As I indicated in my opening remarks, over the long term retail fuel prices do in fact generally track price movements in crude. Certainly, as we've seen over the last two and a half years, while there has been volatility in the price of crude oil there has been relative stability in refiner margins and retail margins. The prices at the pump have generally reflected movements in crude prices.
This is not to say that there are not short-term variations. Largely those display seasonal implications, as the supply and demand balance changes with the changes in seasons, as well as short-term supply and demand disequilibrium, whether from a demand spike or a supply shortage brought about by unplanned refinery outages or the kinds of situations we've seen in the U.S. recently, with a number of refineries shut down because of a strike. It is a North American market, not a uniquely Canadian market. Canada is 10% of what is a much larger North American market.
Going back to the 2008 experience, what you saw there was that while oil was going up as a global commodity, the price of fuel in North America was declining as a North American commodity as the impacts of the recession were starting to bite, particularly in the U.S. At one point in 2008, margins had dropped to zero and in fact were negative on the refining side because of supply and demand dynamics for gasoline that differed from the supply and demand dynamics globally for crude oil.