This bill was last introduced in the 40th Parliament, 3rd Session, which ended in March 2011.
This bill was previously introduced in the 40th Parliament, 2nd Session.
Chris Charlton NDP
Introduced as a private member’s bill. (These don’t often become law.)
Outside the Order of Precedence (a private member's bill that hasn't yet won the draw that determines which private member's bills can be debated), as of Feb. 4, 2009
(This bill did not become law.)
This is from the published bill. The Library of Parliament often publishes better independent summaries.
This enactment establishes the Office of the Oil and Gas Ombudsman to receive and investigate complaints about the business practices of oil and gas suppliers. The Ombudsman may investigate complaints and make recommendations to a supplier that is the subject of a complaint. The Ombudsman reports to the Minister of Industry if not satisfied with the response of the oil or gas supplier.
The Ombudsman’s annual report to the House of Commons and any additional reports to that House are referred to the standing committee of the House that normally considers matters related to industry.
All sorts of information on this bill is available at LEGISinfo, an excellent resource from the Library of Parliament. You can also read the full text of the bill.
Bruce Hyer NDP Thunder Bay—Superior North, ON
Mr. Speaker, my second petition is about gas gouging and it has been signed by people in my riding of Thunder Bay--Superior who are definitely getting hosed, gouged or whatever metaphor one wants to us, more than most of Canada, certainly more than Ottawa or southern Ontario. Most of these people are from Terrace Bay and Schreiber and they pay the highest prices of all.
The petitioners call upon Parliament to give speedy passage to Bill C-286, which would deal with gas gouging in Canada.
Chris Charlton NDP Hamilton Mountain, ON
Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to rise in the House today to speak to Bill C-14, An Act to amend the Electricity and Gas Inspection Act and the Weights and Measures Act.
When it comes to transportation, we have made monumental advances in technologies. Inventions such as the train, bus and airplane have allowed us to explore the world we live in at relatively modest prices. Industrialization gave us the ability to mass produce public transit vehicles so that everyone could be free to move, but sadly, we are still using primitive and environmentally harmful petroleum fuels to propel most of our modes of transportation.
Both gasoline prices and carbon dioxide emissions are creating a growing transportation problem. As a result, governments are being forced to consider implementing better public transportation initiatives in an effort to reduce the impact of the declining oil economy on both our environment and on financial markets. What we need now from the senior levels of governments is a meaningful funding commitment to research and develop renewable energy sources that will allow municipalities, which are already struggling, to overcome their congestion and pollution problems.
In an ideal world, cycling and walking would be the preferred options for most Canadians, but unfortunately, with urban sprawl and a growing number of people who need to commute for work, they cannot avail themselves of those options. That leaves public transit as the only other sustainable solution because it is inclusive and economical, mitigates climate change and improves air quality. But progress in this area is moving at a snail's pace and in the meantime, people have few options but to stay in their cars.
That means the price of gas is an enormous factor in the day to day lives of Canadians. Whether they commute to work, travel to visit friends and family across the country, take meals to housebound seniors, drive their kids to weekend tournaments, or need gas to transport goods for small businesses, filling the tank is a constant struggle for millions of Canadians.
I have been hearing from people from right across my riding of Hamilton Mountain about the hardship that is caused by the rising price of gas, but what is worse is that they have no confidence that the price they are paying at the pump actually reflects what is happening in the market. They believe they are being hosed at the pumps. Here are just a few of the stories that they shared with me.
Jeff said, “It isn't fair that I can barely pay my bills, and paying for fuel keeps me from paying off debt, while gas companies increase their profits by billions”. Vivian said, “I'm retired and finally have some time to visit friends and family. But the car sits in the driveway because I can't afford to travel. The gouging oil companies have taken away our way of life”. Dennis wrote, “If we cannot count on the huge oil conglomerates to treat us fairly and not gouge us...the government should step in and do it for them...we are all being gouged big time”. Mark said, “The oil companies are making billions, while driving has become a luxury we can't afford. Who has the power here, the government or the oil companies?”
The price of gas drives up the cost of all commodities. From food to building supplies, manufactured goods to public services, the price of gas is a key cost driver. It affects all of us, whether we drive or not. Government has a responsibility to ensure Canadian consumers are treated fairly. It is the job of government to protect Canadians from the dubious business practices of big oil companies who steal from consumers with faulty gas pumps and gouge Canadians with price hikes inexplicably tied to weekends and warm weather.
Unfortunately, if predictably, Bill C-14 addresses only one element of that complex problem. It promises to increase fines and penalties for retailers who operate gas pumps that significantly shortchange consumers. To say that this is a day late and a dollar short is a profound understatement.
It is worth reviewing how we got here, how we got to a place where years after clear fraud has been exposed, this allegedly tough on crime government is only now getting around to proposing completely inadequate, half-baked remedies. It has been two long and expensive years since the Ottawa Citizen first reported that the government knew that its friends in the oil and gas industry had been ripping off consumers for decades. When the government was finally forced to release the Industry Canada report showing that fully 14,000 gas stations in Canada have at least one inaccurate pump, the New Democrats demanded action. The government said, “Good idea. We will get right on that”, and did precisely nothing.
During the last election campaign, the government again said to Canadians that it was going to do something about fuel pumps that deliver less fuel than the consumer paid for. The Conservatives indicated that this time they really, really meant it, yet they still did nothing. Finally, with this bill, the government has proposed an increase in fines and penalties for retailers who steal from their customers, but that addresses only part of the problem.
In advancing Bill C-14, the government has completely ignored the other critical issues that need urgent attention. In fact, the list of issues that this legislation does not address is more impressive than the legislation itself. We see no mention of the price gouging policies of big oil that mean consumers pay more for gas on long weekends and over the summer. There is no means of refunding consumers for decades of overpayment resulting from faulty pumps, estimated to amount to millions of dollars a year. There is not a word about restitution for the taxes that the government has collected on those overpayments, and this legislation is silent on the repercussions of privatizing inspection services, a move that essentially leaves the gas industry to police itself. We have seen how well that works.
The government must demonstrate that it gets it, and the bill does not do that. It is so bereft of meaningful solutions to the challenges Canadians face that one cannot help but suspect it is little more than a token to consumers, while big oil is left free to operate much as it has always done.
Then again, this is a government that has chosen to spend $6 billion this year alone on corporate tax cuts to big corporations like the oil and gas industry, so I suppose I am not surprised that this is where its priorities lie. But it is adding insult to injury by punishing hard-working Canadians even further with the much hated HST, which will increase the price of gas by another 8%.
Time and again the government shovels tax dollars by the truckload into the hands of profitable corporations while it fails to stand up for consumers. Canadians want a mechanism to protect them from the excesses of the big oil companies. They want an independent arbiter who can hear their concerns and complaints and make decisions in the public interest.
That is why I introduced Bill C-286, legislation to create an oil and gas ombudsman who would be charged with providing strong, effective consumer protection to ensure no big business could swindle, cheat or rip off hardworking families.
An oil and gas ombudsman would be an independent monitoring agency where Canadians could hold oil and gas companies accountable for their business practices. The ombudsman's office would investigate consumer and business complaints relating to price fixing, gouging and cheating, and provide for remediation. Upon receipt of a complaint, the ombudsman would then challenge gas companies to respond, and could report to the Minister of Industry for action if he or she remained unsatisfied with the response. Finally, the ombudsman's office would report annually to the House of Commons on the activities and findings of the office, so that Canadians would get accountability through their elected representatives.
It is time to shine a light on how the petroleum industry operates in this country and to hold it to account on behalf of Canadians. In a country as vast as ours and as poorly served by public transit, the ability to fill up the tank should not be a luxury. Exorbitant profits financed by price gouging and tax subsidies must be remedied.
I urge the government to do its job, to stand up for Canadian consumers and put big oil on notice that we mean business and we will hold them to account.
Bruce Hyer NDP Thunder Bay—Superior North, ON
Madam Speaker, I am very grateful for the opportunity to speak to the government's Bill C-14. What it is calling a fairness at the pumps act seems to me to have more to do with politics than real fairness.
I was particularly impressed with the long, detailed and interesting speech by the member for Pickering—Scarborough East. He seems to have identified what I have identified, that this is mostly about what the current government has been very good at, very skilfully and successfully, quite often, at changing the channel on what the real issues are.
As I read between the lines, along with the hon. member for Pickering—Scarborough East, this deals with a lot more than just pumps and a lot more than just fixing gas pumps with small errors in them. It would amend the Electricity and Gas Inspection Act and the Weights and Measures Act and would increase mandatory inspection of measuring devices in a whole host of industries like dairy, retail, food, fishing, logging, grain, field crops, mining, et cetera. However, the way it is being marketed and sold here is that it is supposedly about the petroleum sector.
There are about 125,000 gas pumps in Canada, with about 60,000 of them to be inspected every year for accuracy under this bill. Why does this come all so late? It was over two years ago that the Ottawa Citizen and our party in the House reported on investigations that showed government inspections found that about 5% of pumps delivered more or less fuel than reported in the pump display on pumps across Canada. In the 2008 election campaign, the Conservatives were emphatic in saying that they would take immediate action. That is two years of consumers getting hosed, on average, twice a year per consumer. The government has collected taxes on all those overcharged consumers during that time. Why did the government not act sooner?
One thing that is interesting about the bill is it would outsource inspections on all sorts of measuring devices, including gas pumps, to private companies and private inspectors. There would be about 400 to 900 private sector inspectors required to carry out the inspections of the pumps alone. This would add perhaps $2 million in costs for the taxpayers each year. There would be the question of oversight of all these private inspectors. What is to stop a company in the oil business from having its inspectors in this position in a biased position?
A lot of questions are left unanswered by the bill. One problem the bill tries to solve is that while occasionally the pumps give consumers extra gas they did not pay for, far more often they give them less gas than they paid for. That can hardly be coincidental. As a former scientist, the degree of difference here does not seem to be random or accidental.
The bill would increase fines for pump discrepancies to $10,000, or $25,000 for big offences, and would add new fines of $50,000 for repeat offenders.
However, the biggest problem is not inadequate fines right now. Getting caught with inaccurate pumps already results in fines. The problem is authorities do not have the investigative power to gather evidence to impose fines where they are needed in the first place, not with inaccurate pumps, but with the price of gas itself.
Gas station owners should have properly calibrated pumps, and in fact the vast majority do. However, targeting them with more frequent inspections and higher fines is missing the big mark. The bill would use them as scapegoats, and the government seems to be unwilling to tackle the real problem. The bigger problem is not faulty pumps. It is high gas prices and unconscionable margins and probably collusion and price-fixing, prices among competitors that mysteriously go up in lockstep with one another and prices that shoot up quite quickly when the price of oil rises, but never seem to fall very fast or very far when the price of oil drops.
The real problem is that once again we are changing the channel away from the real issues. My region of northwestern Ontario knows this all too well, perhaps better than almost anywhere in Canada. My office hears over and over again from people who feel they are getting hosed. I do not blame them. Over the last 48 hours, eight out of the top ten most expensive pump prices in Ontario were in northwestern Ontario and the other two were in northeastern Ontario. In fact, our gas is usually more than 20¢ a litre more than in most parts of Ontario or in Manitoba.
This weekend while gas prices were as low as 89¢ a litre in Ottawa and 95¢ in Toronto, they were $1.10 or more in Thunder Bay, $1.13 in Terrace Bay and $1.15 in Longlac, among some of the highest prices in Canada. It is outrageous and fines for faulty pumps will not fix this. The problem is not with the pumps and it is not with the small gas station owners either for the most part, who as I said, the vast majority are honest and have accurate pumps. Most do not make very good margins themselves. Most do not even set the prices. It is the big oil companies that set those prices.
If we want to help a minority of consumers getting cheated at faulty pumps twice a year, that is okay. However, what about helping the vast majority of Canadian consumers who are getting gouged every time we fill up on gas? There are lots of unanswered questions. Why are prices in some regions like northwestern Ontario 25% higher most of the time? Obviously, different provincial taxes and periodic problems with refinery supply and shipping play a role in gas prices. The freight cost of transporting gasoline to the northwest is often given as a reason as well, but other regions in Canada just as far away do not have a whopping 25% price difference. As Thunder Bay's the Chronicle Journal newspaper wrote on July 10 of last year when things were really out of hand:
—the one definitive study into city gas prices...determined that prices here should be a maximum of only four cents a litre higher than the rest of Ontario.
What is needed is a public inquiry into price fixing in the gas market and industry oversight with real teeth. I know that when my colleagues in the NDP have called for public inquiries before, the government has suggested that consumers should take their concerns to the Competition Bureau. It knows full well that the Competition Bureau cannot do anything without a smoking gun. About the only time something really gets done is when an informant comes forward from inside the scheme, like we saw in the Quebec gas fixing cartel in 2008.
Virtually all the convictions from price fixing in the last two decades come from that one single case because someone on the inside came forward. In that case, the Competition Bureau commissioner at the time, Sheridan Scott, said an overwhelming majority of gas businesses in the markets involved were accused of participating in the scheme.
Eleven companies were charged with things like illegally fixing gas prices. They were able to convict four and only because they had an informant. I wonder how much similar activity goes on today across Canada that we cannot prove because there are no informants tipping the Competition Bureau off and the bureau does not have the authority to perform more than a cursory investigation of any consumer complaints. It can only investigate violations to the Competition Act, so a great majority of gas price complaints can go nowhere.
I hope the government will be open to starting a real inquiry into the matter and a public investigation of what can be done to really improve the situation for consumers.
One thing my party has been calling for is a gas price ombudsperson. Since the Competition Bureau is so limited in what it can do, we need an ombudsperson who could handle public complaints and give us strong and effective consumer protection.
Our member for Hamilton Mountain has tabled Bill C-286, which would do just that. It would enable Parliament to appoint an independent ombudsperson to investigate complaints about gas pricing and report to the ministry of industry if it is not satisfied with the response from the oil or gas supplier.
If given adequate investigative powers, the ombudsperson would help provide strong, effective consumer protection, including fines of half a million dollars if necessary, to ensure the really big offenders did not get away with swindling consumers. It would help ensure that we paid a fair price for gas so small and independent retailers would finally have proof that they were the good corporate citizens, as most of them are. It would ensure there would be greater oversight and accountability on the big oil companies. It is these big offenders and big distributors we need to go after, even more than those small business people with faulty pumps or the rare unscrupulous gas station owner who might nickel and dime customers.
There is one more thing I would like to bring up when it comes to fairness at the pumps.
No discussion of gas fairness is complete without talking about the harmonized sales tax. As we know, the HST being imposed by the Conservative government on consumers will raise the price of gasoline by 8% in Ontario. This price hike is orders of magnitude more costly than any savings Bill C-14 might ever bring to consumers.
Passing Bill C-14 off as a magic bullet to fix gas gouging, as the government is doing, while hiking gas prices across the board, is the biggest bait and switch in gas marketing history. It has been calculated that the average family of four, through the HST in Ontario, will be hit with an increase of $232 per year, even more in Thunder Bay where it is based on a higher price, and about $900 million across Ontario each year. It is a tax grab.
The Conservative government is tabling a fairness at the pumps bill to crack down on the 5% of pumps that are faulty, but hitting 100% of pumps with the biggest gas tax hike in history. Is this what Conservatives think of as fairness?
To conclude, this bill pays lip service to controlling unfair business practices in the sale of gas. Significant measures need to be added to the bill to make it really worthwhile for Canadian consumers who need it desperately. Do the Conservatives really care about consumers? Do they care about taxpayers? Do they care about average Canadian citizens, or do they really just care about big oil and oil and gasoline distributors?
It is my understanding that the amount of oil and gasoline that we export to the United States is roughly equivalent to what the east coast imports from Saudi Arabia and Venezuela. We know where the real priorities of the Conservatives lie, especially the Alberta-based Conservatives.
I hope the government will prove me wrong and will be open to stronger consumer protection measures in Bill C-14. It will be a litmus test to see whether the government really wants to tackle gas price gouging or if it is all just political positioning.
Chris Charlton NDP Hamilton Mountain, ON
Mr. Speaker, it is my pleasure to table a petition in the House of Commons on behalf of a large number of people who are concerned about gasoline prices and the fact that the government is doing nothing to help ordinary working families who are getting hosed at the pumps.
In fact, the petitioners are keenly aware that the government is making things worse rather than better. By offering the Liberal government in Ontario $4.3 billion to implement the harmonized sales tax, the federal Conservative government has just added another 8% tax to a commodity that many of the petitioners need every single day to get to and from work, to look for new jobs, or to keep a doctor's appointment.
The petitioners no longer have faith that the government will protect their interests as consumers. They do believe, however, that my private member's bill, formerly Bill C-442, now Bill C-286, which calls for the creation of an oil and gas ombudsman, will provide strong, effective consumer protection to make sure no big business could swindle, cheat or rip off hard-working Canadians.
The petitioners therefore call upon the Parliament of Canada to give speedy passage to Bill C-442 to help consumers fight the gas price squeeze.
Chris Charlton NDP Hamilton Mountain, ON
moved for leave to introduce Bill C-286, An Act to establish the Office of the Oil and Gas Ombudsman to investigate complaints relating to the business practices of suppliers of oil or gas.
Mr. Speaker, after the unexpected and premature prorogation of the House in December, I am so pleased to finally have the opportunity to reintroduce a bill that would establish the oil and gas ombudsman. The bill is being introduced on behalf of irate consumers who are tired of continually getting hosed at the pumps. As members will recall, the bill would create the office of the oil and gas ombudsman, which would be charged with providing strong and effective consumer protection to ensure that no big business could swindle, cheat or rip off hard-working Canadians.
I am pleased to report that the bill has been endorsed by the Consumers Association of Canada.
Currently, people can only complain to each other about being gouged at the pumps. My bill would create a meaningful vehicle for having those complaints taken seriously, with mechanisms for investigation and remediation to help consumers fight the squeeze.
Since this is not just an issue in my riding of Hamilton Mountain, I am pleased to have my bill seconded by the member for London—Fanshawe. I am hopeful members from all regions of the country, and indeed from all political parties, will endorse my efforts to put an end to highway robbery.
(Motions deemed adopted, bill read the first time and printed)