Evidence of meeting #20 for Finance in the 41st Parliament, 2nd session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was consumers.
A recording is available from Parliament.
President and Chief Executive Officer, Canadian Independent Petroleum Marketers Association
I wouldn't say if you're Petro-Canada or Shell you're in the same boat as the independents, because they have—
Conservative
President and Chief Executive Officer, Canadian Independent Petroleum Marketers Association
That is a significant problem, the concentration in the wholesale market.
Conservative
Dave Van Kesteren Conservative Chatham-Kent—Essex, ON
The real problem is that the oil companies that have direct marketing have an advantage. Is that the real problem?
President and Chief Executive Officer, Canadian Independent Petroleum Marketers Association
That is one of the elements that make competition so aggressive and so vigorous in the market for retail gas.
Conservative
Dave Van Kesteren Conservative Chatham-Kent—Essex, ON
In essence, that's it. It's not really the credit cards. Credit cards can charge what they want. As soon as they become non-competitive, at some point you have to react.
Let me ask you again. Is the problem that the independents buy gas at, let's say, $1 a litre, and they're allowed to retail it...? Or they're not allowed to retail it, because the market is selling it for $1.08. Is it that the oil companies are able to sell it for $1.08 and have the same charges, because they have an advantage over you? Is that the real problem?
President and Chief Executive Officer, Canadian Independent Petroleum Marketers Association
The more significant players, the larger players and refiners who are marketers as well, certainly have an advantage in that. They have the whole value chain.
Conservative
Dave Van Kesteren Conservative Chatham-Kent—Essex, ON
We used to be in the gas business, so I understand what you're talking about.
President and Chief Executive Officer, Canadian Independent Petroleum Marketers Association
Okay.
Conservative
Dave Van Kesteren Conservative Chatham-Kent—Essex, ON
I don't mean to cut you off. There are more things I wanted to talk about.
I want to go to Monsieur St-Amant. One of the things that puzzles me.... I'm still trying to come to grips with when we came off the gold standard, and how that affected our whole marketplace.
Do you have an economics background? You're a law professor, I know, but you're a business law professor, so you must—
Professor, Université du Québec à Montréal, As an Individual
But I'm not an economist. Thank God for small favours.
Conservative
Dave Van Kesteren Conservative Chatham-Kent—Essex, ON
I'm reading your bio here. You say you're very concerned about legal risks, financial, operational risks. One of the financial risks, I suppose, would be the ease of payment. We keep hearing a lot about the problems that students have with debt. Is that becoming a problem? Is it one of these unspoken situations we have in society? It's so easy just to purchase something. Are we getting into situations where students are getting heavily in debt because of that?
Professor, Université du Québec à Montréal, As an Individual
That's a totally different topic. Clearly, the levels of consumer debt in this country are becoming unsustainable. But I would observe that roughly two-thirds of credit card users pay their bills every month. So on the payment side, that is not the major issue.
Conservative
Dave Van Kesteren Conservative Chatham-Kent—Essex, ON
I have another question. I asked if you had an economics background, because I...but maybe you can still answer this question. It's the question of the money itself. There used to be a time when banks would have to back whatever they lend out by the gold standard. We've abandoned that.
It has become so confusing. I don't know if too many people really understand it. How much money is out there and have we gone over the limit? In other words, we should know how much money governments have printed so how much money is actually out there and how much money is in the system, through either lending or through—Mr. Roberts is shaking—I should have asked the man from the bank.
Do we have a grip on that or is that just something where we're riding on the coattails?
Professor, Université du Québec à Montréal, As an Individual
In terms of the information, yes, we do have a grip on that. In terms of the amount of money out there on this planet, ask the question to the fed down south of the border. They issued tonnes of money in order to—
Professor, Université du Québec à Montréal, As an Individual
—survive over the past six, seven years.
Professor, Université du Québec à Montréal, As an Individual
Even if they did issue an immense amount of money, we have seen practically no inflation, which means that our economy would otherwise have become significantly depressed.
Professor, Université du Québec à Montréal, As an Individual
That will take us a lot more time than the chairman will allow me.
Conservative
Conservative
The Chair Conservative James Rajotte
All right. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Van Kesteren.
We'll go to Mr. Trost now, please.
February 25th, 2014 / 4:40 p.m.
Conservative
Bradley Trost Conservative Saskatoon—Humboldt, SK
Thank you, Mr. Chair, and thank you to the witnesses.
I'm a visiting member here so this is probably the first and last time I'll be looking at this subject, but I found it fairly interesting. The statement today—I'm trying to remember who made it—that caught my attention was if we implement fully into mobile payments, Canadian GDP can rise by 1% to 2%. That's a fairly significant boost. We look for all sorts of things to try to boost our productivity and a change from 1% to 2% would be huge, bigger than many of the moderately sized trade agreements that this government has been pursuing.
With that in mind, what are the things we need to do in the short term? What are the basic things that should be done by the actors in this room? The government is thinking about this. What would make it easier for that productivity boost to go forward? If you could have one, two options—and I'm trying to remember who said it, I think it was Ms. Meredith—what would be the two things we should do that would help speed us along the path of higher productivity?