Actually, when I started in the business, Canadian prices were kept below world prices. I started in the industry in 1976, and I believe the prices stayed regulated until about the early nineties, and then went to world pricing after that—at the end of the NEP, I think.
The way that was accomplished was that there was a cap put on the domestic production of oil, and then when a company such as Gulf Canada, which I was working for at the time, imported crude, it would pay the world price and the Canadian government would pay it the difference between the capped price on Canadian oil and the world price. At first, I believe, the Canadian taxpayer swallowed the difference between the two, but as the differential became larger and larger, the government funded that program—which we call a compensation program—through a refinery gate tax. In essence, that was passed through to the consumer.