Bill C-14 (Historical)

Fairness at the Pumps Act

An Act to amend the Electricity and Gas Inspection Act and the Weights and Measures Act

This enactment provides for the imposition of administrative monetary penalties for contraventions to the Electricity and Gas Inspection Act and the Weights and Measures Act. It also provides for higher maximum fines for offences committed under each of those Acts and creates new offence provisions for repeat offenders.
The enactment also amends the Weights and Measures Act to require that traders cause any device that they use in trade or have in their possession for trade to be examined within the periods prescribed by regulation. That new requirement is to be enforced through a new offence provision. The enactment also provides the Minister of Industry with the authority to designate persons who are not employed in the federal public administration as inspectors to perform certain examinations.

Fairness at the Pumps Act

[Tony Clement, Conservative, Parry Sound—Muskoka, ON]

moved that the bill be read the third time and passed.

[Mike Wallace, Conservative, Burlington, ON]

Mr. Speaker, it is my pleasure this afternoon to speak to Bill C-14, An Act to amend the Electricity and Gas Inspection Act and the Weights and Measures Act. We are at third reading.

The bill is an important piece of legislation that goes a long way toward establishing fair business practices in industries that measure or weigh the products they sell.

It enhances consumer protection, something that is important to this government and to all Canadians. Bill C-14 promotes measurement accuracy, and encourages consumers and retailers alike to have confidence in a fair and competitive marketplace.

With this in mind, the Standing Committee on Industry, Science and Technology heard from a wide range of expert witnesses: consumer groups, industry representatives, and civil servants. Their testimony contributed to lively and informative discussions.

I would like to take a few minutes to remind the hon. members that Bill C-14 is about fairness for both consumers and businesses, and it depends on the accuracy of the measurements of goods.

Every day Canadians make countless purchases based on measurement. With each transaction, these buyers, as individuals or as representatives of organizations and businesses, trust that the amount of produce they get at the grocery story, the amount of fuel they get at the gas pump, or the amount of milk they get from a farmer is precisely the amount they paid for. They trust that goods are measured meticulously and dispensed appropriately.

Under existing legislation, namely, the Weights and Measures Act and the Electricity and Gas Inspection Act, measurement inspectors conduct random inspections of measurement devices, and consumers have an avenue through which to file complaints of suspected measurement inaccuracies.

More stringent legislation is needed to maintain the credibility of Canada's market system and to ensure that the trust of consumers is well placed. More people are needed on the ground to validate measurement equipment. More inspectors are needed to detect non-compliance.

It is for these reasons that the bill before us today is of such vital importance. This legislation will encourage a fair processes and fair business transactions for Canadian consumers and businesses.

The hon. Minister of Industry is charged with ensuring that consumers and businesses receive fair and accurate measures of the goods they purchase. Although the importance of enforcing accurate measurements may sound obvious enough, experience has shown that only through a carefully monitored regulatory regime can Measurement Canada accomplish this task.

The proposed fairness at the pumps act provides the foundation for such enforcement. Bill C-14 amends the Weights and Measures Act and the Electricity and Gas Inspection Act. Specifically, Bill C-14 addresses weaknesses in existing legislation with three timely updates: first, mandatory inspection frequencies for devices subject to the Weights and Measures Act; second, increased fines and penalties for non-compliance; and finally, ministerial power to designate authorized service providers to assess the accuracy of measurement devices at check-out counters, gas stations, and everywhere else consumer goods are quantified.

Allow me to speak more on this last point. Authorized service providers will be private businesses trained and designated by Measurement Canada to inspect the accuracy of various measurement devices. They will provide private businesses driven by market forces to offer competitive rates and flexible schedules. They will be private contractors whose quality of work will be ensured through the public oversight. Measurement Canada's own inspectors will perform random follow-up inspections to make sure that authorized service providers evaluate equipment impartially, precisely, and reputably. Measurement Canada inspectors will also continue to respond to complaints from the public, to take cases in which non-compliance is detected, and to enforce actions as required.

As an added benefit of mandatory inspection frequencies, increased demand for authorized service providers across several trade sectors will create hundreds of jobs. It will create jobs for front-line workers who travel to the sites to inspect the accuracy of measurement equipment.

Designated authorized service providers must also be fair to retailers. Honest and fair-minded business operators, not just consumers, feel the sting when their less conscientious competitors inaccurately measure the products they sell.

The proposed fairness at the pumps act would help level the playing field for small businesses. Bill C-14 would ensure that all players in the retail petroleum, the downstream petroleum, dairy, retail food, fishing, logging, mining, and grain and field crops sectors are held to the same moral and business standards.

The industry's input has been invaluable. Consultations underscored the fact that retailers could also be victimized by inaccurate measurements, whether by their own inadvertent errors or their competitors' deliberate miscalculations. In fact, it was through our consultations that we saw a need for mandatory inspection frequencies and took action to bring these new inspection intervals into use.

Some businesses have implemented inspection frequencies voluntarily. They have seen solid benefits from inspections, because the companies know beyond a doubt how much they are selling. They face fewer inventory problems, and this streamlines their business practices and saves them time and money.

All consulted stakeholders, including consumer groups, reiterated that mandatory inspections are necessary to uphold the integrity of the industry and to help retailers remain competitive in high-stakes markets.

Consumers welcome this legislation as a means to re-establish the principles of fairness, honesty, and decency in commercial transactions.

Retailers welcome the legislation as a means to ensure that companies compete ethically to win the business of Canadian buyers.

As members of this House, we must welcome and endorse fairness at the pumps and in the marketplace. We must uphold integrity in transactions that depend on the measurement of goods. We must promote and protect the interests of consumers and retailers alike. Canadians have done their part. It is now time for us to do ours. What is fair must remain fair. I call on all hon. members to vote in favour of Bill C-14, a bill whose time has clearly come.

I have one item I would like to add. As a past employee of an oil company, I audited gas stations. These audits included reviews of inventories. There was nothing more important to the gas companies than making sure that we had accurate measurements of inventory. As this product is held underground, it becomes an environmental issue if it is found to have gone missing. It is not only an economic issue but also an environmental one.

Gas companies welcome this government's approach to making sure that we have fair and accurate measurements at their pumps and at all scales across this country.

[The Acting Speaker, Barry Devolin]

I must interrupt the hon. member for Burlington at this time as it is two o'clock. He will have 11 minutes remaining in his speech when the House returns to this matter.

The House resumed consideration of the motion that Bill C-14, An Act to amend the Electricity and Gas Inspection Act and the Weights and Measures Act, be read the third time and passed.

[The Speaker, Peter Milliken]

When this matter was last before the House the hon. member for Burlington had the floor and he has 11 minutes in the time allotted for his remarks. I therefore call upon the hon. member for Burlington.

[Mike Wallace, Conservative, Burlington, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I have completed my formal remarks on the bill and I would be happy to move to questions and comments.

[The Speaker, Peter Milliken]

Questions and comments.

Resuming debate, the hon. member for Westmount—Ville Marie.

[Marc Garneau, Liberal, Westmount—Ville-Marie, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I cannot really say that I am pleased to be debating Bill C-14 because, in actual fact, the bill has very little substance.

Let us be frank: as it currently stands the bill is not very credible because it is a bare bones proposal in response to something the Prime Minister himself observed during the 2008 election campaign. If he believes that consumers are being totally ripped off at the pump, why wait two years? The fact is that the government is acting grudgingly, and so the bill, as it currently stands, is mere window dressing and will simply shift the financial burden of the rising cost of gas onto retailers.

The Conservatives are on a witch hunt and are cracking down on independent retailers who, in their eyes, are alleged fraudsters. It is nothing but smoke and mirrors. Why does the bill not contain measures to support healthy competition rather than volume-based measures that would be extremely expensive for consumers?

The bill does not appear to deal with the real problem. There are few documented cases of retailers tampering with gas pumps, and they have no incentive to do so.

Let me share a few telling facts with you. The oil sector is ranked second when it comes to playing by the rules. So why would these kinds of measures apply only to this sector and not others? Are my colleagues aware that losses due to meter issues are in the order of $8 million, not $20 million as the government asserts? Currently, Measurement Canada inspects 34,000 gas pumps nationwide every two years, which accounts for a quarter of the 130,000 pumps across Canada. Enforcing this bill would mean hiring some 300 additional inspectors under contract to retailers. This would cost independent retailers between $50 and $200 per pump. Who will the bill be passed on to?

Most gasoline retailers are small, independent businesses, which in fact operate on very small margins, as we know. The additional cost of these inspections would certainly hurt their bottom line. In switching the onus of inspection to the retailer, the demand for private inspectors would increase drastically. I and many of my Liberal colleagues are concerned that retailers in northern and rural communities may not have access to the private inspectors required to ensure that they can stay within the letter and the spirit of the law.

If the government wants to keep going in this direction, would it not be better to review the way in which the law is enforced in order to ensure that the cost is not simply passed along to consumers? The ideal would probably be to increase the resources at Measurement Canada’s disposal. We need to face facts. Does the government have the resources or the money necessary to implement a measure like this? Independent retailers and consumers should not have to pay for this bill.

We will also have to ensure that it is uniformly enforced. My fear is that the penalties could be arbitrary, and that is why the inspectors should be trained according to very specific guidelines. The inspectors should definitely be under a very clear code of practice.

There is another point. In order to reduce certain difficulties for retailers, why not provide a 30-day grace period, as suggested by my colleague from Pickering—Scarborough East? The equipment these retailers use is not infallible, and sometimes they may not know that the readings are faulty. They should not be considered automatically guilty.

If the government were truly concerned with helping Canadians at the pumps, it could turn its attention to any number of issues, such as refinery closures and the anemic state of competition at the refinery level. In fact, when it comes to higher gasoline prices, the Prime Minister himself has said that there is nothing the government can do to help Canadians.

In the three elections since the Prime Minister has been leader of the Conservative Party, he has made no less than three specific commitments to help Canadians with ever-increasing fuel prices. Members will remember that in 2004, lest we forget, the Conservatives promised to eliminate the GST on gasoline prices above 85¢ a litre when they came to power. I do not think that happened. In 2008, they promised to lower the diesel excise tax. I do not believe that happened either.

I think the real reason behind the legislation being introduced right now is so the government can pretend to be helping consumers while they complain that prices are rising.

At this stage and in its current form, I see the fairness at the pumps act more like the Conservative farce at the pumps act.

A responsible government that really had Canadians’ interests at heart, including the price of fuel, would focus in particular on the competition among the refineries and look at the Competition Act. The important thing is to make the market more effective and competitive, as the Liberal government proposed in 2005.

How is it that despite the increase in prices and the industry’s claims that supply is very low, we see refineries closing? Why does the Conservative government remain impassive in the face of such a situation?

It is in the interests of Canadians that the House review whole parts of this bill and tailor them to deal with the real problem, which the Conservative government is trying to hide.

When a sampling was done of the gas pumps in this country, it was discovered that 94% of them were within specifications and only 6% were out of tolerance. Out of that 6%, one-third, or 2%, were actually delivering a little too much fuel to the consumer. The other 4%, in other words, 4% out of 100%, were delivering a little less fuel and a little outside of tolerance.

In terms of the devices that Measurement Canada is responsible for monitoring, measuring and inspecting, gas pumps are among the most reliable devices in this country. The question is why the government felt that it needed to legislate, through Bill C-14, the need to measure pump accuracy when the numbers were certainly extremely respectable. My guess is that the government wanted to do some grandstanding. It even gave it the name, “fairness at the pumps act”, which sort of left a hint that somebody was being unfair. Unfortunately, the retailers had to wear that name when, in reality, the situation was really very respectable.

From my point of view, the government has created a bill and has put us through the hoops when in reality there was very little need to create such a bill as Bill C-14. In the end, it has smeared retailers and will end up costing Canadians additional sums because of all the inspectors required to carry out the aim of this legislation.

[Scott Simms, Liberal, Bonavista—Gander—Grand Falls—Windsor, NL]

Mr. Speaker, my colleague's speech was very well done. I appreciated his parallels to what I would consider to be typical retail politics. I think fairness at the pumps act is the title and, quite frankly, if we bore down to the depth of this, there is not a lot to it in my opinion. Some of it may be fair but only in a small, sparse way. Therefore, unfortunately, when it comes to retails politics, we are dealing with dollar store legislation.

In the meantime, if it is the fairness at the pumps and the weights and measurements, I do want to address one of the issues he raised which had to do with the effect on rural areas. In some communities we may find in a radius of maybe 200 kilometres that there is only one outlet that provides gasoline. Therefore, it becomes problematic when these people are compelled to do the measurements and weights and they need to rely on the private sector to do this. Not only is it the fee for doing it, they have travel costs, they need to bring the person in, pay their wages and so on and so forth, and that takes time to do and therefore lineups are created and it causes lots of problems when they are the only retailer in a large area.

I would like the hon. member to comment further on that, please.

[Marc Garneau, Liberal, Westmount—Ville-Marie, QC]

Mr. Speaker, the issue of northern or remote communities is a particularly acute one in terms of being able to respect the letter of the law in the case of Bill C-14 and yet there is a reality here, which he has very eloquently outlined, which is that in order to conform to the letter of the law there need to be inspections. The challenge there is to get the inspectors and the inspectors need to be available in order to do inspections of the pumps within a certain period of time.

This is problematic in and of itself in the case of certain communities but it is also a fact that these independent retailers who provide a very essential service often have very slim margins of profit and the additional burden of having to pay for the inspections that will need to take place at their one or two or three pumps is one they can ill-afford. It is a particularly acute problem for those independent retailers who are outside the large centres in this country.

[Scott Simms, Liberal, Bonavista—Gander—Grand Falls—Windsor, NL]

I will make this somewhat brief, Mr. Speaker. I remember during the last election that the price of fuel was a huge issue at the time. Many people in the House used this issue to torque it in certain ways. One of the ways of doing this, and to say it was shallow is being somewhat generous, was that there was a commitment to reduce the amount of diesel by 2¢, which came from the current government.

I have looked through the order paper but I cannot seem to find it. However, I was wondering if the hon. member would know where that policy went, perhaps out the pump, as it were.

[Marc Garneau, Liberal, Westmount—Ville-Marie, QC]

Mr. Speaker, my colleague raises an extremely good point. I seem to remember hearing about the 2¢ on diesel but I have not seen it enacted. I am forced to conclude that perhaps it was one of those many promises, including the 85¢ promise, which goes back about six years, whereby if gasoline went over 85¢ the GST would be removed from the price of gasoline.

Perhaps the government might be able to shed some light on what happened to those promises, which would have served the consumer a great deal more than Bill C-14, which is nothing but a sorry excuse for the government to try to look like it is on the side of the consumer.

[Jim Maloway, NDP, Elmwood—Transcona, MB]

Mr. Speaker, my question for the member has to do with ambient temperatures.

A number of years ago, I had a constituency complaint and the basis of the complaint was that people got more gas in their tanks in the morning when they filled up because the temperature was poor, whereas, in the afternoon, because gas expands with the heat, people got less when they filled up.

I wonder if the member can answer as to how that will impact the ambient temperature issue as far as the measurements that the inspectors are planning to take, because there has to be some kind of reconciliation here between ambient temperatures and how the gas is measured.

[Marc Garneau, Liberal, Westmount—Ville-Marie, QC]

Mr. Speaker, the whole delivery in terms of volume of gasoline is predicated on certain conditions. In terms of temperature it is based on 15° centigrade. Therefore, if it were 15° centigrade at sea level, there would be a certain volume, but unfortunately most of the time the temperature is not 15° centigrade. In fact, on average in the country it is minus 6° or something like that. Therefore, there has to be a compensation that is done and that compensation is based on temperature and it is supposed to adjust the volume. As the member quite clearly said, when liquids or gases get cold, they compress and when they get warm, they expand, so that changes the volume.

One can only hope these pumps are making that correction based on the actual temperature. This assumes that is part of the process.

[Scott Andrews, Liberal, Avalon, NL]

Mr. Speaker, I commend my hon. colleague for his views on this legislation. I would like to ask one question. It might not be related, but when we talk about gasoline, it gets everyone's emotions up and running.

When we look at regulations across the country, it is different from province to province and region to region. Sometimes it is unfair that one part of a province or a region has to pay a certain price and then it is totally different in another place.

Could he comment on regulation and how we could address some of these concerns?

[Marc Garneau, Liberal, Westmount—Ville-Marie, QC]

Mr. Speaker, regulation is a complex issue that touches both the provincial and the federal. On the federal component, for example, on the excise tax, we will remember that a far-sighted Liberal policy was enacted some time ago under Prime Minister Martin to take some of that excise tax and use it for infrastructure projects. That was applauded by many Canadians.

Regulation is an area for which the federal government has a responsibility. One of the concerns it should have is to deliver the best and lowest price to the consumer. It is not entirely within its responsibility, but it is part of its responsibility. As I mentioned in my presentation, things like the competitiveness of refineries to again stimulate greater competition are the kinds of issues the federal government should look at so ultimately the consumer is the one who benefits from it. This bill tries to suggest that retailers, to use the Minister of Industry's wording, and I cannot remember it exactly, are somehow out to gouge the consumer, which is not the case.

There is some constructive work that the federal government can undertake to make the price of gasoline as low as possible, and I would encourage it to do that.

[Robert Bouchard, Bloc, Chicoutimi—Le Fjord, QC]

Mr. Speaker, as the Bloc Québécois industry critic, I had an opportunity to follow progress on Bill C-14 in the spring and to hear testimony at the committee meetings.

Bill C-14 amends the Electricity and Gas Inspection Act and the Weights and Measures Act.

Although the bill has not generated a lot of controversy, nonetheless, overall, it could have gone a lot farther.

In fact, that is why my colleague from Shefford introduced Bill C-452. That bill is particularly important given that Bill C-14 still does not allow the Competition Bureau to conduct inquiries on its own initiative.

My colleague therefore introduced Bill C-452 to give the Competition Bureau more teeth, so it can initiate inquiries on its own initiative.

It still has to wait for a complaint before undertaking an inquiry. This is a classic response from the Competition Bureau: a complaint has to be filed in order for an inquiry to be started. As a result, Bill C-14 still does not address one of the major issues, the appearance of collusion in the oil industry.

Although the Bloc Québécois expressed support for the bill, as I said in my last speech in the spring, that does not mean that it is sufficient. Moreover, the clause-by-clause consideration of the bill did not result in many amendments. The amendments that were made related more to secondary issues. Personally, I think that even though the bill does not have as many teeth as we would have liked, it is hard to be against motherhood, particularly when we are trying to provide better protection for the public.

Even though we think it is in fact high time to make changes to the Electricity and Gas Inspection Act and the Weights and Measures Act, Bill C-452 could give the Competition Bureau tools for battling companies that might want to profit from their dominant position in the market to rip off consumers.

The good thing about Bill C-14 is that from now on, the onus will be on the trader to prove they are not guilty. As well, there may be additional penalties if the trader continues to operate in violation of the law.

But what is more important, to my mind, is that the law will allow the names of offending businesses to be posted and announced publicly. In an area like gasoline sales, if a trader is convicted, we can bet that the retailer will want to remedy the situation quickly. Information moves fast in social media and neighbourhoods, and there are also service stations in various locations, on almost every corner, and so it will be easy for consumers to switch from one business to another when they see that the retail price of gas is higher in one location.

In addition, the amendment to the Weights and Measures Act will allow for much higher fines for offenders. Under the new provisions of the act, inspectors appointed by the government will be authorized to enter premises that they have reasonable grounds to examine and to seize or detain anything in the place, to use any computer or communication system in the place and to prepare a document based on the data. They may also prohibit access to the place and require that faulty equipment be shut down.

Bill C-14 is not intended to instill fear in traders, but rather to make improvements to legislation that no longer meets modern standards. It is quite appropriate in 2010 for inspectors to ensure that consumers are not being shortchanged.

In my last speech in this House on Bill C-14, I remarked that in committee certain questions would be asked regarding things that we would like to see included in this bill.

It is a tremendous opportunity for us as parliamentarians to give the bill some teeth and allow the Competition Bureau to launch inquiries of its own accord.

For a number of years, we have also been calling for a petroleum monitoring agency, which would closely monitor gas prices and tackle any attempts at collusion or unjustified price hikes. The Bloc Québécois is not coming up with anything new here. For years now, we have cited the recommendations in the November 2003 report of the Standing Committee on Industry, Science and Technology.

The federal government has never done anything to assist consumers in this area, and it has to some extent let the opportunity to institute a petroleum monitoring system slip by. In spite of this, I reiterate that this is a step in the right direction.

Setting aside Bill C-452, the Bloc is convinced more than ever that the industry must contribute its fair share. With the skyrocketing rise in energy prices and oil companies’ profits, we are witnessing a real across-the-board economic bloodletting for the benefit of the oil companies. The overly generous tax benefits for oil companies must end.

We need to be prepared because by 2012, 11 car manufacturers intend to put about 30 fully electric or rechargeable hybrid models on the market. These cars will be more reliable and fuel-efficient and cost much less to operate than gasoline-powered cars.

I do not want to stray from the objectives of Bill C-14, but for the Bloc Québécois, any discussion on oil consumption absolutely must include a genuine plan and restructuring of the sector that focuses on achieving the following three things.

So once again, here are the three steps that must be taken in order to have legislation that truly has more teeth: first, the oil industry needs disciplining, and this can be achieved by way of a tougher Competition Act. Second, the oil industry must contribute by being made to pay its fair share in taxes. Lastly, we need to reduce our reliance on oil by, for instance, providing incentives to consumers to encourage them to buy electric cars.

We must be prepared, because electric cars will be available soon enough. So we should offer assistance for municipalities to install charging stations. We should also do further research on the batteries of these future vehicles so that they keep their charge longer.

We must implement better measures to prevent fraud, as proposed in Bill C-14. Having measures like these and a comprehensive action plan will enable us to come out on top.

In conclusion, I will briefly present the position of the Bloc Québécois.

The Bloc Québécois supports Bill C-14 in principle. However, this bill does not directly address the problems of collusion, such as the problems that recently came to light in Quebec, nor does it provide ways to effectively predict sudden increases in gas prices.

Therefore, the Bloc Québécois believes that we still need to look at ways to effectively address rising gas prices through Bill C-452, which we introduced.

In addition, the Competition Act still does not allow the Competition Bureau to conduct inquiries on its own initiative. A complaint must be filed, because if there is no complaint, the Competition Bureau does not take action, does not do anything.

The Bloc Québécois is also calling for the creation of a petroleum monitoring agency to closely monitor gas prices and to deal with attempts to collude and with unjustified price hikes.

That is the Bloc's position. I want to repeat that in principle, we support Bill C-14, which we are debating today.

[Jean Crowder, NDP, Nanaimo—Cowichan, BC]

Mr. Speaker, I am rising to speak to Bill C-14. The short title is the fairness at the pumps act. One would presume that fairness at the pumps refers to consumer protection and that we are talking about fairness to consumers generally.

Although there are some good measures in the bill, I would say that, generally speaking, consumers are at risk in any number of areas. The NDP has consistently called for a number of initiatives to protect consumers more broadly. These initiatives include having a minister responsible for consumer affairs; strengthening the Competition Bureau, tackling credit cards independently, not just through voluntary measures that credit card companies put in place; putting health and safety measures in place that protect consumers from imported goods; and finally, improving labelling so that consumers know when they are buying genetically modified products.

With respect to fairness at the pumps, I think this is a small measure to adopt in attempting to protect consumers.

I want to place the reason for this legislation in context.

Back in May 2008, an article called “Hosed at the Pumps” appeared in the Ottawa Citizen. The article said that the federal government was aware that there were any number of violations at the pumps. It stated, “A Citizen investigation shows that between Jan. 1, 1999, and Aug. 28, 2007, nearly 5% of gas pumps tested in Canada—about one pump in 20—failed government inspections by dispensing less fuel than they should”.

This relates to consumer fairness in that Canadians were going to the gas pumps and paying more for the product, because they did not receive the amount that they should have received.

The article goes on to state:

And while some faulty pumps give out more fuel than they charge for, more often than not it is consumers--not the retailers--who get hosed, government inspection records show.

The problem of faulty pumps appears to be an industry-wide phenomenon. About 30% of all gas vendors tested have had at least one pump flunk an inspection by shortchanging consumers, according to the inspection reports.

There is a lot more detail here, but I want to go on a little further in the article. It said that sometimes consumers are shortchanged, sometimes they get a benefit; there are fluctuations, and there is a limit set for acceptable fluctuations.

The article further states:

The small fluctuations might be less of a concern if the measurement errors evened out. In theory, consumers who come up short on slow-running pumps should be balanced by those who benefit from extra gas from fast pumps.

But the inspection reports reveal a puzzling trend: Canadian consumers are squeezed by faulty pumps far more often than vendors. When a gas pump fails a measurement test, 74% of the time it is the motorist who is disadvantaged by the error, and not the retailer, according to the inspection data.

Odder still, the results of pump inspections in the U. S. seem to run counter to the Canadian numbers. Newspaper reports on state government inspection of gas pumps suggest that consumers and retailers in the U.S. tend to be affected by pump errors in roughly equal proportion, with motorists getting a slight advantage in some states.

Not so here in Canada. Here, consumers end up on [the] short end of the nozzle three times as often as retailers. “There is no realistic possibility of these errors being so slanted against consumers just by chance,'” said Richard Shillington, a statistician with the economic consulting firm Infometrica, who reviewed the numbers on behalf of the Citizen.

“It's off the scale. It's one in billions,” he said of the odds of this happening. “But that does not mean,” he adds, “that the errors are necessarily attributable to unscrupulous vendors. There could be procedural or mechanical reasons that would make more pumps run slow rather than fast.”

In the article's conclusion it states:

By using the most conservative figures, pumps that fell outside the tolerance zone would have shortchanged consumers by at least $17 million annually if projected across the entire industry. At the same time, however, fast pumps would give out $8 million in free gas. On the small percentage of pumps outside the tolerance zone, consumers would come out about $9 million behind.

That was in 2008.

We are now at the end of 2010, and we are still looking at legislation that addresses fairness at the pumps.

I want to touch on the response to that report. The article refers to government inspections carried out between 1999 and 2000. For a number of years, government inspections continued to demonstrate that Canadian consumers were being short-changed at the pumps.

It is 10 years later, and we are talking about these old numbers, and we are finally dealing with legislation in the House. That is unacceptable.

I want to acknowledge the good work that the member for Windsor West has done on this. He has been on this file for a number of years. Whether it is gas prices or the unevenness of measurements at the pump, he has been looking into what is required for consumer protection.

Bill C-14 is an act to amend the Electricity and Gas Inspection Act and the Weights and Measures Act. The short title is “fairness at the pumps act”. According to the legislative summary, the aim of the bill is to amend certain provisions of the Electricity and Gas Inspection Act and the Weights and Measures Act to provide greater protection for consumers from inaccurate measurements at gas pumps and other measuring devices.

The bill seeks to achieve this objective by introducing administrative monitoring policies for contraventions under the acts, increasing maximum fines for offences, introducing a new fine for repeated offences, introducing mandatory inspection frequencies for measuring devices, and proposing the appointment of non-government inspectors to be trained and certified by Measurements Canada to conduct mandatory inspections of measuring devices.

I want to talk a little about the administrative monitoring policies. Many see this as progress. The administrative monitoring policies allow for a more flexible and proportionate response to instances of non-compliance. There are varying degrees of these classifications, from minor to serious or very serious, with specified maximum penalties for each level. It allows for a rapid response to these violations, as opposed to having to go through the process of laying criminal charges.

Bill C-14, proposes to increase the accountability of retailers for the accuracy of their measuring devices by requiring them to have their devices inspected at regular intervals. Mandatory inspection frequencies, which are common in the majority of industrial nations, for example, France, Germany, and most U.S. states, are proposed for measuring devices used in eight trade sectors: retail petroleum, downstream or wholesale petroleum, dairy, retail food, fishing, logging, grain and field crops, and mining. Other sectors will be added to this list in the future, depending on the results of stakeholder consultations.

There is much more in the bill; this is a brief summary of some aspects of it.

I want to touch on the use of authorized private sector service providers. We are going to see a shift as a result of having private-sector inspectors carry out these inspections. The government has said that this is partly because it is going to increase the number of inspections required.

The NDP feels strongly that inspections need to be done in house with government workers. In this way, we have an arm's-length, non-interested party performing these inspections.

Under this fairness at the pumps act, the Minister of Industry will have the ability to appoint non-government inspectors of authorized service providers to perform inspections. This will allow Measurement Canada to use its resources strictly to enforce its mandate.

The mandatory inspections could be conducted by authorized service providers. The Measurement Canada inspectors will continue to assess marketplace performance through independent inspections, respond to complaints of suspected inaccurate measurements, and perform follow-up inspections of authorized service providers to ensure that they are doing their jobs correctly.

The Measurement Canada inspectors will be solely responsible for enforcement actions. Fees for the independent inspection services would be determined by market forces, ensuring that there is competition in the marketplace and that retailers will be charged fairly for these services.

It is estimated that the number of annual gas pump inspections would increase from 8,000 to approximately 65,000.

Although there would be more inspections, they will be carried out within the private sector and one would question the impact on the retail sector itself at having to pick up the cost. According to this, these fees will be determined by market forces. That sounds like something that could cause some problems for some in the retail sector.

The NDP has raised a couple of problems with the bill. I know the member for Windsor West attempted to make some amendments at the committee stage of the bill and was not successful. The problems the member for Windsor West has identified are the privatization of the inspection service by mandating frequent inspections that must be carried out by the newly created authorized service provider private companies. Mandating private inspections will now increase from 8,000 per year to 65,000. I did talk about what that impact might be on the retailers.

There is no ombudsman office to evaluate problems or investigate complaints. This is a very important aspect that we have been on record about, and I will talk about when we first raised that. There is no refund or compensation for consumers who are ripped off and no refunds or restitutions on the taxes collected in the phantom gasoline purchases.

On these last two points, since 1999, we know consumers have been overpaying in a significant number of cases. However, how do we go back to consumers over 10 years and say that they overpaid their gas bills for the last 10 years? There is not even any recognition of that and there is no acknowledgement as well on the taxes that were collected on these so-called phantom gasoline purchases. We have had people paying more at the gas pumps and the government has been collecting taxes on phantom gas. Therefore, we have other problems with the bill.

In April, the member for Windsor West called on the government to take immediate action. He said that gas pump problems were exposed more than two years ago by a media investigation and the government waited far too long to respond. He said the government was allowing the thieves to keep what they stole over the past few years. The member for Windsor West is very passionate about this file.

He went on to say:

What is outrageous is that the government potentially collected taxes from consumers who were paying for phantom gasoline....The question that must be asked is whether the government earned tax revenues from this short-changing of Canadian motorists and, if so, how much?

To make matters worse, the “Fairness at the Pumps Act” will further remove the federal government from the inspection process and will essentially allow the oil industry to police itself.

We have seen this in other cases. The do-not-call list comes to mind, where the industry was policing itself. We have seen how ineffective that has been in terms of monitoring that list. We have little faith that turning this over to the private sector is going to ensure that not only are retailers protected, but that consumers are protected as well. I absolutely support the member for Windsor West calling for these inspections to be carried out with government employees.

In 2008, which is how long New Democrats have been raising this, during a question period exchange, the member for Toronto—Danforth raised the issue around this report. In his question he said:

—the Ottawa Citizen has reported that one in twenty pumps is not correctly calibrated and that consumers are paying the price. In addition to shortchanging people at the pumps, the big oil companies are not even giving people the gas they paid for. At $1.30 a litre, every cent counts. When will this government create an ombudsman position to protect consumers from the big oil companies?

The minister of industry at the time came back and said a bunch of other things that did not do much around answering the question, but he did say they would not be creating the position of ombudsman.

Although the act does put in place some measures, it simply does not guarantee the kind of protection for which New Democrats have called. One would wonder why we have not seen this ombudsperson who would give Canadians a bit more faith that their interests were being well looked after.

Perhaps we will not get one because people are afraid of what the ombudsperson will speak up about. We have seen this with Veterans Affairs. The ombudsperson has done a very good job, is well respected by veterans, but his term will not be renewed. If we do not get an ombudsperson around consumer protection, is it because people are afraid we would get a very good ombudsperson who would speak up and protect consumers?

It makes no sense that those kinds of things are not included. They would give Canadians more confidence.

Because we were unable to get the amendments we were looking for at the committee stage, New Democrats simply cannot support the bill without some of those other measures and protections in place. Therefore, we will be voting against it.

[Jim Maloway, NDP, Elmwood—Transcona, MB]

Mr. Speaker, for a number of years the government of the province of Manitoba had a random inspection system for cars. If people owned their cars over a 10 or 12 year period, they would probably be called in by government inspectors once every 6 or 7 years. Manitobans trusted that system because they trusted the government inspectors, and there was no charge to it.

In 1995 the Conservative government of Gary Filmon turned it all over to private garages. What happened? Entry level cars doubled in price. No one could buy a car for $300 anymore, it was $1,000, and every two years it had to be inspected. CBC's I-Team investigators uncovered widespread gouging by garages. With a private garage, if people kept their cars for 10 years, they would never have to be inspected. Only if they were sold would have to be re-inspected.

Which system helped to keep safe cars on the road? The one where the government randomly brought them in every 3 or 4 years, or the system that if people bought their cars through private garages, they could drive them for 10 to 12 years and never have them inspected?

This is what happened in Manitoba. I see a direct parallel here.

[Jean Crowder, NDP, Nanaimo—Cowichan, BC]

Mr. Speaker, the member from Elmwood—Transcona raises a very good case of how the private inspection services simply do not work. Arguably, perhaps more inspections are needed, but it is troubling to think that we will radically increase the number of inspections, which means that we will have all of these private sector authorized inspectors put in place. There would be a cost to the retailers and people simply do not have faith in that private inspection process because of examples exactly like the kind that the member from Elmwood—Transcona pointed out.

That is why we call on the government to maintain the inspection service with Measurements Canada and ensure it has the adequate resources to conduct those inspections. Also, those inspections could be random and at arm's-length from the industry. Then people would have more faith in them.

As we have seen of the inspections that were being carried out in the past, the government was taking no action when a problem was identified. Again, the government department that is responsible needs to have the resources in place and the support of the minister to ensure the work they do results in the kinds of outcomes that we can see, which is fairness to consumers.

[Chris Charlton, NDP, Hamilton Mountain, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I listened with great interest to the speech from the member for Nanaimo—Cowichan. As always, it was right to the point.

I have had literally thousands of phone calls in my constituency office since I have been elected about gouging at the pumps. This bill addresses a very small part of that larger problem. It talks about calibration at particular gas stations. The member has addressed concerns about privatization in terms of enforcement and issues with respect to fines on that aspect of it. For most people who call my office, that is only a tiny fraction of the concerns they have.

People are much more concerned with what is happening with the oil companies in general and what is happening on perceived collusion, especially in terms of setting gas prices. It seems that prices are always going up on long weekends, or on Fridays or when one station raises its prices, all of them do.

There are much larger issues that this government is failing to address. This is still a government that is giving huge corporate tax cuts to the oil and gas industry, precisely part of the players who are gouging consumers in our communities.

Could the member from Nanaimo—Cowichan take a couple of seconds to address those issues as well?

[Jean Crowder, NDP, Nanaimo—Cowichan, BC]

Mr. Speaker, the member for Hamilton Mountain is absolutely correct. We have received a number of calls in our offices about gas prices. I am always shocked when I go home to Nanaimo—Cowichan on Vancouver Island. Our gas prices are always substantially more than they are in this part of the country. It is always a surprise to me when we know there are not a lot of refineries.

The member Windsor West has raised this issue a number of times and has called for an investigation into how gas prices are set at the retail level. It does seem to be a bit of a miracle that on the Friday of a long weekend, the gas prices, throughout the area, go up almost simultaneously.

[An hon. member]

Free market.

[Jean Crowder, NDP, Nanaimo—Cowichan, BC]

I hear one of my colleagues talking about free market. It is hard to believe there is much free market happening when there is this simultaneous raising of prices.

At the beginning of my speech on Bill C-14, I talked about fairness for consumers and the fact that the NDP had called for a number of initiatives to ensure there would fairness to consumers across a broad range of issues, including gas prices. We have called for a minister responsible for consumer affairs who can take on the responsibility for looking at things such as the retail gas prices in our country and whether or not there had been collusion among the retailers and the gas companies and ensure consumers were all paying the same price.

There is no free market competition with gas prices. The member for Hamilton Mountain raised a great point and she is absolutely correct. This bill does nothing to protect consumers around that kind of practice in the market.

[Chris Charlton, NDP, Hamilton Mountain, ON]

Mr. Speaker, that was a perfect answer so I will just take the opportunity follow up a bit.

One of the problems people have in our communities is that when they see prices rising simultaneously, as the member just talked about, and when they have that perception of collusion, there is absolutely no redress for those people. They do not know what to do. We can complain to each other and people do, right at the pumps. They certainly complain to their family members and they call us as members of Parliament to complain to us, but right now there is absolutely no formal mechanism for addressing those very legitimate concerns, having them investigated and frankly acted upon.

One of the things I had the privilege of doing in the House was to introduce a bill calling for an oil and gas ombudsman, someone who would have to take those complaints seriously, who would have to do the investigative piece, but also then have the power to order remedial action. That would be real consumer protection. That is something for which people in my riding of Hamilton Mountain are calling. That is something they have supported. I know the member for Nanaimo—Cowichan has constituents who are watching this just as closely because, frankly, this is an issue from coast to coast to coast.

Would she care to comment about whether she has also received a flood of those requests, whether her constituents have signed those petitions and whether she thinks this would be part of the solution?

[Jean Crowder, NDP, Nanaimo—Cowichan, BC]

Mr. Speaker, again the member for Hamilton Mountain is absolutely correct. The bill she tabled for an oil and gas ombudsperson would help alleviate some of the problem that we have seen with oil and gas pricing across the country. I know, from hearing from members in my own riding, they are very supportive of this kind of initiative.

New Democrats are proposing these kinds of initiatives to protect consumers, fairness for consumers. I outlined at the beginning of my speech a number of those initiatives, whether it was a minister responsible for consumer affairs, or the kind of labelling that we would all like to see, or looking after the health and safety of products that were imported in the country.

New Democrats have been taking on a number of things to ensure that consumers are protected and that there is fairness in the pricing.

[The Acting Speaker, Barry Devolin]

It is my duty pursuant to Standing Order 38 to inform the House that the questions to be raised tonight at the time of adjournment are as follows: the hon. member for Moncton—Riverview—Dieppe, Justice; the hon. member for Rosemont—La Petite-Patrie, The Environment; the hon. member for Etobicoke North, Health.

Resuming debate, the hon. member for Bonavista—Gander—Grand Falls—Windsor.

[Scott Simms, Liberal, Bonavista—Gander—Grand Falls—Windsor, NL]

Mr. Speaker, it is an honour to stand today to talk about this particular bill.

At first glance I noticed that we have this wonderful way of playing with titles in this House with certain aspects of legislation. Sometimes it means a significant amendment to other acts or it may be an act upon itself but we tend to title them in a way that, I suppose, sells.

A perfect illustration of what I am talking about is Bill C-14, An Act to amend the Electricity and Gas Inspection Act and the Weights and Measures Act. Basically we are making sure that the calibration is correct and that people are not being unfairly gouged at the pumps because of the measurements and weights that are involved in determining how much gas is being put through the pump.

As my hon. colleagues pointed out, a very small fraction of retail outlets, that do it unwittingly, are subject to shortchanging their customers. In this particular situation, that is what this bill tries to amend.

The title of the bill, and this is the best part, is fairness at the pumps act. In relative debate, we have been talking about the price of gas now for the past 5 to 10 years extensively. We all know why. The price of oil rises and the price at the retail pump is extremely high, well over a $1. In my riding in central Newfoundland, it is some of the highest in the country, exceeding $1.20 in certain cases. I think that in Labrador it is even more than that. I think we get the idea.

Therefore, fairness at the pumps act leads us to believe that fundamental action has taken place so that the price of the fuel is coming down in a particular area. That is not particularly the case here. What this would do is help calibrate the machines and ensure the retail outlets are following suit.

In this particular situation, they may be sideswiped by some of these regulations, which I will get to in a moment. I had to start by saying that the fairness at the pumps act is not an apt description. It is kind of discovering an old t-shirt in our closet. We take it out to clean the floor and call it ShamWow because it sounds good, but it is still an old t-shirt.

In this particular case, some of the fundamental points provided in Bill C-14 deal with, in one instance, the administrative monetary penalties. That is for contraventions under the act. That is a big part of this for the particular retail outlets.

Let us not be led astray here. This is not for the average consumer. This is for the retail outlets and, in this case, especially if they are rural or northern, this will be a hard situation to face in certain circumstances. This is why I think there should be more in this bill to help people in particular situations.

Before I proceed, Mr. Speaker, I would like to mention that I will be splitting my time with the member for Nipissing—Timiskaming.

The bill would Increase maximum fines for offences and it introduces a new fine for repeated offences, which is apropos for the case. If people are doing something because they were unaware that the calibration was wrong and what we see as a price tag is not what just went into the gas tank, which sometimes happens unwittingly, there is a fine involved. However, if it happens again and again and the person is a repeat offender whose intent is to bilk the customers, then the person should be dealt with accordingly.

Bill C-14 proposes to increase the accountability of retailers for the accuracy of the measuring devices. Mandatory inspection frequencies, common in the majority of countries, deal primarily with retail petroleum, wholesale petroleum, dairy, retail, food, fishing, logging, grain, field crops and mining. Essentially, these are measurements for industries in general where the measurement of the goods being sold or purchased is very important. There needs to be that standard and, in this case, this international standard.

Other sectors could be included in the future of course as time goes on and I am sure we will have a debate about that in the future.

Measurement Canada will take a more active role in this. One of the roles it will take is the training of people involved in helping to calibrate these machines to ensure they are correct.

I will now talk about some of the clauses that are considered here, one being the Electricity and Gas Inspection Act. The act requires that only approved and verified metres would be involved. The act allows the accreditation of independent metre verifiers to verify the accuracy of electricity and natural gas metres on behalf of Measurement Canada.

We see there is another element being brought in that is really quite something. Now we are branching off into a different direction that, in my particular riding, could be detrimental under certain circumstances. However, the spirit of this is an honest one, which is to ensure the calibration on the pumps is correct, but in this particular case the government could help maintain that perfection in the system by doing more things to help certain retailers.

Bill C-14 proposes to give the Minister of Industry the power to appoint non-government inspectors. These inspectors would be trained and certified by Measurement Canada, as I mentioned. This is where the bill gets a little bit dicey, a little bit cloudy as to the clarification of what it is that certain retailers must do and what it is they are on the hook for, as the common vernacular goes.

Description and analysis: In addition to ensuring metres are kept in good repair, owners are responsible for paying any fees required by the act, such as those that may be charged for mandatory inspections.

I will touch on that one for a moment because it is one that is of grave concern to me. The owner is responsible for the cost involved in looking at the metres to ensure they are calibrated. Let us say that the owner is someone with a retail outlet in a remote area, perhaps on the south coast of Newfoundland. In certain cases there are places remote enough so that there is no other way to purchase gasoline in a 200 kilometre radius. The owner finds himself in a situation where, if he needs to have someone come in and if it is not someone from the government or someone trained and willing to do it but someone in the private sector, a fee is involved to bring the person to the owner's establishment to ensure his pumps have the right readings.

A lot of small retailers will be on the hook for travel costs, meals costs and mileage costs. The frequency of getting their pumps calibrated will be such that it is an added expense to them. It is not just that. Let us assume, unwittingly, that there is a slight mistake in the calibration and that the gas pump is putting out something that is slighty off what the price on the pump shows. It must be shut down. Even though that is the only pump in a 200 kilometre radius, it must be down for a period of time because, let us face it, if it has to be fixed and it has to be fixed by someone else. Someone else has to come in and do that.

We should think about the people in the area who rely on gasoline to get to work, take their kids to schools or get to the hospital, God willing. These are the situations that I do not think we have looked into with the bill. When the bill was put together, I would hope that there was some consideration and thought put into it, more than what I see on the surface of this particular bill. I certainly believe that the government should have looked at some kind of subsidy for these small retailers to help them in calibrating their pumps.

In the meantime, we have the administrative monetary penalties, which in this case are apt because we have a graduated amount of money. As I said earlier, if owners unwittingly make a mistake in their pump or it is showing a different reading, then obviously they will be fined for it, but if it happens again and again, the intent is such that they want to bilk the public. After all, this is about fairness at the pumps, I suppose.

That said, the graduated fine should be to a point where individual retailers will not have to pay a small fee every time it happens. They must pay more and more as we go along. That is the key element of this.

[Jim Maloway, NDP, Elmwood—Transcona, MB]

Mr. Speaker, the member will know that the Bloc's Bill C-452 would go a long way toward solving the problem here. It would change the Competition Act to authorize the commissioner to inquire into an entire industry sector, which is what we really need to do in this country.

The public has been aware of price fixing on gasoline prices for many years and yet 125 studies, paid for by provincial governments and the federal government, have all concluded that the legal framework is not there to get a conviction. We need to change the Competition Act.

The federal people have been able to chase the real estate agents on two occasions and get action from them to stop price fixing. They managed to get travel agents to stop price fixing. If they can do it with those other industries, why can they not do it with the retail gasoline industry?

[Scott Simms, Liberal, Bonavista—Gander—Grand Falls—Windsor, NL]

Mr. Speaker, the member made an extremely valid point.

I would like to point out for my colleague that this topic came up in discussions several years ago in my home province of Newfoundland and Labrador when we instituted price regulation at the pumps. P.E.I. was the other province.

Why is it that we do not have the framework by which we can cut down on what I would consider an unfair business practice after well over 100 studies have been completed? It is true that we do it in other sectors. Is it a case of this industry being so connected to world inputs, such as oil prices being determined by a huge global compact? Is this part of the reason?

I do not stand here trying to make excuses for this. I do think that in this particular situation, despite the fact that Canada has a great deal of resources, we still have the right to disentangle ourselves from the world to ensure the consumer in Canada is not unfairly gouged.

[Joe Volpe, Liberal, Eglinton—Lawrence, ON]

Mr. Speaker, my colleague from Bonavista—Gander—Grand Falls—Windsor was not here when this was a raging debate, led by members of the now government side, who were in opposition at the time and who were looking for fairness at the pumps.

I noticed that my hon. colleague looked at the legislative item that says fairness at the pumps act. For a government that has been in power for almost five years and one that used to rail against unfairness at the pumps, it has done nothing. It is now simply looking at measurements and weights associated with arriving at prices.

As the member and my hon. colleagues have indicated, six years ago the provinces in Atlantic Canada figured out a particular formula, but one that did not completely address the issue of gouging and fairness in the rest of Canada.

I wonder if my colleague is finding out the same thing that the rest of us are finding out, which is that this is a waste of Parliament's time, especially when the government knew what the program should have been and yet did nothing for five years. It is now moving sound bite legislation with no substance but lots of spin.

[Scott Simms, Liberal, Bonavista—Gander—Grand Falls—Windsor, NL]

Mr. Speaker, I do not know if my colleague was here earlier but I mentioned that with some of these bills we are seeing a case where we haul the old t-shirt out of the closet and call it ShamWow and start cleaning with it. Just because it has a fancy label does not make it a better cleaner. The member gets the idea--

[An hon. member]

It's still a sham.

[Scott Simms, Liberal, Bonavista—Gander—Grand Falls—Windsor, NL]

Yes, it is still a sham. That is a good point.

The member made a valid point. The government campaigned on two options: first, a 2¢ reduction in excise tax on diesel; and second, when the price of gasoline goes over 85¢ it would cut out the GST element. Neither of those things were done.

In this particular situation, the government did not even go so far as to talk about the Competition Act, which my colleague from the NDP talked about. Instead, we have mandatory inspections. By the way, this must be paid for by the gas station owner.

[Anthony Rota, Liberal, Nipissing—Timiskaming, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I rise today to speak to Bill C-14, the so-called fairness at the pumps act.

Fairness at the pumps sounds good. It is a nice title. It sounds as though people are trying to do something good.

I have heard different variations on it from the Conservative Party: the getting back at the chisellers act, those who are trying to rip off people when they buy gas.

What this bill amounts to is vast and expensive changes to combat variances which in large part can be attributed to environmental changes and honest errors.

When we look at what has happened in the past, and the amount of the variance or error, studies show that 96% of gas pumps are precisely accurate. Ninety-six per cent is not perfect. However, let us look at the difference. Four per cent are inaccurate. Of that 4%, 2% favour the consumer and 2% favour the owner. It is not as if there is this big massive problem, but it would be nice to try to get 100%.

The petroleum industry is second only to the apiary industry in terms of measurement accuracy. The apiary industry is slightly better than the petroleum industry.

What is more, according to Alan Johnson, president of Measurement Canada, the majority of pumps that were out of tolerance were out by slightly over one tolerance. One tolerance is the equivalent of .5% discrepancy between the amount of gasoline paid for and the amount dispensed. This means that the majority of pumps out of tolerance were about 1% off measurement. That is of that 4%. We can see how minuscule that amount is.

I am not justifying this and I am not saying it is okay to have variance, but what we have to look at is the amount of energy that has gone into this and how this actually comes out.

The Conservatives talk about it as if there were a whole industry out there trying to rip off consumers. They vilified a group. What I am seeing is a repeat of what we had in Ontario in 1995 when the Conservatives were in government in Ontario. Their modus operandi was to create a crisis and vilify one group, one industry. In this case it is not so much the oil industry or the petroleum industry, but they are vilifying the person at the pumps, the small operator.

We have seen this in Ontario. We saw it in Walkerton where they left it up to the individuals to monitor themselves and to hire their own private inspectors, not government inspectors, but private inspectors who would make a living off it going to different areas.

When private inspectors go in when needed or on a regular basis, what we are seeing is the industry regulating itself. I have a small concern with that; actually, it is a large concern because of what we did see in Ontario.

Currently on a report, a fraud is investigated by a government inspector. This will not change under the new system. The only change is that every two years station owners must pay $200 per pump for a mandatory inspection with no evidence of tampering or intentional discrepancy. That is $200 every two years. It does not sound like much, but when one has a number of pumps it causes a problem for the small operators.

As was mentioned earlier, I look at northern Ontario. Northern Ontario is a large territory with a sparse population and there are small operators. They are not making millions of dollars. They are not making huge amounts of money pumping gas. They are providing a service.

When we look at northern Ontario and rural Canada in general, there is not a lot of operators. I have seen it happen where people have to drive an hour to get gas, believe it or not. They have to get to that gas station. If that operator is not doing the volume, he still has to get the inspection.

When we look at what causes pumps to go out, cold temperatures cause a bit of variation, but the major factor is the amount of pumping that gets done.

When we look at a major centre such as Toronto, some stations pump gas like it is going out of style and there is some wear. Perhaps the Conservatives would like to look at something like that and say that maybe they should be inspected more often, but it is two years right across the board.

In rural areas in northern Ontario there is not that volume and not the wear and tear. When we look at operators in northern Ontario or in rural Canada, they still have to be inspected every two years. Inspectors are paid $200 per pump. Northern Ontario is a vast area, as is rural Canada. How many inspectors will be going to the rural areas? They are going to go where the fruit is lying low, which is in the major centres. The inspectors will be in the larger centres like Toronto, Vancouver and Ottawa. In the smaller centres, the operators will be at the mercy of the inspectors. They will be sitting there waiting and wondering when it is going to happen. This is going to cause some problems for the operators.

When we look at operators in rural areas such as northern Ontario, we see that there are independents. Many of the independents have been wiped out, but a lot of the operators are small operators. This adds to their costs. They will have to pass these costs on to the consumer. This is actually adding costs to the operators or the people of northern Ontario and rural Canada.

If this were a problem solver, if it would put an end to all fraud at the pumps, then I would say that this is something we should embrace and let it go ahead, but this bill will not stop those major fraudsters who are overcharging consumers. It will only penalize pump owners, especially in rural regions where equipment is most likely to break down in inclement weather, whose equipment is off by less than 1%. That is not a large amount, yet independents, small owners, are going to be hit hard. In turn we are going to see more and more people asking why they would put themselves up.

It is almost as though they are accused of being guilty until proven innocent in something like this. In the way it is written, it has come to light that all small companies that pump gas are fraudulent, that they are all trying to chisel and steal money from people. That is not so. The people who pump gas are honest and are trying to earn a living.

There might be a little variation but there is variation in all businesses and all industries. When we look at it, about 0.0002% of the gasoline bought by Canadians last year did not end up in their cars. That is two ten-thousandths of one per cent. Anybody who looks at that sees it as a small amount. It is not a large amount. I am not saying it is insignificant, but it is something that should be considered because two ten-thousandths of one per cent is not a huge amount, not when we see the variation in the price of gasoline. It swings up and down. In my community the other day it went from 96¢ to $1.08. Had they been measuring better, it would not have made a bit of difference.

When I look at what the Conservatives have talked about in the past, such as taking the GST off once it got over 85¢ and all kinds of neat things that sounded good but were not acted upon, this is a pittance. It is playing Canadians for fools. It makes people feel good when they read the title of the bill, but unfortunately, that is where it ends.

[Raynald Blais, Bloc, Gaspésie—Îles-de-la-Madeleine, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I would like the member who just spoke to further explain his reservations and why it should not be the consumer who pays. We must find a way to improve the system. However, if improving the system means that we end up paying more at the pump, what is the point?

Has my colleague thought about all that? When we study this matter in committee, how should we go about it and what is his vision?

I would very much appreciate his comments because they will help us get ready to do excellent work in committee.

[Anthony Rota, Liberal, Nipissing—Timiskaming, ON]

Mr. Speaker, that is a very important question.

In terms of this bill, people believe that in the end, they are not going to be ripped off. The best thing to do is to ensure that a bill is put in place to make a real difference. That should not mean that people have to pay a little bit more and that, in the end, there is no difference.

This bill causes problems for the company or the individual selling the gas, but does nothing about the price of gas. That is the problem. In 2004, the Conservatives began talking about changes and capping the price of gas. They wanted to stop it from climbing. They wanted to make sure that the price would be the same in Toronto as in northern Ontario, the same in Vancouver as in northern British Columbia. They wanted a fair price for everyone. That is what we have to work on: something that looks at the price at the pump, whether it is in major urban centres or in rural areas.

[Nathan Cullen, NDP, Skeena—Bulkley Valley, BC]

Mr. Speaker, earlier a colleague from the Liberal Party spoke about the despair he felt around bills like this because the title proclaims fairness at the pump. This gives Canadians the impression that is what is actually going to happen. However, the government is only moving the ball a few inches down the field and a penny here or there might be saved after all the effort that we are putting behind this bill. The big question about the potential abuse by some companies in price fixing has been risen many times, but the rules do not allow government to come to the conclusion that is in front of all of us, that companies seem to elevate their prices at various times of the year and consumers get hit. It is not pennies; it can add up to many dollars every time consumers fill up their tanks. Across the country that could mean millions of dollars.

This was not addressed by the Conservative government in the last five years, nor was it addressed by the previous Liberal regime. Are the Liberals now saying they are willing to work with us to provide consumer protection, to change the fundamental rules so that Canadians can be protected from gouging at the pump?

[Anthony Rota, Liberal, Nipissing—Timiskaming, ON]

Mr. Speaker, it is nice to hear that the hon. member is willing to work with us to make a difference because we have not seen that. I remember in 2004 that his leader actually knocked out the Liberals so that the NDP could possibly get a couple of seats and we lost a lot. It was really painful.

However, let us go to fairness at the pumps which is what the hon. member mentioned. It is about the title of the bill. It sounds as though there is actually something being done and it sounds like it is there. As I mentioned earlier, this is a repeat of Ontario under a Conservative government. The Conservatives create a crisis, rally the troops and when they realize that we are all rushing in one direction, what happens is the issue was not there at all. It was somewhere else. This is a diversion that the Conservatives are using to make themselves look good, but it is not solving the problem.

[André Bellavance, Bloc, Richmond—Arthabaska, QC]

Mr. Speaker, it is my turn so speak to Bill C-14, An Act to amend the Electricity and Gas Inspection Act and the Weights and Measures Act.

Bill C-14 is not bad in itself because it is very important for pump measurements to be accurate. I have noted, though, the criticisms voiced by my colleagues. They said that consumers should not have to bear the cost of the new monitoring requirements under Bill C-14. We will have to be careful in committee to fully clarify this issue.

The Bloc Québécois is in favour of sending the bill to committee. However, the bill does nothing to address the real concern of people, which is that they pay too much for gasoline. Two things need to be done: we have to create an agency to monitor gasoline prices and to give the Competition Act more bite.

The Bloc Québécois has introduced some bills in this regard that I will discuss in a few moments. That is what we need to talk about. I hope the government is not going to pat itself on the back, claiming that it introduced a bill to regulate the fluctuations in the price of gasoline and it will ensure that people pay a fair price through tighter monitoring of the measurement devices at the pump. The accuracy of these measurements is a very interesting point.

We do not even know if consumers benefit or are penalized when pumps are not working quite right. I suppose that if people are tampering with the pumps, it is not to do consumers any favours. It remains to be seen, though, whether people have fiddled with the gauge showing the number of litres pumped. That is not the solution, and I will show why in the next few minutes.

Bill C-14 amends certain provisions of the Electricity and Gas Inspection Act and the Weights and Measures Act in order to better protect consumers against inaccurate gasoline pump measurements. That is basically what we are talking about. Many people are concerned about this. The bill covers other measurement devices as well and not just gasoline pumps.

The bill imposes penalties for contraventions to the laws in question, increases maximum fines for offences, and introduces a new fine for repeat offenders. It also introduced mandatory frequencies for measuring devices and proposes the appointment of non-government inspectors, to be trained and certified by Measurement Canada to conduct mandatory measuring device inspections.

The Bloc Québécois is in favour of Bill C-14 in principle and of sending it to committee.

However, Bill C-14 does not directly address the issue of collusion that has recently come to light in Quebec. Nor does it effectively prevent sudden increases in gas prices. I spoke about two objectives earlier: creating an agency to monitor gasoline prices and giving the Competition Act more teeth.

I want to talk about what happened in my own municipality. Many vehicles are stolen and many people are in possession of stolen vehicles in central Quebec. I do not want people to think that my region is particularly problematic, but in Victoriaville we also had the infamous gas price cartel. Luckily, the scheme was uncovered and people are being held accountable. I hope that if this happens elsewhere in Canada, we will be able to stop them.

However, under current legislation, criticism or complaints must be filed in order for the Competition Bureau to act. That is the difference. The Competition Bureau needs to have quasi-police authority to act when it feels the need and as soon as there are suspicions, not only when there is a complaint. I will come back to that.

We also believe that we still need to make an effort to efficiently respond to rising gas prices, and we can do so with our bill, Bill C-452, which the NDP member mentioned during questions and comments. That bill was introduced by my colleague from Shefford. The Competition Act does not allow the Competition Bureau to conduct inquiries on its own initiative. It must always wait for a private complaint before it can start an inquiry. We are also calling for a petroleum agency to closely monitor gasoline prices and to respond to any attempts at collusion or unjustified price hikes.

If the government had taken a serious approach to really helping consumers, it would have focused on those two points. Every time the price of gasoline rises suddenly, people begin to wonder about the oil industry, and rightfully so. These increases are unjustified, and consumers must not be the victims of dubious business practices on the part of oil companies. I repeat, the existing Competition Act has significant gaps. For instance, it does not allow the Competition Bureau to undertake a real investigation of an industrial sector. How can it gather information if it can neither force the disclosure of documents nor protect witnesses? This aspect must be corrected.

Bill C-452 introduced by the Bloc Québécois would toughen up the Competition Act to give the federal trade tribunal the right to initiate an investigation, rather than waiting for complaints or accusations, the right to protect witnesses and the right to conduct searches and seize documents. A petition to that effect has been circulating. It is a very popular petition, particularly in my region, understandably, since it was seriously affected by this cartel. To ensure that everyone clearly understands the importance of this issue, I would like to read the petition.

WHEREAS:

1. Individuals and companies pled guilty in the summer of 2008 to conspiring to fix the price of gasoline;

2. According to Le Soleil, retailers could be overcharging by more than $100 million a year;

3. The current Competition Act has significant gaps, preventing the Competition Bureau from conducting investigations until complaints are lodged.

THEREFORE, your petitioners call upon the House of Commons to pass Bill C-452, An Act to amend the Competition Act (inquiry into industry sector), authorizing the Commissioner of Competition to conduct an inquiry of her own accord into the fluctuating price of gasoline.

I can say that this petition is very popular. People are requesting it. They get it online and sign it. People want something to be done about what happened. The Competition Bureau did manage to take action in my region. It is so difficult to do anything about this that this was only the second time the Competition Bureau was able to take action in this type of incident. The first time was in Vancouver in 1995. The second time was in 2008 because there was a complaint. We should not have to wait for a complaint before something can be done. Nonetheless, it worked out and that is how it should be, with increased powers and investigations before things get to the complaint stage.

The Competition Bureau discovered a gasoline cartel in Quebec. By cartel we mean an agreement between companies not to compete with one another. It is a rather simple definition. I will read from a Competition Bureau document, a press release that was issued on June 12, 2008:

...the Competition Bureau became aware of allegations of price-fixing at gas stations in Victoriaville, Quebec. The evidence gathered during the Victoriaville investigation led to further probes in other local markets in Quebec, namely Thetford Mines, Sherbrooke and Magog.

In conducting its investigation, the Bureau uncovered evidence of agreements between competitors to fix the price at the pump at which gasoline was sold to consumers. The evidence indicated that participants in the targeted markets carried out the conspiracy mainly by phoning each other to agree on the price of gasoline and about the timing of price increases, contrary to section 45 of the Competition Act.

A number of investigative tools were used, including wiretaps, searches and the Competition Bureau’s Immunity Program.

Some could dispute my argument since I was saying earlier that the Competition Bureau did not have enough room to manoeuvre. Some might say there was collusion, and that a cartel formed in Victoriaville, Thetford Mines, Sherbrooke, and Magog and perhaps elsewhere, but there have been no reports of this in other places.

The competition bureau was able to take action. Lawsuits were filed and some people have already pleaded guilty. So, it works. However, as I keep saying, it took a complaint. At one point, a gasoline retailer from the Victoriaville area received threats, seemingly from other retailers, because he did not want to go along with their scheme. He would keep his prices a little lower than those of the others for a while. His company supported him for a while. However, he eventually found himself all alone and he decided to expose this situation. If I am not mistaken, he talked to a local weekly newspaper. He expressed his frustration to a journalist regarding these events, the threats he had received and the fact that, as a merchant, he wanted to continue to be able to compete with the others.

That is what is wrong with the petroleum industry. If someone wants to buy a pair of shoes, he can go to two or three different stores. Chances are the price of a pair of shoes of the same brand and colour will not be the same everywhere. There may be a $5 or $10 difference. The person may even find a pair on sale, at 50% off the regular price if he is lucky. However, when it comes to gasoline, even if we look everywhere, we will rarely find much variation in prices. In the case that took place in my community, the competition bureau showed that retailers would phone each other and set prices. So, obviously, prices were the same everywhere.

That individual decided that enough was enough, and he spoke out about it. It is only when the competition bureau saw what was going on that it could take action. It reasoned that since a complaint had been filed, it could take action. Otherwise, it could not have done anything. That is why the procedure at the competition bureau must change.

As I said, a number of charges were laid. In Victoriaville, 11 companies were involved in the scheme. In Thetford Mines there were 6. In Sherbrooke there were 20, and in Magog there were 5.

As I mentioned earlier, several companies in Victoriaville, Thetford Mines and Sherbrooke pleaded guilty. The fines are rather stiff, that is $179,000 in one case, $1,850,000 for an oil company, and $600,000 and $90,000 respectively for two other companies. That is more than a slap on the wrist. The $1,850,000 fine was imposed on an oil company, not on a retailer. There is no doubt that these penalties will have a sobering effect.

Obviously, I travel a lot, like all of my colleagues here. We all travel within our ridings. When we are responsible for files, we deal with them away from here, which allows us to compare gas prices. It is interesting to note that at one time in Victoriaville, gas was always slightly more expensive than in Trois-Rivières or Drummondville. Sometimes it was less expensive than in Quebec City, but it was not the cheapest in the province, far from it. Since the Competition Bureau started its inquiry and the results came out, it is funny, but the prices are often lower. People had to be caught red-handed for others to be far more careful in terms of fixing prices. We are still the ones who are benefiting today. Luckily, the Competition Bureau's inquiry allowed us to find out what was going on.

As for the individuals linked to this collusion, this cartel, there were fines of $50,000, $10,000 and $5,000. For once, we caught the people and were able to make them pay. I have here a series of fines for $10,000, $20,000 and $25,000, depending on the person's involvement in the scheme.

As for how this all played out, an article in La Tribune says that the gas cartel may have cost each car owner up to $180. This whole story came to light in 2008, but prices were fixed between 2002 and 2006. The newspaper article says:

A very rough estimate [because it is difficult to know how much gas each person bought over the years] is that each year a car owner in Sherbrooke, Magog, Thetford Mines and Victoriaville paid an extra $20 to $40 to fill up their vehicle because of the cartel, which distorted gas prices for approximately four and a half years.

It is interesting to note that a class action lawsuit against the gas cartel is now before the civil division of the Quebec Superior Court, which will attempt to determine how much money should be given back to people who were swindled for four and a half years.

To date, over 12,000 people—and that number is a few months old—have signed on to the class action lawsuit authorized by Quebec Superior Court Justice Dominique Bélanger on November 30, 2010, concerning gas price fixing between January 1, 2002, and June 30, 2006, in the aforementioned cities.

According to another interesting article, this time in Le Soleil:

Plaintiffs are seeking $7.5 million plus interest as of January 1, 2002. In addition, they are seeking $500 for trouble and inconvenience for each participant in the lawsuit, as well as $1,000 in punitive damages. The Automobile Protection Association is also seeking $250,000.

That should give a sense of the amounts of money sought by this class action. It is important to note that Bill C-14 does not address these concerns at all. Conservative members should not be saying that this bill will solve all gas price fixing problems. The bill might make retailers more accountable by imposing regular mandatory inspections of measuring devices, such as gas pumps, but it will not prevent the price of gas from going up right before a long weekend for who knows what reason.

I have said this a number of times in the House and I will say it again: every time I see gas prices jump and watch television reports about it, I am always curious about what could possibly have caused gas prices to jump by 5¢, 10¢ or 12¢ per litre.

When a representative of the association of oil companies explains on television that there is a problem in Iraq or an oil rig leak, it is always rather difficult to believe him. In many cases, the facts show that the price of a barrel of oil, given that we have reserves, was a certain amount when the problem occurred. As this amount has still not gone up, the price hike should come later, but that is not what happens. As soon as a problem is announced—and we never know if it is real—the price at the pump goes up right away and never goes down as quickly as it should. Thus, we have reason to wonder.

Getting back to Bill C-14, the fines that the courts could impose pursuant to the Weights and Measures Act would increase from $1,000 to $10,000 for minor offences, and from $5,000 to $25,000 for major offences. In the case of subsequent offences, a new maximum fine of $50,000 and/or imprisonment for a term not exceeding two years could be imposed. I would be surprised to see that happen.

There are some measures like this in Bill C-14 but, I repeat, that is not what consumers asked for initially.

The member for Westmount—Ville-Marie even said that the Liberal Party, in 2005, had introduced Bill C-19. There again, the recommendations of the Standing Committee on Industry, Science and Technology, which called for the creation of a gasoline price monitoring agency and more teeth for the Competition Act, were ignored. These two objectives were not achieved by the previous Liberal government, nor by the Conservative government. It is our responsibility to tackle this issue immediately.

[Jean-Claude D'Amours, Liberal, Madawaska—Restigouche, NB]

Mr. Speaker, I remember that in my region in northern New Brunswick, as in many other rural and urban areas in the country, the price of gasoline in 2004 and 2005 was over $1.40 a litre. It almost reached $1.50. The people in my riding could hardly get over it because for them, cars are an absolute necessity. There is no public transit in rural areas. People need a car to get to work. Workers in my riding, and in many others across the country, could not afford it. They saw the price of gasoline constantly rising. It levelled off for a little while, but then it started rising again.

So far as I can see, the bill now before the House does nothing to limit such drastic and illogical increases. I would like my colleague in the Bloc Québécois to state clearly whether this bill will solve once and for all the problem of drastic increases in the price of gasoline, like those we saw in 2004 and 2005.

[André Bellavance, Bloc, Richmond—Arthabaska, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I want to thank the hon. member for his question.

I see the same thing in my region, which is also rural. There is some public transit, especially in the largest city, Victoriaville. It is a very good system of public transit, but as soon as people leave Victoriaville, they have to take their cars. All the other municipalities in my riding are rural communities, and like my colleague who just asked me this question, we have to face that reality. People need their cars. It is all very well to talk about car pooling and other efforts to reduce gasoline consumption, the reality is that people often need cars to get to work. In fact, rural people often even need somewhat larger vehicles. They need a vehicle not only to get around, but also to move their farm machinery around. It is very expensive.

I agree entirely with my colleague. The bill does nothing to deal with this reality. It does nothing to prevent fluctuations. As I and other have said in the House many times, we should pass the Bloc Québécois bill that creates an agency to monitor gas prices. Then the oil companies would be forced to explain exactly why there are fluctuations in the price. They could not do whatever they like. That is what needs changing.

[Cathy McLeod, Conservative, Kamloops—Thompson—Cariboo, BC]

Mr. Speaker, I listened with great interest to the example that the hon. colleague across the floor gave in terms of how the Competition Bureau actually worked. It really created a solution to what was a big issue in Quebec.

We do have a Competition Bureau. So I would ask the member this. Is it also not very important for his constituents to be comfortable and confident when they fill up at the pumps that they are actually getting what they pay for? This is, of course, what the bill is intended to do.

The Competition Bureau did an excellent job in terms of the member's issue, and now there will be an added comfort in terms of the accuracy at the pump.

[André Bellavance, Bloc, Richmond—Arthabaska, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I had expected that kind of reaction after giving the example of what happened in my riding. I said that the Competition Bureau had succeeded in doing a good job. I never question that fact. The problem is that complaints have to come in first, either from the public or from someone who has witnessed an incident of fraud in the form of gas price fixing. What we want to see happen—and something needs to change for this to happen—is for the Competition Bureau to be able to act much more independently. It should not have to wait to receive a complaint, in the same way that the police do not have to. When the police suspect something, they can set up a wiretap, for example, with a judge’s permission, obviously. We are not talking about allowing just any old thing. The Competition Bureau could develop procedures in order to determine whether fraudulent acts are being committed, for example. That is part of my answer for the hon. member.

People in my riding are obviously particularly attuned to this because they have been defrauded. Everyone is very glad to be able to go and fill up at a pump with an accurate meter. That is why we are ready to see this bill go to committee, but it will not fix everything. Folks will still be watching the prices go up across the board for no particular reason, despite accurate gauges on the gas pumps. One can hope that the measurement is accurate, but that will not solve the whole problem.

[Yves Lessard, Bloc, Chambly—Borduas, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I would like to begin by congratulating my colleague, the member for Richmond—Arthabaska, on the clarity of his remarks regarding the impact of a lack of oversight on consumers. The Competition Office should regulate these matters.

I would like the member to elaborate on the price monitoring agency proposed by the Bloc Québécois. Would it not be possible to transfer the responsibilities to be vested in the monitoring agency to the Competition Bureau so that we can better understand why such an agency is necessary and also attempt to define its role?

[André Bellavance, Bloc, Richmond—Arthabaska, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I thank my colleague from Chambly—Borduas.

I would be happy to elaborate. If we go back a few years and if I am not mistaken, our former colleague Paul Crête was the first one to champion this issue in the House. He proposed the creation of a petroleum industry monitoring agency, because there was a desperate need for such an agency. People were at the mercy of the oil companies and their excuses. I gave a few examples earlier. The oil companies would give excuses about what was going on in the world: a pipeline in Afghanistan or Azerbaijan caused problems, an oil rig was hit by a hurricane off the coast of the United States, and so on. Any excuse might explain a price increase.

A petroleum monitoring agency would enable us to see the real reasons, such as the cost price and the profit margin at the refining stage. We cannot always get these explanations and understand them. They must be put together and verified by independent people who can advise consumers on what a fair price would be. If the fair price is $1.05 a litre, even if that seems expensive, consumers will understand the reasons behind that price and will accept it. It is also possible that a litre could cost 90¢ at certain times of the year. Consumers want to be certain that they are paying a fair price for their gas.

[Jean-Claude D'Amours, Liberal, Madawaska—Restigouche, NB]

Mr. Speaker, thank you for giving me a few moments to ask a question. At one time, oil companies were each a single entity. They either made a profit or ran a deficit at the end of the year. Now each oil company has split itself into several companies, which allows them to make a profit or run a deficit—and we know they always make a profit—in various entities and increase their global profits, something that used to be impossible to do.

Does the government's bill address this confirmation, this assurance? We must have some control over the companies' ability to split up into several smaller companies and thus bring in larger profits than in the past.

[André Bellavance, Bloc, Richmond—Arthabaska, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I thank the hon. member for his second question. I did not see that in Bill C-14, but I think he makes an excellent, very relevant suggestion. This should be discussed in committee, if the bill makes it that far, which is quite possible. That would be one of the questions to consider. I am not certain that studying Bill C-14, which has to do with the accuracy of measuring gas at the pump, will be the best forum for discussing the oil companies' practice of splitting into smaller companies to spread out their profits. It would be very interesting to confirm that. The government would have to do some very precise calculations of oil companies' profits. Everyone knows they are making billions of dollars in profits.

[Jim Maloway, NDP, Elmwood—Transcona, MB]

Mr. Speaker, I am very pleased to speak to Bill C-14 today.

I wanted to start out by making some comments about the Bloc's initiative in Bill C-452, because I really feel that that is a game-changer. That is an actual solid response to a long-term problem.

The bill is a very short bill, but it basically amends the Competition Act to authorize the commissioner to inquire into an entire industry sector. As the previous Bloc speaker has pointed out, in order to launch an investigation under the Competition Act, a complaint has to be made, and that is essentially the problem that has occurred over the years. We really need the Competition Bureau to be able to act very independently and be very proactive when it sees price-fixing going on in the gas industry.

I have been dealing with this issue now since probably 1988, when we went from government to opposition in Manitoba, and my job was to ask a lot of questions every day about gas prices. We looked at a whole range of ways to deal with the issue. As a matter of fact, the Conservative minister in Manitoba at the time, Jim Ernst, who was very frustrated too, I might say, was determined to follow this issue through as far as he could. He was aware that there were already 125 studies on this very topic sitting on the shelves gathering dust. Nevertheless he went and commissioned another one, so we are up to 126 now probably, and at the end of the day that study came up with the same conclusions that all the others did, that yes, in fact there was price-fixing going on but the Competition Act would have to be changed in order to get a conviction. So we found that that was not going to be the route to go.

Once again, he was the minister and I was the opposition critic, so we were not exactly working together on the subject because I was asking him questions every day as to what he was doing about the matter.

That was the issue of the study. Then we looked at the regulatory options, and we were aware that in the Maritimes there were regulatory boards available, regulating gas prices, but we watched them closely over the years and found out that they were not the answer either, because in fact they tended to regulate simply to the highest price.

I think the public would be very supportive of a monitoring agency or a regulatory agency if in fact they were going to see a regulatory agency with teeth, one that was going to be able to reduce the prices and not just approve the increases. What we will find, if we look at the Maritime regulatory boards, is that they regulate up to the higher price, and that has always been my objection to that approach.

At the end of the day of course, the gasoline prices are pretty much dependent upon world pricing, world events and availability of supplies. When there are examples of refineries impacted by severe storms and hurricanes in the southern United States, such as Louisiana, when refineries are shut down because of weather, storms, explosions or work stoppages, there comes a shortage of product and that creates problems.

We have seen a huge reduction in the number of refineries over the years. In Manitoba, as recently as 20 years ago, I believe we had 2 refineries in the province, and today we have none.

So during this period of the early 1990s, when we were looking at the whole area of studying the issue and changes to the Competition Act and we were looking at regulating gas prices, we were also observing some other developments that were happening within the market. One was to look at possibly bringing gasoline through the port of Churchill because, as members know, we have a port in Manitoba that is very underutilized. However, we have some tanker farms up there where there are a number of tanks, which hold gasoline products that are actually shipped further north. And so, we were looking into the possibility of actually shipping them down to the south by rail.

We also had a number of independent operators who were taking advantage of a very low American price at the time. There was at least one in particular, but I think there were two or three. What this operator would do was drive down to Fargo or Grand Forks, North Dakota, load up from the pipeline there, truck the gasoline up into Winnipeg and sell it at perhaps 10¢ or 20¢ less per litre. It was a substantial amount. The point was that when we turned on the evening television news on a day-by-day basis, we would see cars lined up for blocks to buy gasoline from this gas station, which was being supplied by tankers that were bringing the gas up from the States. But of course this fellow could only operate to the extent of his ability to fill up his tanker truck and bring it back up. He could not get beyond supplying the gasoline for one or two gas stations.

We did look at perhaps expanding on that a bit and trying bring in more tankers of gasoline into some other stations, and we did encounter a lot of different problems in that the transfer of gasoline is certainly not done the way it used to be done years ago. Some of the members opposite who were on farms in the 1950s would know that gasoline was transferred from a little truck that drove to the farm. It would be transferred by a hose into a big tank and then transferred from there into the farm equipment, the tractors and so on. However, things have changed and we cannot drive into town or into a big city anymore with a big tanker truck and start selling gasoline out of the tanker. We did discover that was a fact.

So, we did look at all sorts of areas to try to act on behalf of consumers at that time, and it is easy to do when the prices skyrocket very quickly.

I want to take a minute to talk about the member for Pickering—Scarborough East because he is a long-time Liberal member in this House. We have had Liberal members today talk about this issue as if it were something that they had newly discovered and other members who think it is a big Conservative problem, that this problem only surfaced since the current Prime Minister and the current Conservative government came to office and now this is all their problem.

The fact of the matter is that all through those periods of time that I spoke about earlier, the Liberals were in power, from 1993 on, and every attempt that was made to do something about high gasoline prices was thwarted. As a matter of fact, with regard to the member for Pickering—Scarborough East, his own Liberal caucus thwarted his efforts on many occasions, I believe. I used to hear him many times over the years, on the radio, being a champion of the consumer and trying to do things with regard to the Competition Bureau and trying to deal with competition and the price-fixing issues in this country, and he was getting nowhere with his own caucus, with his own government and with his own prime minister.

This has been a longstanding problem. Price-fixing is not something that is just peculiar to the gasoline industry. Since the mid-1980s to the present, we have seen at least two major initiatives on the part of the federal government against price-fixing in the real estate industry. The latest one is being resolved as we speak. Within a number of weeks, the real estate boards across Canada will be getting together to ratify a deal that was made to prevent price-fixing. If that deal is not ratified then, of course, they will proceed through court action.

There are anti-competitive activities that have been around in our society for many years and they have been allowed to foster over the years. It takes strong initiatives on the part of government and law enforcement to attack this and try to break it up, so that the public is better served by true competition.

It is not only real estate agents that have been dealt with over the years but the travel agency business and the property and casualty insurance business. I believe the Toyota Motor Corporation was challenged when it tried to set a fixed price. I am sure members will recall five or six years ago when Toyota tried to dictate to its dealers that in fact there was a fixed price, there was a no-haggle pricing and they could not cut the price. That was dealt with by the government in a positive way.

This is not exciting stuff for the average member of the public, but it is very crucial to a proper competitive environment in which business has to compete. A series of monopolies governing the country is not the way our system is supposed to be operating. We try a lot of things, like monitoring. People think it is a good idea, but we have proven it does not work. However, there are a lot of other things we could look at here.

I want to talk about some of the elements of this bill that people on our side of the House have found objectionable. I do not think we would have a problem if, in fact, these gas pumps across the country were being inspected by government inspectors.

I mentioned earlier that for many years in the province of Manitoba, and maybe some other provinces too, we had a system of random inspections of cars. If a car was bought today, owned for 10 years, it would probably be called in once or twice for an inspection and repairs would have to be made to keep the car in good shape to keep it on the road. People trusted that system because they knew it was government inspectors who were doing the inspecting.

Around 1995, the Conservative government of the day decided to turn the whole inspection system over to private garages. The economy was probably tight, they were not making enough money and this was a way to give them a bit of a cash cow. When cars needed inspecting, they would have to go to a local garage and it was up to the garage to tell the owners what was wrong with their cars. We have seen many terrible examples of gouging, where people have bought a car, taken it to a garage, and found out they have to spend hundreds if not thousands of dollars for repairs before they could put that car on the road. We have seen totally different examples of people who have taken cars in and have found out later from a friend in the business that in fact cars that are really not safe at all are being approved, are being certified as safe and being allowed to be driven on the road, because someone has an in with somebody or has a relative in the garage or dealership.

This system was brought in as a sop to the car industry, and overnight the price of used cars went up. We used to see $50 cars, $100 cars, back in the early 1990s. Then, overnight, because of the safety inspection system, the worst-looking car on the road was a $1,000 vehicle.

After a couple of years, the CBC and other news outlets, based on complaints, started to do investigations of what was happening. They found all sorts of examples of gouging in Manitoba, where people were being taken advantage of. The CBC would take in cars that they had previously had inspected; they knew what was wrong with them. I will not mention the garages, but some of them hon. members would know, because they are nationally known chains. The cars would be taken to five or six different garages, and most of the garages, if not all of them, would find huge problems with the cars, when there was nothing wrong with them. That was a blatant example of gouging. Some of the garages lost their licences because of this. Then, a year or two later, a follow-up was done. They found still more cases of gouging. In fact, the second time around, some of the same garages that were caught the first time were cited once again.

Hon. members should know that we cannot get rid of the system once it is in place. The NDP, under Gary Doer, became the government in 1999. It did not get rid of this system and go back to a centralized government inspection system. In fact, it changed the safety inspection period, from two years to one.

As for keeping cars safe on the road, safety inspections are required only when we sell our car. If we have a car and it is sold three or four times in the first two or three years, it will have safety inspections over and over again. However, if we buy the car and drive it ourselves and keep it, we could drive the car forever and it will never be called in for a safety inspection. Potentially, we may have many unsafe cars on our roads. This is a result of turning a perfectly functioning system over to the private sector.

Let us take a look at what could happen and probably will. Members have already said that, if we are dealing with rural areas, northern areas, then we are talking about the private sector. Who will be doing the inspections of the pumps in Yukon? Who will be doing them in the Northwestern Territories, northern B.C., in rural areas? It is a licence to print money. It is a recipe for abuse to have a system like this.

I also want to deal with some aspects of the weights and measures issue. But this is not the way to go. The public and the retailers would accept it if the government were to do the inspections. The inspections should be done over a period of time, but the government should do them. We should not allow the private sector to do these inspections.

[Chris Charlton, NDP, Hamilton Mountain, ON]

Mr. Speaker, this bill has come before us because over two years ago an investigation by The Ottawa Citizen revealed that, between 1999 and 2007, government inspections of over 200,000 fuel pumps found that about 5% of pumps delivered less fuel than reported on the pump display.

The government inspection data showed that about one-third of Canada's gas stations, or about 14,000 of them, had at least one faulty pump. Therefore, a motorist who fills up at various stations and pumps is likely being short-changed about twice a year.

The gas pump problems were exposed more than two years ago by a media investigation, and the government waited far too long to respond. Now the government is allowing thieves to keep what they stole over the past few years.

What is outrageous is that government potentially collected taxes from consumers who were paying for phantom gasoline. Talk about adding insult to injury. Talk about hot air.

Questions must be asked, but I have not heard any of them answered by the Conservative members in the House. Let me give a couple of examples.

Questions must be asked about whether the government earned tax revenues from the short-changing of Canadian motorists. If so, how much? Will this law-and-order government charge the criminals who stole Canadians' money?

I know that the member for Elmwood—Transcona has been here throughout the debate, and I wonder whether he even once heard the Conservatives acknowledge that they benefited from those tax revenues, and whether they have given any indication that they would be amenable to repaying Canadian customers who have been gouged by these faulty pumps.

[Jim Maloway, NDP, Elmwood—Transcona, MB]

Mr. Speaker, the member is 100% correct.

I have been waiting to hear from one of the government members for some time, so that I could ask him questions. For example, I know the penalties are being increased under the Weights and Measures Act.

Under weights and measures legislation, we have the whole issue of odometer rollbacks. This is important. Everyone here understands what happens when unscrupulous people roll back odometers or replace odometers and sell cars that have 300,000 kilometres on them as 80,000-kilometre cars.

It is big-time theft. Yet, this is something that would be covered under the increased weights and measures penalties.

I would think it would be a good news story. I would think the government should be issuing a press release confirming that it is moving against people rolling back odometers. However, I cannot find anyone in the government to ask, because there are no speakers who want to get up and talk about this issue.

If anyone is listening over there, I would ask him or her to get back to me and let me know about this. Under this bill, are we taking tough action against odometer rollbacks that occur every day right across the country? The Weights and Measures Act is increasing the penalties by quite a substantial amount.

[Chris Charlton, NDP, Hamilton Mountain, ON]

Mr. Speaker, the bill proposes a system under which all the inspections of these pumps would be done by the private sector.

The government is contending that the inspections will go up from about 8,000 inspections to approximately 65,000. But the reality is that the government itself will not be enforcing standards. It is going to privatize the enforcement.

I wonder whether the member has had assurances from the government that we will not end up with the oil industry policing itself. It seems to me that as soon as we privatize those services there would be nothing to stop the oil industry from setting up a full inspection system and looking after its own.

Could the member comment on that?

[Jim Maloway, NDP, Elmwood—Transcona, MB]

Mr. Speaker, that is absolutely correct. Actually, it is worse than that: not only would it be privatizing the inspector services for gas pumps; it would also be dealing with wholesale petroleum, dairy, retail food, fishing, logging, grain and field crops, and mining. So the government has gone the whole hog. It did not stop with the inspection of gasoline pumps; it is trying to privatize inspection services in a whole host of other parts of the economy.

I have already stated the abuses that occurred when Manitoba privatized its car inspection system. Under the proposed system, this would be even worse. We are going to see the Manitoba abuses multiplied by all the other eight different areas in which the government is planning to privatize inspection services.

No one yet has been able to tell me how someone in a remote area will be able to afford to bring in a private sector inspector who can charge what the market will bear. We are not going to have much competition in many rural and northern areas. That is just not going to happen. We have seen that in other areas as well. Maybe the system would work reasonably well in a huge metropolitan area like Toronto, but it is not going to work in rural and northern areas.

Not only that, it is going to be a severe detriment to independence. This is all in favour of the big multinationals, the big chains. But the little mom and pop stores, of which there are fewer every year, are going to be hard pressed to come up with $2,000 for inspection bills, which they will have to pay on a regular basis. Never mind that we have problems with ambient temperature and are not sure whether a lot of this calibration equipment is actually accurate.

[Nathan Cullen, NDP, Skeena—Bulkley Valley, BC]

Mr. Speaker, the government has framed this debate in the naming of the bill so as to give Canadians the impression that, once this becomes law, they will get a better deal at the gas pump and will not get ripped off anymore. Actually, this is only the tip of the iceberg when it comes to consumer protection, particularly with respect to the oil and gas industry.

All along the way, we see the present government and the previous Liberal one offer subsidies to the oil and gas firms, regardless of the price of oil or extraction. Then, when the product moves all the way down the chain, the subsidies come along and the profits leave the country. Canadians become concerned when they see prices in their local gas stations all elevate magically together, while the price of a barrel of oil on the stock exchange has not moved at all. Yet the gas companies are asking us to believe that there is no conversation going on when the prices all of a sudden move in coordination in one town, but not in another town 50 kilometres down the road. This is our experience in northwest of B.C. We see this time and time again. I drive the highway quite a bit, because that is our job as members of Parliament, and the price will move 5¢, 10¢, or 12¢ in communities that are 20 minutes apart. Yet apparently there is no collusion.

Is that not what we should be getting at in legislation, rather than this window dressing that the government has offered?

[Jim Maloway, NDP, Elmwood—Transcona, MB]

Mr. Speaker, we have uncovered instances in the past where people who have worked in the gas stations have come forward and said that they had been ordered to change the prices. So this is well documented. They cannot hide this forever. There are gas station employees whose job it is to climb up and change the prices. They do this based on a phone call that comes from their management.

This is a well-organized effort. Somebody has to go out and document it and start taking the initiative. The Bloc's bill was a good start. I hope that somehow in this minority Parliament we can get this bill passed and start to see some more initiatives that would help to stop the collusion in the retail gas business.

[Michel Guimond, Bloc, Montmorency—Charlevoix—Haute-Côte-Nord, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to speak to Bill C-14, which deals with an amendment to the Electricity and Gas Inspection Act and the Weights and Measures Act.

As my colleague before me, the member for Chicoutimi—Le Fjord and Bloc Québécois industry critic, said, the Bloc Québécois will support this bill in principle. However, I would like to say that this has been a lot of work for not much result. I will explain why. If the government thinks that with this bill it has done a bold stroke of business, to bring the oil companies into line, that it has come up with the most important thing since sliced bread, it is sadly mistaken. That is why we will agree that it should be considered in committee, subject to our later position over the stages to come.

I listened with interest to the discussions—if I may put it that way, the puck passing—among the NDP members in their speeches and questions and comments. Those discussions were very appropriate, very much on point, and very much in tune. My NDP colleagues have also recognized the private member’s bill introduced by my colleague in the Bloc Québécois. However, everyone will acknowledge that Bill C-14 does not allow for a direct response to the problems of collusion such as have recently been brought to light in Quebec, or for effective prevention of sudden gas price increases. The government thinks the solution is inspections of the pumps and penalties imposed by the courts, ranging from $1,000 to $10,000 for minor offences and from $5,000 to $25,000 for major offences. We should not be fooled. Those fines are peanuts for oil companies raking in billions of dollars in profits. I certainly do not think the oil companies deliberately alter the way the pumps work, to steal a half-cent more per litre sold from us. I certainly do not think that is done. But we do agree that there should be more in-depth inspections. We are not against motherhood, any more than we are against apple pie. With fall upon us, we all agree that apple pie is a good thing. During apple season, I have the apple growers on Île d'Orléans and Isle-aux-Coudres in my riding, and they are very skilled and efficient.

All kidding aside, this is not the discovery of the century. The Bloc Québécois would have expected the government to take responsibility, pull up its socks and address the root of the problem in the oil industry, namely collusion between companies. We did not expect to be told that the Competition Bureau looked into the situation and it cannot conduct an investigation itself because that requires accusations and well-documented cases. As far as the case brought to light in Lotbinière, Arthabaska and the Eastern Townships is concerned, fortunately someone from the oil sector blew the whistle. That is how we came to find out about this. However, it is just the tip of the iceberg.

The problem is much more serious. I hope no one will be surprised to learn that the Conservatives are doing nothing to rein in the oil companies and to discipline them. Just look at who is financing the Conservative Party. It is mostly the oil companies. Who needs tax benefits to explore and exploit the oil sands in Alberta? The Conservatives need the oil companies to finance them in the next election campaign as they needed them in previous elections.

Increasing the retailers' responsibility by imposing mandatory periodic inspections of the measuring devices is truly very important, without a doubt, but it is also highly ineffective. We were hoping and we continue to hope that the competition commissioner would be given more powers. The Bloc Québécois has introduced Bill C-452 as a clear response to gasoline price increases.

Mr. Speaker, I hope you understand. I know that your role as Speaker requires you to be completely neutral. You are listening to what I say. You can do two things at once: speak to your colleague on the left and listen to me. You are clearly talented. I will continue to address you, but I will also address the people watching us at home. Do they realize that in Quebec, increases in the price of gas generally happen on Thursdays, when people get paid? Increases can be seen before a long weekend, when there is a statutory holiday. Before Thanksgiving, prices in Montreal jumped by 10¢ or 12¢ just like that. Nothing happened, and the price per barrel around the world is decreasing. Why did the price in Montreal jump by 10¢, 12¢ and even 15¢?

In the past, the oil companies would tell us that the prices were based on what was going on around the world, on the rising price of a barrel of oil, on the wars in Iraq and the invasion of Kuwait. Any excuse would do. We could understand it if there were instability in the countries that produce oil, or if something specific happened. But in this case, nothing happened. On the contrary, the price per barrel is decreasing, but the price at the pump is going up. That is what makes us say that the oil companies are gouging us.

I will give some more examples for the people at home and for my colleagues in the House who are listening. I do not think there is an equivalent in the other provinces, but in Quebec, the last two weeks of July—sometimes up to the beginning of August—are usually what we call the construction holidays. Hundreds of thousands of construction workers are on vacation at the same time. Generally, construction workers are people who work hard. They get up early, and they are at the mercy of the elements and the weather. They are subject to stress on the construction site, and must meet the deadlines on these construction sites, whether they are residential, commercial or industrial. They must complete the buildings and finish their work on time. In Quebec, construction workers take the last two weeks of July to unwind, and many take that opportunity to travel throughout Quebec.

In Quebec, we are naturally attracted to New England, the coast of Maine and the beaches. Some construction workers take long distance or interprovincial buses, some take the train or plane, but the vast majority generally travel by car. If my colleagues would like proof, they need only travel on Quebec roads during the construction holidays.

It is funny that a few days before July 15, 16 or 17, poof, prices suddenly go up. How can that be? What happens?

[Some hon. members]

Oh, oh!

[Michel Guimond, Bloc, Montmorency—Charlevoix—Haute-Côte-Nord, QC]

Some NDP members did not like my “poof”. I do not know what else I could have said. Whether by magic or miracle, there is a major hike in gas prices on the eve of the construction holidays. Why?

Here is further proof of collusion. In a number of medium-sized or large cities, it is commonplace to have gas stations on each corner of a traffic circle or other intersection. I see my colleague from Trois-Rivières behind me. I regularly pass through Trois-Rivières as I travel from my riding, on the Beaupré coast, to Ottawa by car. I often stop to fill up in Trois-Rivières, a magnificent city with very welcoming people. There are often gas stations on every corner of an intersection.

She and I could go there together, stopwatches in hand. When one station increases its price by 3¢, 5¢, 10¢, 12¢ or 15¢ per litre, we could count the number of seconds that elapse before the other three increase their prices. Is that open competition? Why does Shell feel the need to increase its price at the same time as Esso? Why increase the price at the same time as Petro-Canada? Why do the increases happen almost simultaneously within a span of seconds? If we had real competition, one service station would charge $1.038 per litre, another would charge $1.019 per litre, and yet another would have a different price. Then we would have real competition.

Let us take a look at food and clothing. Food is a good example of a sector where we can compare the price of identical products. We will not look at products such as beer or milk, as their prices are regulated. I believe that they do not have the right to sell milk for a very low price. Milk is a bad example. Take, for instance, Oasis orange juice. If we checked with the four largest food chains, it is very likely that the prices would be different. That is true competition because there is not necessarily collusion among the four major grocers in Quebec.

And that is what we are seeing with gas prices, which is why I began my speech by saying that there has been a lot of work for not much of a result. Bill C-14 is better than nothing, but the government is not addressing the root of the issue. For one, we hoped that the government would use this bill to propose that the Competition Act allow the Competition Bureau to conduct inquiries on its own initiative, as I mentioned earlier, instead of always having to wait for a private complaint before beginning an inquiry.

In addition, the Bloc Québécois has proposed that a petroleum agency be created to monitor gasoline prices and respond to any attempt at collusion or unjustified price hikes. I gave our reasoning earlier. With this type of agency, we could act as soon as prices increase. Instead, the Conservative government keeps telling us—and it was no different under the Liberals—that there is nothing that can be done because the Competition Bureau found that there was no agreement among oil companies to fix prices; therefore, there is no problem. The Bloc Québécois was hoping that the bill would address the real issue.

On May 5, 2003, Konrad von Finckenstein, then the Commissioner of Competition, now chairman of the CRTC, told the Standing Committee on Industry, Science and Technology that even though there were problems with the law, as Commissioner of Competition, he had no choice but to enforce it. Like us, he recognized that the law had loopholes. What we need is a government with the political will to take action and stop oil companies from doing this.

Mr. von Finckenstein said:

...while the Bureau's mandate includes the very important role of being an investigator and advocate for competition, the current legislation does not provide the Bureau with the authority to conduct an industry study.

That is basically the point I wanted to make. Once again, I would like to congratulate my colleague from Chicoutimi—Le Fjord, the Bloc Québécois industry critic, for his work on this file and for keeping the people of Quebec and Canada informed about loopholes with respect to the price of gas, loopholes that Bill C-14 does nothing to close, unfortunately.

The Bloc Québécois supports the bill in principle and will send it to committee. We will see what happens after that. We should not just be talking about the system of measures at the pump and silly fine increases. Oil companies make multi-billion-dollar profits. This bill would fine them $25,000 instead of $10,000, yet they will have made millions using these tactics. We do not think that this bill goes far enough.

[Peter Julian, NDP, Burnaby—New Westminster, BC]

Mr. Speaker, I really enjoyed the speech of the hon. member for Montmorency—Charlevoix—Haute-Côte-Nord. He said the government refuses to do what is necessary to prevent large oil companies from increasing gas prices without valid reasons. Every spring and every fall, around the holiday season, prices go up worldwide, even though we are talking about oil that is already in stock. A few weeks later, it is still oil that was bought at a lower cost, but the price still does not go down for several weeks, or even months.

If we look at various studies, we see that consumers are treated badly. Yet, there is nothing in this government bill to put an end to these practices.

Why does the hon. member believe that the Conservatives refuse to protect the middle class and consumers, who constantly see their money disappear, because oil companies are abusing them?

[Michel Guimond, Bloc, Montmorency—Charlevoix—Haute-Côte-Nord, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I thank the NDP member for his question. That is precisely the principle to which I was referring earlier: One must not bite the hand that feeds. The Conservatives—that is not the case for the NDP nor for the Bloc Quebecois—get hundreds of thousands of dollars in election campaign contributions. The $1,100 limit is respected, but there are many $1,100 contributions. The Conservatives receive funds from oil companies located in Calgary, in all of Alberta and in other regions. So, it is not true that the Conservatives will give more teeth to their legislation. A lax approach suits both the oil companies and the Conservatives. That is why they keep a low profile and do not make waves, instead of looking after the consumers' best interests, as the hon. member aptly pointed out. In the end, people cannot do without their cars, they have no other means to travel. They cannot go back to the horse and buggy days, before the automobile was invented.

For goodness sake we must soon have access to the electric vehicle to free ourselves from our dependence on oil.

[Royal Galipeau, Conservative, Ottawa—Orléans, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I would like to ask the member opposite a question, since he often insinuates that oil companies make financial contributions to certain political parties. If he has a list of the oil companies or other corporations that make such contributions, the police should be called and such companies should be pursued, because that is against the law.

Can he give us any names?

[Michel Guimond, Bloc, Montmorency—Charlevoix—Haute-Côte-Nord, QC]

Mr. Speaker, the House adjourns at 6:30 p.m. I will go get some documentation. I agree with the member—

[Royal Galipeau, Conservative, Ottawa—Orléans, ON]

A name, a name.

[Michel Guimond, Bloc, Montmorency—Charlevoix—Haute-Côte-Nord, QC]

Mr. Speaker, could you ask the hon. member for Ottawa—Orléans to calm down? Perhaps it is because he is going to be on the losing side in the municipal election in Ottawa this evening, but I find him overexcited.

It is true that with the new legislation, Petro-Canada, Shell and Esso have not contributed to Conservative campaigns. However, I would like to point out that individual contributions of $1,100 quickly add up to hundreds of thousands of dollars and millions of dollars in campaign contributions. That is how they do it. We just have to look at how the Minister of Natural Resources suddenly changed his story about the cocktail fundraiser, which he now admits he should not have attended. Those people contribute money to Conservative coffers. The guy gave $1,000 but in return got a contract to renovate the West Block. The minister did not see any problem with that. However, on two televised current affairs programs last weekend, he said that maybe it was not such a good idea for him to go to that cocktail fundraiser. Now the tables have turned.

[Joe Volpe, Liberal, Eglinton—Lawrence, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I would like to know whether the hon. member for Rimouski-Neigette—Témiscouata—Les Basques will give me a chance to ask him a question in English. I found him to be quite animated and frustrated.

So I wonder if the member is frustrated because of the “gaspillage du temps de la chambre” to consider a bill of such insignificant magnitude. I say “insignificant” because it is typical of the government's sound bite legislation.

Here it is, we are talking about the fairness at the pumps act as if it has been unfair and the government has noticed that it has been unfair for five years and has done nothing about it.

I know my hon. colleague used to sit on the industry committee, amongst others, and he heard government members saying that they had to do something about this, they had to introduce competition, and they have not done anything. Now they are talking about a criminal act taking place at the pumps and they are going to pass legislation to change it.

I wonder whether the member thinks this is part of the government's crime and justice agenda. In other words, is this a sound bite but no bite?

[Michel Guimond, Bloc, Montmorency—Charlevoix—Haute-Côte-Nord, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I see that my colleague was paying attention to what I was saying.

I sit on the Standing Committee on Transport, Infrastructure and Communities, not on the Standing Committee on Industry, Science and Technology. My riding is Montmorency—Charlevoix—Haute-Côte-Nord. The hon. member is confusing me with my namesake from Rimouski-Neigette—Témiscouata—Les Basques. I sit in the first row. If he looks at the seating plan, he will see that my colleague sits in the fifth row. That is okay, Mr. Speaker. I appreciate the effort my colleague from Toronto makes to speak French. His French is excellent. He is originally from Italy. We both have Latin roots. Many of my colleagues in this House arrived here at the same time I did, in 1993. It was 17 years ago today that we were elected. He has improved his French by spending time with francophones in this House, just as my colleague from Burnaby—New Westminster has. His French is extraordinary, but he studied at the Université du Québec à Chicoutimi so it is no wonder. Other colleagues would benefit from speaking French like my colleague who just asked the question.

I simply want to say in closing that I would not go so far as to talk about wasting the House's time because we live in a democracy and it is up to the government to introduce whatever bills it wants. We, as members of the opposition, have no choice but to receive the bills the government decides to introduce.

I am not perfect, but I am a democrat. We consider the bills the government introduces, even though they sometimes lack teeth. This bill has more the teeth of a chihuahua than a doberman.

[The Deputy Speaker, Andrew Scheer]

There is only enough time for a quick question. The hon. member for Trois-Rivières.

[Paule Brunelle, Bloc, Trois-Rivières, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I am very disappointed to see a bill that effectively does so little.

Just a few years ago, I was a critic on the Standing Committee on Industry, Science and Technology, and the gas issue was very serious. Prices were fluctuating so wildly that an emergency debate was held in this House. I was in Vancouver with the Standing Committee on Industry, Science and Technology, and we had to come back for that debate. In the end, an election came, everything was dropped, and we never resolved the issue. The purpose of the bill that was introduced at the time was to give teeth to the Competition Act. I see that that is not the case here. It is all well and good to suspect that there could be collusion, but it has to be proven. I think my colleague demonstrated that. Could he tell us a bit more about that?

[The Deputy Speaker, Andrew Scheer]

The hon. member has only 30 seconds to answer the question.

[Michel Guimond, Bloc, Montmorency—Charlevoix—Haute-Côte-Nord, QC]

Mr. Speaker, the only thing I can add is that both my colleague from Trois-Rivières, when she was on the Standing Committee on Industry, Science and Technology, and the member for Chicoutimi—Le Fjord, did excellent work on this issue. We are still waiting for a bill with more teeth.

[Peter Julian, NDP, Burnaby—New Westminster, BC]

Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to speak to Bill C-14.

First, I would like pay tribute to the person who is responsible for the little action that the government has taken in this regard, and that is the member for Windsor West. He is the one who raised this issue and has been pushing it and working extremely hard in the House of Commons. He is the one who has pushed the government to do the certain little action that has been brought forward. It addresses part of the problem, but as the member for Windsor West has said all along, it does not address the whole problem in any way. That is why we pay tribute to him for pushing the Conservatives on this, but we will need his continued efforts to ensure the government finally responds to consumers who are ripped off by the petroleum industry.

Because of the huge gaping hole in the legislation, we could almost call it the gas price ripoff enabling act. It does not deal, in any way, with the problems of gas price gouging that we have seen. It has been very clearly indicated year after year. We have had a number of members speak in the House about what happens with old stock. World prices move, but on that old stock, prices all of a sudden spike up and they stay up. Even when the world price has declined and new stock is entering the stream in Canada, we see those old prices maintained. That means the average Canadian family is being ripped off through the course of that cycle. Millions of dollars are being taken out of the pockets of Canadian consumers.

I do not expect that the Conservative Party will take full action in this regard. The government seems to enjoy enabling ripoffs, whether it is the financial industry or the petroleum industry. We have certainly seen this with the telecommunications industry. Every time some company is willing to rip off the public, the Conservatives just seem unwilling to intervene in any way.

We can add to that the kind of actions the government has brought in, for example, the hated HST in my province of British Columbia. The Conservatives brought in the HST and added additional costs for hard-working middle class and poor families, forcing them to pay more for a whole range of things. Whenever British Columbians finally get their opportunity to speak to what the Conservatives have done against them, whether that is in a byelection or a general election, we will see a significant shift in those who may have voted Conservative in the past. They are not going to vote for the party that forced the HST on British Columbia.

As we well know, many Ontarians feel the same way. They feel the Conservative government having imposed the HST on Ontario, making people and families in Ontario and British Columbia pay more is something that deserves a response when they finally have the opportunity to give their voice to what the Conservatives have done.

I am proud to say our leader, the member for Toronto—Danforth, has stood up for Canadian families. He has called for the removal of the HST on heating fuel, as we approach winter, He stood in the House and he stood up for Canadian families in that way. This corner of the House will continue to press the Conservatives to start addressing the needs of ordinary working families, middle-class families and poor families rather than giving them HST or allowing them to be ripped off by the petroleum industry. They will have to start to listen to ordinary Canadians.

I will finish my speech tomorrow on the bill and what is missing.

[The Deputy Speaker, Andrew Scheer]

The hon. member is right. He will have about 15 minutes and 30 seconds to finish his remarks tomorrow.

The House resumed from October 25 consideration of the motion that Bill C-14, An Act to amend the Electricity and Gas Inspection Act and the Weights and Measures Act, be read the third time and passed.

[The Acting Speaker, Denise Savoie]

Resuming debate. The hon. member for Burnaby--New Westminster has about 13 and a half minutes left.

[Peter Julian, NDP, Burnaby—New Westminster, BC]

Madam Speaker, members will recall that when I was speaking yesterday I began by praising the member for Windsor West for his determination to force the government to take measures to stop the rip-off of ordinary Canadian families through both gas price gouging that we have seen across this country and from the whole issue of faulty gas pumps, pumps that do not give us the gas for which we are paying.

Even though the government has known about this issue for two years, and despite election promises to the contrary where it said that it would take action, rather than intervening and doing something, it has finally come forward with this bill. However, it is only because of pressure from the member for Windsor West and the entire NDP caucus pushing the Conservative government to finally take action.

As we know, the Conservatives love their gravy train and the gravy train that they give to financial institutions, the petroleum companies and telecommunications companies which does not seem to have a limit. No matter how much the public is ripped off, the Conservatives seem to feel that is okay. However, it is increasingly not okay with the public, which is why the member for Windsor West and his work is so important in this House.

Bill C-14, which is before us today, is a poor half-measure but we would not even have this poor half-measure before the House if it were not for the work of the member for Windsor West.

What we have seen from the Conservatives since they have come to power is progressively allowing the public to be ripped off and ordinary Canadian families to have their pockets picked without any sort of intervention or any sort of government responsibility being taken. We have the finance minister who, after it became clear that there was a major rip-off by financial institutions of ordinary Canadian families, wrote a letter to those financial institutions. That was the sum total of his work.

We see the same thing when we talk about gas price rip-offs. It has been very clear for years that gas prices were being manipulated. The large and incredibly profitable petroleum companies jack up world prices and automatically the retail price goes up and the retailers, the mom and pop operations, have no choice. I have talked to many of them and they say that they are being told to raise prices immediately. They have to live with that despite the fact that it is local people who are most impacted. The world prices go up on old stock and prices spike up, with windfall profits. Over the course of a weekend, particularly holiday weekends when there is a lot of travelling, those prices are maintained.

The world prices may change and they may go down. The new stock comes in at a lower wholesale price but those high prices are maintained. They are jacked up immediately on old stock, with windfall profits there, and then as new stock comes in at a lower price, the prices are maintained for more windfall profits. The petroleum companies do not want to be too greedy. They know the degree of public tolerance of their practices is really coming to an end. They are testing public tolerance every year, so reluctantly they bring the prices down to something more akin to what actually matches the wholesale price.

We have known this for years and have seen this happen for years. Ordinary Canadian families, whether they live in the Lower Mainland of British Columbia, in Atlantic Canada, in central Canada in Ontario or Quebec, have to live with these rip-offs and the government has steadfastly refused to do anything to stand up for ordinary Canadian families at all, not one intervention.

We now come to the issue of the gas pump rip-offs, because this has been known for years as well. A study done by the Ottawa Citizen revealed that between 1999 and 2007, government inspections found that about 5% of pumps delivered less fuel than what was reported on the pump display, which means that 10,000 fuel pumps were overcharging hard-working ordinary Canadian families who are working harder and harder for less and less pay.

We also have seen a fall in real income over the last 20 years. The only people who are doing well in this country are the very wealthy who now take most of the income pie. That is something Conservatives do not like to talk about, but it is a reality just the same.

On the Liberal watch and on the Conservative watch, we have seen a hollowing out of the middle class. Poor Canadians have become much poorer and the wealthy now take most of that pie. They just sit down and gobble up most of the pie. What is left for the vast majority of Canadian families is a smaller and smaller piece of pie. Year after year, the wealthy take a larger and larger chunk, the middle class and poor Canadians a smaller and smaller chunk, and that is why real incomes have descended, even though the average Canadian family and the average Canadian worker is working harder than ever. Overtime has gone up over a third in the same period. We are seeing Canadian families struggling to make ends meet and working harder and harder for less and less pay.

As part of that whole dynamic, we have seen the government's inability to stand up for Canada. On the Conservative watch and the Liberal watch, we have seen the loss of half a million manufacturing jobs. Those were good, family sustaining jobs that were thrown out of the country by bad trade deals and dysfunctional trade policy. As a result, people are taking whatever job they can get, whether it is temporary or part time, which is often the case. The number of burger flippers in the country is expanding monumentally. The Conservatives love to stand up and say that, sure, we have lost half a million manufacturing jobs but we have created 400,000 burger flipper jobs. They somehow think that Canadians should praise them for replacing good, family sustaining jobs for jobs that are part time, temporary and low-paying. Somehow the Conservatives feel that they are economic geniuses in having achieved that end, the hollowing out of the Canadian economy, putting all of the Canadian economic levers into Bay Street, so that if one is a wealthy financial speculator, one is wealthier than ever, and nothing for middle class families.

That is where we come to the issue of the fuel pumps. We have 10,000 fuel pumps pumping less fuel than ordinary, hard-working Canadian families are paying for and the government has done nothing to intervene. It says nothing about this being absolutely outrageous. It does nothing to refund the tax it is getting from the consumers who are paying for less fuel than they receive. It has done nothing to organize an ombudsman department, as the member for Windsor West has called for, so that consumers would have somebody to go to, an ombudsman who would stand up for them. No, the Conservatives do not do that. They do not talk about refunds or any sort of compensation. They allow the rip-offs to go on for years and then finally but reluctantly, faced by enormous pressure from the NDP, they decide to bring in Bill C-14.

What does that do? Does it create the ombudsman office that consumers have been calling for? No. Does it actually allow for a refund or compensation for the years of rip-offs? No. Does it allow for any sort of refund of tax for what the government received from the consumers who were being ripped off? No.

What it does do is it allows for inspection. That is important, except that in most countries there is an impartial government inspection service. The Conservatives decide that what they can see as a profit centre. These mom and pop retailers and other retailers would now have to deal with mandatory inspections, which is a good thing. We would increase the number of government inspectors who would ensure those fuel pumps are accurate, which is also a good thing. However, instead of doing that, the Conservatives said no. They said that they would allow private companies to come in and the mom and pop retailers would have to pay whatever the private companies decide they will pay so that they have these mandatory inspections. It is not as if the mom and pop operations can stop it. They do need to have the inspection, which is not a bad thing if the government provided the service out of our taxes. However, instead of doing that, the retailers would now have to pay whatever the private companies charge.

The member for Elmwood—Transcona spoke to this bill yesterday and what he said was extremely relevant.

This is just another example of how badly this government has attacked and let down rural and northern Canadians. We see it time and time again. We saw it with the softwood lumber sellout. It is as if the Conservatives did not care about the softwood lumber industry and signed the deal because they could spin it any way they wanted. It is as if they do not care how many northern and rural jobs were lost and they really do not care about northern and rural Canada. That is the Conservative message, whether we are talking about the softwood lumber sellout, about this kind of bill, or about a whole range of issues.

As we well know, the worst farmer seats in the country are in Alberta. The provincial Conservative government and the federal Conservative government are bad news for Alberta farmers. The worst farmer seats in the country are in the province of Alberta because Conservatives do not give a damn about rural or northern Canadians. They just do not.

What the Conservatives care about is Bay Street and the petroleum industry's CEOs. They care about a very narrow range of interests. They care about lobbyists. But when it comes to rural and northern Canadians, they do not give a damn. We can see this in Bill C-14, as the member for Elmwood—Transcona said.

Perhaps this idea of privatizing and allowing private companies to enforce mandatory inspections may work in urban Canada where there is some competition. In rural and northern Canada when the private companies, perhaps the petroleum companies, decide that they are going to run the inspection operations they are going to charge whatever they want. The mom and pop operations are just going to have to suck it up because that is the attitude of this Conservative government. It will make sure that the local mom and pop operations in rural and northern Canada are forced to pay whatever the big private companies want to force them to pay. Couple that with everything else that is not in this bill that should have been.

The fact is that the government waited for years and allowed the ripoffs to go on for years before it chose to do anything about it. It took goading and determination from the NDP once again to force the government to do anything. After all of that we see it is not even a half measure in dealing with gas price ripoffs.

The government, in an attempt at irony I imagine, tried to say this is the fairness at the pumps act. Very clearly, it is not fair. It does not deal with gas price gouging. Yes, it deals with mandatory inspections, but in a way that penalizes mom and pop retailers. It does not tell the petroleum companies that they were wrong to allow this practice to continue for so long. The government does not say mea culpa and that it is sorry. Consumers need the government to say it is sorry that it allowed the ripoffs and that it will make it right.

[Dan McTeague, Liberal, Pickering—Scarborough East, ON]

Madam Speaker, I listened to the latter half of the speech by the hon. member for Burnaby—New Westminster regarding Bill C-14. He lives in a community in a province in which the wholesale price of gasoline tends to be a little higher than that in the rest of the country. He will recall that the mantra of the oil industry many years ago was to have Canadians pay world prices for fuel.

I wonder if the hon. member would care to comment on the fact that each and every day in Vancouver and region the wholesale price of gasoline and the price people pay at the pumps, ex tax, is 9¢ a litre above world prices.

I understand the member has taken some liberties with the issue of the Ottawa Citizen article a couple of years ago. I want to assure the hon. member that a 93.11% compliance rate in the retail gasoline sector, according to Measurement Canada, gives it the second highest rating of most industries in this country. It is perhaps a question of a dragon slayer in search of a dragon.

More specific to the question, I wonder if the hon. member could tell us what he thinks of the 9¢ a litre ripoff occurring in Vancouver today.

[Peter Julian, NDP, Burnaby—New Westminster, BC]

Madam Speaker, I am aware, as are all members, of the member's work on this issue. He has been very dogged. The member for Elmwood—Transcona mentioned that it is the Liberal Party that allowed this originally. I think we make a distinction between the party and the member, and the member has done an exemplary job. He has put a lot of effort into the issue of gas prices. We need more members to take an interest in this issue.

I would disagree with him on the compliance issue. I know he knows the file exceedingly well, but the reality is the compliance rate should be higher. That is why we are dealing with the bill today.

What is happening in the Lower Mainland is extremely problematic. What we have seen regularly in the Lower Mainland in British Columbia is the jacking up of prices. I described earlier, that particularly around holiday weekends we see an immediate spike up and a long and prolonged high level of what can only be called windfall profits, a high level of gas prices despite the fact that old stock is coming into the system at the lower price and then when new stock comes in at a lower price, as well, we see a maintained price level that is far higher than is justified. It is very clear from the studies that have been done by the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives, among others, that this leads to enormous multi-million dollar windfall profits taken from consumers, ordinary families, in the Lower Mainland of British Columbia, and other parts of Canada on a regular and sustained basis. This is unacceptable. That is why we pushed the government to take action. We are going to continue to push the government to take even more action. It is unacceptable that it is allowing the ripoff of ordinary Canadian families.

[Jim Maloway, NDP, Elmwood—Transcona, MB]

Madam Speaker, the member made an excellent presentation on Bill C-14.

Clearly, the issue here is the empowering of the Commissioner of Competition to act against price fixing. The government has moved against monopolistic practices in real estate at least twice in the last 20 years, and against travel agents and other groups. The question is, if the government can enforce competition in real estate, travel and other industries, why can it not do something about price fixing in retail gas pricing?

To that end, the Bloc has introduced Bill C-452 which accomplishes exactly that. If the government is interested in actually doing something that would get to the root of the problem in this country, then perhaps the government should be looking at supporting the Bloc bill and allowing the Commissioner of Competition to conduct an inquiry into this issue.

Over 125 studies have been done over the last 20 years in the area of price fixing at the pump. The fact of the matter is pretty much everybody concludes that we cannot get a conviction under the current legislation. The key is to change the legislation. That is what we should be doing in this House.

[Peter Julian, NDP, Burnaby—New Westminster, BC]

Madam Speaker, the member for Elmwood—Transcona is absolutely right.

I think what bothers most Canadian families is the government's absolute refusal to act and its refusal to allow a real attempt to shut down what is monopolistic practices. There is no other way to put it when we see all the major petroleum companies moving their prices in sync. Even though there me be a few hours' difference from one to the other, there is very clearly a problem.

The Competition Bureau has to be beefed up. These kinds of practices have to stop. Yet we are seeing a government that simply refuses to act. When the big companies and corporate lobbyists come cap in hand, the government is ready to shell out tens of billions of dollars at the drop of a hat. We have seen that. It is willing to spend a billion dollars for a fake lake in a few minutes. It is willing to spend $16 billion to $19 billion on jets, even though those fighter jets have problematic financial repercussions. We are seeing a number of other countries starting to back off on the purchase because of the concern around open-ended financial liability.

The government takes all kinds of decisions every day that are worth billions of dollars, without any understanding of the impact. Having been a financial administrator before I was elected to Parliament, I can say that these folks do not know how to manage money. The Conservatives have no idea how to manage money. That is why we have record deficits. They are unable to say no to a corporate lobbyist. That is part of the problem and they are financially inept. That is the other part of the problem.

That is why Conservative governments simply do not manage money as well as NDP governments do. That is understandable. NDP governments are composed of ordinary Canadians and ordinary Canadians know how to manage money. They are not corporate CEOs; they are not high flyers or jet setters. They sit down and get to work, just like Tommy Douglas did, and make sure that budgets are balanced. That is why over a 20-year period, Madam Speaker, as you well know, NDP governments have the best record of fiscal management and balance the budget far more than Conservative governments do and far, far more than Liberal governments do. It is because we are composed of ordinary Canadians and ordinary Canadians manage money better than they do.

[Bruce Hyer, NDP, Thunder Bay—Superior North, ON]

Madam Speaker, as I understand it, there are now going to be private inspections. This will be another privatization move by the Conservatives. Inspections will increase from 8,000 to over 65,000 per year. There will be no ombudsperson's office to evaluate any problems or investigate complaints. There will be no refund or compensation for the consumers who have been abused by these problems and no refund or restitution of the taxes collected.

I would like to ask the hon. member whether I understand this correctly.

[Peter Julian, NDP, Burnaby—New Westminster, BC]

Madam Speaker, as always, the member for Thunder Bay—Superior North has perfectly understood the legislation. I guess the question has to be why the Conservatives would move this bill forward. Have they not read the legislation? Do they understand the legislation? Why would Conservatives vote for legislation that is, as the member for Windsor West said, years late and millions short?

As the member for Thunder Bay--Superior North has said very eloquently, there is no ombudsman's office. There is no refund or compensation for the years of ripoffs. There is no refund or restitution on taxes collected.

There is an increase in inspections which we certainly agree with, but because the Conservatives are trying to find in a shell game some way to benefit, I guess their supporters, they are saying private companies have to do it and they can charge the price they want. This means that in a riding as far flung as Thunder Bay--Superior North, if a private company is set up it will be able to enforce on mom and pop operations any price it wants.

The inspections are mandatory. We will have a situation where a mom and pop retailer will not have a choice and the price will be set by the person providing the service, particularly in rural and northern Canada. This is yet another example of the contempt the Conservative government has for rural and northern Canadians. It is not just the softwood lumber sellout. It is not just the collapse in farm incomes, particularly in Alberta. For an Alberta farmer to vote Conservative I gather after their inept policies would be a sore mistake. It is a series of measures that go against what rural and northern Canadians stand for and what is good for them.

[Dan McTeague, Liberal, Pickering—Scarborough East, ON]

Madam Speaker, for obvious reasons, I am comfortable with this subject. I cannot support a bill that promotes petty treatment of small gas retailers across the country. I thought that the government was trying to help at a time when rising energy prices cannot be explained by supply and demand. This is a real problem that the government does not want to hear about or deal with.

I am very concerned about Bill C-14 for a number of reasons, which I will be permitted to expand on at some length. Hon. colleagues will know that this is an issue that I have spent a considerable amount of time on. I have devoted my time. I thank the people of Pickering—Scarborough East for indulging me over the years, as well as the people of Pickering—Ajax—Uxbridge and the people of Ontario riding, all three ridings over time representing a good chunk of Canadians, or well over half a million Canadians in that period of time.

I am concerned because this bill suggests, lends itself to or gives the impression that it is doing something which is patently false. The government is not going to give the public any reassurance whatsoever that prices they will pay at the pump, or in fact the measurement, are going to be accurate.

I mentioned earlier the concern I had with respect to how the government is portraying this particular issue. To suggest that somehow it is achieving fairness at the pumps, or as the Minister of Industry lamentably, and I would suggest slanderously, suggested that retailers in this country are chiselling people is simply not only incorrect; it is misleading and it is wrong. The minister ought to have apologized.

Given that the minister has not, he has constructed a body of regulation, which in my view and I think in the view of Measurement Canada, in and of itself will do very little if anything except to undermine the integrity of what is left of competition at the retail level in the gasoline industry in Canada.

Just before the Prime Minister provoked an election, breaking his own word, the industry committee had an opportunity to look at one of the major reasons why energy prices were going up in 2008. It had everything to do with a loophole created that allowed a lack of oversight to the commodities industries around the world. We can recall that energy prices in July 2008, as far as oil was concerned, reached $150 a barrel virtually. The price at the pumps went up substantially. There were a number of other causes and effects, including commodity costs for food and other forms of energy.

The industry committee had one day to look at this before the Prime Minister pulled the rug out from under us in order to obtain an election. Rather than looking at the issue that was confronting Canadians and undermining their standard of living and undermining, as it continuously does, their issue of balancing the cost of living, the government instead chose to pick an article that appeared in May 2008 in the Ottawa Citizen and give it some credibility by talking about it without any actual verification of the numbers, to allow wild extrapolations in terms of the number of pumps that are askew.

Rather than dealing with the fact that we have lost a significant number of refineries in this country due to mergers and acquisitions, rather than dealing with the fact that wholesale prices now move up in lockstep in most provinces and most large communities across this country, rather than dealing with the unfairness of temperature compensation, and I will explain that in a moment, the government chose to narrowly go after the odd gas retailer.

All this would be correct if in fact we learned that the government knew full well that 94% of all the pumps it tested over a rigorous years' period proved to be accurate. Of the 6% that were found to be inaccurate, 2% actually gave consumers more product, and while 4% may have been askew, one would really have to make an argument, both in court and in the public domain, to suggest that somehow gas retailers were involved with chiselling the public.

If the hon. members in the government who proposed this bill had taken the time to actually learn how a pump works, they might find, as we see in so many other instances, that there is obviously a duty of care but retailers may not know that a pump is broken, they may not know that the pulser, which is part of the electronic process, may have malfunctioned, they may not know there is a mechanical problem even after they have tested and even after they have calibrated.

Why is that important to know? It is because they may realize there is a problem, through no fault of their own, and they will test that. Why do they want to test that? It is very simple. No reasonable retail gas retailer in this country is going to want to have a gas pump that malfunctions. The reason is that their volumes will be out, and their logistics and inventory report, which they have to make day in and day out to ensure accuracy for their own economic reasons, are there.

The incentive to do something wrong is certainly not there, but more importantly, there has been no jurisprudence here. There has been no case, to my knowledge, where someone has been convicted of deliberately defrauding someone. If that is the case then I want to hear about it because I have not heard a single cogent argument coming from the government to justify this. It is in fact a solution in search of a problem.

We know that it can lend itself and head toward some very unintended consequences, including penalizing and skewing an industry whose representatives, mom and pop gas station retailers and other people, are working day in and day out, 24 hours a day, seven days a week to try to make a living. The government has the audacity of penalize them and call them chisellers and suggest somehow it is going to remedy the situation with a magic wand saying, poof, we now have new effective fairness at the pumps. This is misleading to Canadians. This is telling Canadians that something is going to happen that does not. I am surprised to see in a few media reports that somehow they have bought this line. It is not going to do anything to help Canadians. Let us understand that when we target a particular industry we had better back it up with facts.

The facts we have before us are very simple, and I suggest this to the member for Burnaby—New Westminster. I have measurement compliance rates from 2005 to 2009, which will take in the period of the Ottawa Citizen article and all the other little things the government says it has done, through Measurement Canada by sector. I have about 30 of them here, which includes sectors where there are less than five data points, where there is not a lot of oversight and inspection, but it has a number of areas: hardware stores, retail rubber products, general merchandise, laundries, cleaners, piece goods, precious metals and stones, alcoholic beverages, honey and apiary, non-metallic minerals, quarries and sandpits, waste collection, transportation, metal scrap, fruit and vegetable, fur and skin, retail gasoline, dairy farms, dairy products, textiles, chemical products, food and beverage manufacturing, electricity, livestock, poultry and there are a few others.

In looking at Measurement Canada's own guide of these 30 or so industries, we find that retail gasoline is the second highest most compliant in the country. So we are going after an industry whose reputation is very good by our own analysis and yet we have a government that wants to target them. With a 93.11% compliance rate, it is only slightly behind honey and apiary at 93.33%. That surprises me because if it is not an admission that the government has this terribly wrong and is targeting the wrong industry, why for goodness' sake has it not gone after the quarries and sandpits industry with a 47.42% accuracy rate? Why has it not gone after the electricity industry? The government says that we use gasoline. Well the last time I checked, this place was lit up by electricity. Its compliance rate from Measurement Canada is 74.19%. One-quarter of what we are buying may not be accurate, and industries and consumers use it day in and day out. Our country is driven by this and yet Measurement Canada, through the direction of the government, decided we are going to target the good guys here.

We are going to go after them because we do not want the public to know that currently energy prices are being manipulated through a lack of oversight both in terms of the trading platforms at NYMEX and around the world. We do not want to let people know that there have been a number of strategic withdrawals of refineries in Canada, removing supply and as a result artificially bumping up the price of gasoline. We do not want to talk about a Competition Act, written in 1986 by the oil industry at the invitation of the then Prime Minister Brian Mulroney to go and rearrange the Competition Act in such a way that it would be the first time that a western country has allowed its very act of policing the commercial industries to be policed by the very people it is meant to police.

It seems to me that we have missed the point here and the government has done something that is classic smoke and mirrors. This is a distraction. This is to give people the impression that somehow when they are pumping gasoline in fact they are not getting what they pay for.

There are probably in excess of 130,000 pumps in this country. There are about 70 billion litres of gasoline and diesel dispensed. I was able to get this document finally from Measurement Canada after three and a half months of requests. They finally gave it to me with one week's notice to review this in advance of this debate and of course for our presence in committee. I was surprised to learn that the $20 million from Measurement Canada, which the government is trotting out as being the annual average rip-off of Canadians, actually turns out to be $8 million, because it recognizes that $12 million of that could have actually gone in favour of the consumer.

That being the case, we know the government is somewhat challenged when it comes to statistics. We know it has a problem with Statistics Canada as it relates to the census, but that should not be surprising, given how it extrapolates its views with respect to statistics and data that it tends to trot out, which it knows to be wrong, which it knows to be false.

Let us put that into context. The average skew of gasoline in Canada is 0.018. That pales in comparison to what is occurring today, which the government does not want to talk about. I am not sure whether it believes that this is acceptable. We have not heard much from it. I have put forth changes to the Competition Act and suggested that we have a petroleum price monitoring agency, for which the Liberal government advocated and implemented and which the Conservative government killed as its first act upon taking over in Parliament in 2006.

Canadians would have what Americans and others around the world have, a better understanding of the inventory picture in the country, but no, Conservatives do not want Canadians to have that. They want Canadians to believe that 0.018% of the time, there might be a skew and they might not actually get what they pay for, but they say nothing of the fact that in Toronto today, there is a 5.3¢ ripoff. In Vancouver it is 9¢. In Montreal it is 6.3¢. In Ottawa today it is 6.1¢.

This is ludicrous. We are worried about 0.018% on a litre of gasoline, but we do not think that 5.5¢, 7¢, 8¢ or 9¢ is a problem. Do the math, and for the media that happens to be watching this, maybe they could do the same as well because, frankly, this is unacceptable. It is in fact not only false; it is a fraud. I cannot, in all good conscience, support something like this, which is meant to do something that it will not do, that is, to give false expectations to consumers who rightly ask the question, “Why has Ottawa failed us?” I could go into substantial detail of why that is, but let us talk about the bigger picture.

We know this morning that commodity prices on food, particularly corn, have skyrocketed. This may be in response to certain economic conditions around the world. The media seems to be focused on potash, but the bigger question is this. How do prices get manipulated? How is it possible that we have abandoned regulatory oversight of how trading on these markets, the energy markets above all, is avoided? Why do we not understand or care in this country, and why do we hear nothing from the finance minister, or anybody on that bench, about what the Americans and many other parts of the world, particularly Europe, France and Britain, are saying? They are saying that it is time to get control of the derivatives, the swap dealers. These are dealers that were created in light of a loophole created in 2000.

Some colleagues here in the House will remember that the year 2000 was the famous year in which the 262-page report of the Commodity Futures Modernization Act took place that allowed energy traders to establish their own exchanges in which to trade contracts and then of course be exempted on exchanges in their entirety from government regulation. That has led to the direct impoverishment and to the consequences of the 2008 period of time in which energy prices spiked.

We could talk about collusion and conspiracy, which is always a convenient argument that is brought out, but I have to remind colleagues that we have to have competitors who would otherwise have different prices, meeting in the dark of night under little lamps, conspiring to bring prices together. That era of competition at the retail level and, more importantly, at the refinery level, is gone. It is over.

Wholesale prices by city are established usually by a leader. In Canada, nominally that tends to be Imperial Oil, at about 3:30 or 4:00 p.m. every day. That wholesale price is simply followed within a microsecond, and whatever that price is, it is traded publicly. It is available to most Canadians if they want to see it. It is not, as a result, price-fixing but rather a distinct, severe and almost pathetic lack of competition in Canada at the wholesale level.

We had very little discussion recently regarding the affect of declining suppliers on the Canadian market. In eastern Canada the Shell refinery closure in Montreal has meant that a once slack supply situation throughout eastern Canada, particularly the Maritimes, Quebec and part of Ontario, is now affected. How is it affected? Let us look at it this way.

Three months ago, wholesale prices in Montreal and Toronto were on average a penny and a half below Toronto. As of last night, those wholesale numbers have changed rather dramatically. They are now a penny and a half above Toronto. As a result of the closure of the refinery in Montreal, Canadians, not the industry, not its apologists or those who ignore it in the media, pay the freight.

Canadians will have to pay more. Looking at that difference of 2.5¢ a litre in the past three months added to the bill of every ordinary Canadian, who uses 100 litres a week, winds up being $2.50 to the average family multiplied by 52 weeks. Canadians have now been told they can pay another $250.

The fact that we cannot look at this issue more intently means Canadians will continue to suffer. It means Canadians will continue to realize just how irrelevant Parliament, and more important the Conservative government, is with respect to coming up with solutions.

I know of no jurisdiction, particularly the United States or Europe, that would tolerate the exit from the market of a player. It would not tolerate the level of concentration in our country. It would it accept that the Competition Act, written by the very people it is meant to police, would ultimately be chaired by somebody who worked for the industry.

We all recall the issue in 2000 of Superior Propane. I brought a bill before the House to prevent a monopoly to occur in the propane industry, and it passed. Our friends in the other place, many of whom sat on the boards of directors of many of these companies, decided they would not allow the bill to go through. I was surprised to learn that the current Competition Commissioner, with all due respect, was counsel for Superior Propane, which obtained that monopoly. Talk about the fox marching into the chicken coop.

Nothing has amazed me more than this industry because money talks. We have been woeful in our ability to address the real substantive dollar and cents issues that Canadians want us to tackle. I am not against this industry. I want the industry to flourish. I want energy markets to behave in a way that responds to the fundamentals of supply and demand. However, what I have is thin drool and dribble coming from the government by it saying that it will target the very people who have been targeted for years.

The people who have lost in our country are hard-working independent gas retailers. Day in and day out they try to eke out a living with very skinny margins and are often subject to predatory pricing created by a Competition Act that has been decidedly in favour of one thing, and that is intensification of monopolization.

If I have done anything in 17 years as a member of Parliament, it is to try to illustrate the economic injustice that is occurring. I will not lend my name to this bill. I will not support this bill. I encourage members of Parliament to look at the bill, look at the bigger picture, look at the real issues and vote it down.

[Jim Maloway, NDP, Elmwood—Transcona, MB]

Madam Speaker, I thank the member for his long-standing interest and work in this area. I also thank him for sending me a copy of the measurement compliance rate, which indicates that retail gasoline has a current compliance of 93%.

The fact is Bill C-14 proposes that the inspection process will cover another eight areas, with perhaps more areas in the future. It proposes to cover retail food, which has a compliance rate, according to his chart, of 90%. Dairy farms have a compliance rate of 89%. Downstream petroleum has a compliance rate of 66%. There are also mining, metals, grain and field crops. It will cover a number of the areas that have a high compliance of the current rate and some which are under compliance. Interestingly enough, It does not include quarries and sandpits, which has the lowest compliance of 47.42%.

We have been observing that we would favour government inspectors over privatizing the expansion process. We are seeing an effort to outsource, to privatize the inspections and increase the number of inspections, which would create a lot of extra expenses for some of the smaller mom and pop operations, no matter what sector they happened to be in.

Could the member comment on that?

In 1995 when the Manitoba Conservative government privatized the car inspection process, the price of used vehicles went up substantially overnight and there was a lot of abuse. The CBC did some undercover operations that showed garages were ripping off customers by fixing all kinds of things that really did not need to be fixed.

Could the member also comment on that?

[Dan McTeague, Liberal, Pickering—Scarborough East, ON]

Madam Speaker, the hon. member does raise some very important points. However, he should not be swayed by what Measurements Canada says. If we look at its website today, we will find that it says “fairness at the pumps act”. That is a very political, crass, irrelevant and, I would suggest, dishonest reflection of what the bill is purported to try to accomplish. We were told by Measurements Canada that was not the title. However, if we go to its website right now, and I am sure it is probably going to take it down in the next few minutes, we will see that it says “fairness at the pumps act”. Just punch it into a Google search.

The hon. member should not be swayed or somehow led down the garden path by either Measurements Canada or the government. This really is about going after and targeting, as the minister said, chisellers, chisellers who do not exist and are a figment of the government's imagination.

It is also important to know that with a compliance rate of 93% or 94%, it means the other 6% or 7% may in fact be favouring consumers, but through no deliberate attempt. Things can and do break down. If we find out there is an inspection process, it is in our interest to ensure that it is correct. If the inventory is lost or off, it can mean terrible consequences for the people who have throughputs or gas stations across the country, where they have hundreds of thousands of litres every year. If they are off by 1%, that is a lot of money at the end of the year.

The question is about private or public inspection. The issue is the NDP has a reason on this, and I do not disagree with it. There has to be absolute concern. One of the amendments I wanted to see was to ensure that our officials were in fact governed by, adhered to and are sworn in as public servants. It is important for the Crown to demonstrate due diligence.

One thing the Liberals did in committee was to ensure absolute due diligence by the minister to ensure those people were held to the highest account, that there was accuracy in their testing, in the various methods that they use. It is very difficult to test these things. There is not one universal way in which we test.

Because the government did not get rid of temperature compensation, it means we lose 4% or 5% of the amount of volume of gasoline we buy because we are at 15° Celsius. Fifteen degrees Celsius assumes that we have had over a year of that temperature. It is 6° in Canada. In Hawaii it is 15°. Therefore, the public is being ripped off by 5% or 6%. Again, the government wants to go after retailers who, through no fault of their own, are struggling to make ends meet. That is disgusting. That is an outrange.

Frankly, I hope the media is looking at this. I want to talk to it about its lack of understanding and precision on this issue. What I see is a target of an industry that has done very well, has done its best and is still the whipping post of the government.

[Niki Ashton, NDP, Churchill, MB]

Madam Speaker, I want to ask a question of my colleague, but I will begin by prefacing just how critical the issue of fairness at the pumps is for the Canadians who I represent in northern Manitoba. We have an area with extensive distance between us as communities. We have roads that, unfortunately, due to the lack of federal investment, are substandard in many cases. People have to purchase heavier duty vehicles, which costs them more money for gas.

On the other side, we also have communities with high rates of unemployment or people with very low incomes. They struggle to make it by and do not have money to waste at the gas pump.

In recent years, especially a couple of years ago when the prices went through the roof in our part of the country, there was a serious concern about the gouging and its impact on northerners and people who lived in parts of Canada like mine. There was much discussion about how we could solve this real challenge facing Canadians. Yet despite the work by many in the House and the push to get this issue dealt with in a timely way and effective way, nothing has happened.

Could the member comment on the effectiveness of this bill and the lack of an ombudsman's office to evaluate the problems that Canadians have brought forward and the absence of a refund or compensation for consumers who are ripped off? Their concern is they are spending more money and they are being ripped off, yet the plan is not looking at that. There is no refund or restitution on the taxes collected on the phantom gasoline purchases, the pumps which do not dispense as much gas as is shown. There are so many pieces that do not respond to what Canadians have talked about. I would like to hear the member's thoughts on these points.

[Dan McTeague, Liberal, Pickering—Scarborough East, ON]

Madam Speaker, the hon. member for North Bay, a rural riding though it is a little closer to the smoke of Toronto, also brought forward very much the same concerns about the less travelled parts of the country, where there is a greater dependence on energy-intensive transportation fuels.

It will probably help the hon. member to know a couple of things about the price. In Winnipeg the gas is about 65¢ a litre wholesale, plus whatever the taxes are in the province of Manitoba. It is not very far from Ontario, so it would not have the HST, thankfully. That would be the tax passed by the federal Conservative government.

What concerns a lot of us, though, is the issue of transportation. If I understand the member correctly, her riding is about 500 to 700 miles within a geographic area. Transportation cost is about 2¢ for every 1,000 kilometres. One would think if it is at the outside, 2.5¢, maybe 3¢, that should make the wholesale price about 69¢. If we add the usual taxes, which come up to about 25¢, we are talking about 94¢, plus the GST, plus 7¢ for retailers, which is about what they need to turn the pumps on, especially in areas where they do not get a lot of activity. Therefore, the price should be $1.04 $1.03, $1.05, and I am sure it is a lot higher than that.

When we talk about calibrating and checking these pumps out, one of the unintended consequences I was referring to earlier in my speech would be that the inspection would have potentially the effect of removing gas pumps that currently exist because they would not compliant. I am not suggesting that should be the case, but we have to find a mechanism that takes into consideration rural Canada. The government did not it that into consideration. I propose a sliding scale that will see reviews take place in a way that will not be unduly burdensome of rural Canada.

The other thing the hon. member needs to know is that gas pumps can be faulty sometimes in favour of the consumer, based on how little they are used or based on overuse. There is a number of reasons, electronically and mechanically. These are all internal parts. When we look at the way a pump works, and there are 3 metres per every 5 or 10 or 12 pumps, the reality is the retailer will not know. That is why they inspect them periodically, usually within a three month period. In communities like mine in Toronto, for instance, they are inspected more frequently because retailers do not want the pumps to be off. They cannot afford to have them off. It is not in their interest to rip off the public. Not that the government would understand that because it has never actually taken the time to look at how a retailer runs.

However, in rural regions of the country, this would be a recipe for disaster, especially when we do not know who is inspecting the pumps. What if the inspector does not happen to like the retailer? There is a number of considerations about which the government did not think. As a result, in my view this is not a bill worth supporting.

[The Acting Speaker, Denise Savoie]

Is the House ready for the question?

[Some hon. members]

Question.

[The Acting Speaker, Denise Savoie]

The question is on the motion. Is it the pleasure of the House to adopt the motion?

[Some hon. members]

Agreed.

On division.

[The Acting Speaker, Denise Savoie]

I declare the motion carried.

(Motion agreed to, bill read the third time and passed)