, they must be made to pay.

Dan McTeague Pickering—Scarborough East, ON

Mr. Speaker, the hon. member for Burlington and I sit on the committee together and we look forward to having more discussions about this.

The hon. member will appreciate the fact that I am concerned that this action is so infinitesimally small as to be virtually meaningless to Canadians. The reason for that is simple. The minister's announcement over a month ago, predicating this bill, attacked good independent gas retailers and called them chisellers. He forgot to point out that in his own facts and information 94% of all the random surveys of pumps in Canada were correct, 2% turned out to favour consumer and 4% did have an impact on consumers, 1 in 25.

The hon. member for Abbotsford suggested nothing had been done on the consumer side. The member will have to recognize that WestJet exists as a company in his riding as a result of initiatives by this member and this party to ensure fairness in the airline industry among other initiatives we have taken in the Competition Act.

Specifically is the member concerned about the fact that the regulation will require only two years of inspection? As he knows, in his riding, as in mine, the volume, the throughputs that many of those pumps go through are in the tens of millions. The breakdown and the probability of a breakdown that might occasion a civil response is serious. Would the member not consider an early term? Is this something to which he has given any consideration?

Mike Wallace Burlington, ON

Mr. Speaker, I was honoured to speak to this point. I used to work in the retail gasoline business. At one point it was with Texaco Canada, which has left Canada, and then it was with Imperial Oil.

We need to understand the actual gasoline business. I can only speak mostly for urban areas. Oil companies own 99.9% of the fuel at gasoline stations in urban areas. Agents work there. They are not independent retailers. The fuel is owned by the company.

My first career out of university was as an auditor of gas stations. I would check the meters against the volume that the retailer said was sold. There was a dipping system and at one point I would dip tanks. That system is now electronic. As an auditor, I was always looking to see if those meters were accurate and to be frank, it was hard to tell. There was a variation in measurements. We were really looking for leaky tanks, to ensure that no gas was leaking and that the retailer was reporting sales correctly.

A two year time frame is appropriate for this. The quality of the pumping systems now is much greater than in the past. They are much more accurate. A two year time frame is an appropriate length of time for retailers to ensure those measurements are accurate.

Robert Bouchard Chicoutimi—Le Fjord, QC

Mr. Speaker, Bill C-14 imposes rather stiff penalties. The hon. member also spoke of the fact that gas pumps and gas meters are quite precise.

Does the retailer have to exceed a specific margin of error in order to be found guilty?