All right.
Could you explain why a barrel of oil cost $73 and a litre of gasoline cost $1.06 a year ago, and why gasoline costs $1.15 a litre today, whereas a barrel of oil only costs $61? I find it difficult to understand how this is possible. I understand why oil is at this price and I will tell you why. There are two reasons for this.
Just now, you spoke about the abuse of dominance. How can we have fair competition if, in Halifax, Esso is doing the refining for all the oil companies; Irving is doing the same in New Brunswick; Ultramar is doing the same in Quebec and in Montreal, Petro-Canada and Shell are doing the same. How can we have fair competition when the same refiner is supplying everyone? I do not see how there can be fair competition in a market where the same refinery is supplying everyone.
Then, you said that for refining costs, we cannot have.... You spoke of a price for refining.
In the magazine Les Affaires, it says that ExxonMobil made a whopping $9.3 billion in the first three months, as compared to $8.4 billion last year. Nevertheless, the sales figures for the biggest oil company in the world went down by 2%. Now although the figures went down, the profits rose nonetheless by 10%. Do you know why? Since ExxonMobil's revenue went down, how come the giant still made a bigger profit? We have to take a look at profit margins. Thus, the price of oil was brought down from $73 to $61 a barrel, but in order to make the same profit, the price of refining was raised. It is easy to do this, and all the oil companies benefit from it, because there is a refiner in each province. Therefore, a refiner that makes a 14¢ profit can decide to make a 27¢ profit on the next day because the price of a barrel of oil went down.
Do you really think that this is not a dominant position?