Thank you.
Mr. Chair, members of Parliament, and Canadians who have access to this hearing, on behalf of the members of the Canadian Petroleum Products Institute, thank you for inviting me to better understand your preoccupations with our industry.
I'll keep my comments brief so as to answer as many questions as possible.
As some of you may know, the CPPI is a national association of major Canadian companies involved in the refining, distribution, and/or marketing of petroleum products for transportation, home energy, and industrial uses. Collectively we operate 16 refineries, representing over 80% of the refining capacity in Canada, and we supply over 7,000 branded retail outlets with transportation fuels across Canada. Our members include Chevron, Husky, Imperial Oil, North Atlantic Refining, Shell Canada, Suncor Energy Products, Ultramar, NOVA Chemicals, and Bitumar Inc. Our members operate refineries in British Columbia, Alberta, Ontario, Quebec, Nova Scotia, and Newfoundland and Labrador. Arco Products Corp. and the Parkland Income Fund are marketers in western Canada.
We recognize that our industry is under the spotlight. For most Canadians we are the indispensable enabler of the drive to work and school, the transportation of paramedic and fire services, home heating fuel, and right now, even the Sunday or Saturday cutting of grass. We provide quality products, proven performance, and our complex facilities operate safely and reliably. We make our products affordable by keeping our costs down. We are also the ones, I will say, who face the consumer reaction head-on, with price signs larger than I am tall.
Affordability of our products is one of the key questions that face consumers, consumer advocates, social activists, environmentalists, scientists, engineers, and economists as well as people like you, the public policy decision-makers. We understand your interest in gas prices and refinery margins, and I hope to provide you with a reasonably straightforward answer today.
The first chart in the presentation that has been provided to you sets out the movements in gas prices in four major urban centres compared to the New York harbour wholesale price for gasoline. This says fairly straightforwardly that we operate in a commodity-based market where we are, in effect, the price taker, not the price maker.