Chair, I appreciate the passion that Monsieur Vincent has brought to this, and I would certainly agree that giving powers to the commissioner is a good thing. But if you don't amend the Competition Act in its entirety, as I specified years ago, there's no point in giving powers for the commissioner to do something he can't do. But I think it's fair to say....
I am going to say this in French. The cost of a barrel of crude rose from $18 to $129 over a four-year period. That is an increase of about 60¢ a litre. Rather than looking at amounts of 2¢ or 3¢ a litre… The Competition Act did nothing to prevent the refining industry's capacity from becoming non-competitive.
The essence of what our consumers are looking for, and what Canadians are looking for...they're going to say, “What is causing the prices to rise? How did it go, Mr. Vincent, Mr. McTeague, from 35¢ a litre as crude, as part of the makeup of a litre of gasoline, to 89¢ in Quebec and Montreal today?”
That disparity of 53¢, 54¢ a litre is what we should be looking at. And on the very day that Madame Brunelle proposed this motion, the U.S. acting chair of the commission on futures trading decided they were going to not only undertake an investigation, Chair, but, as you will know, I believe there had to be more transparency to see what effect this has had on distorting the prices.
I suggest this is possible, if the Bloc will accept it, to try to address that mysterious 55¢ that's been attached to the price of gasoline and home heating fuel--and wheat and soybeans, and everything right across the spectrum. If we see what the Americans have, since they trade most of the commodities here, along with a few others, we might actually get a solution that the people of my riding and his riding actually want, and that is to put a spotlight on these activities, because they're distorting the market and they're driving the price beyond anything.
If it can be $130 a barrel this year, Chair, it can be $250 next year. Until we address that fundamental point, I think we are leading a fool's errand, and we are deceiving our constituents in trying to tell them that by having this kind of conduct or this activity, or this kind of investigation or discussion for three days, we're somehow going to give them some kind of an answer. It's false hope. I want to deal with what's current. I want to deal with what we need to deal with.