Thank you, Mr. Chair.
I'd like to thank my fellow committee members for supporting my motion and agreeing to be here in Ottawa before the House resumes to attend to this important issue of oil and gas prices. It's something, clearly, that we've all heard about from our constituents over the past several months. I believe these are important hearings.
It's a complicated subject. I'd like to thank our witnesses for being here to help us understand what goes into the price of gas at the pump and what the various factors are that are involved in price increases.
I was struck by an article earlier this summer, based on a report by an economist at the Bank of Montreal, that said—this is before things started to moderate somewhat—that oil prices had passed the tipping point and were a drag on the Canadian economy. He called the price a “heavy anchor” undercutting consumer confidence and leading to higher inflation, and he said that the prices were now burning up about 7% of Canadians' disposable income, a record high. Clearly we have all heard that from people in our communities.
What is frustrating for a lot of people is that we are the second largest oil supplier in the world. Consumers, I think, are rightly frustrated by an inability to understand why it is we are paying so much for oil and gas.
Mr. Boag, we heard you talk about supply and demand. But what is also frustrating for people is that we see prices fluctuate. They tend to go up before the summer. They tend to go up before a long weekend. They can even fluctuate during the day--they seem to go down in the evening and up during the day.
If these are world markets and it's supply and demand, why do the prices change over the course of a day?