Industry Committee on June 3rd, 2010

[Sonia Roussy]

I'll explain how the private inspector is set up. I think that would be helpful, to see how we get around possible conflict of interest.

[John McKay, Liberal, Scarborough—Guildwood, ON]

Okay. I've only got five minutes, though, so please be quick.

[Sonia Roussy]

I'll try to go quickly.

First of all, with the private inspector, we authorize companies. So they have to be incorporated companies. They're not individuals. They are the authorized service providers. These companies must meet certain requirements--

[John McKay, Liberal, Scarborough—Guildwood, ON]

I can incorporate myself. I could be a company.

[Sonia Roussy]

That's right. So you must be incorporated. Certain conditions must be met. Then you would hire people who wish to be recognized technicians--that's the term we use--and to be able to do that, they have to attend training. They have to go through a theoretical examination and a practical examination. They must have equipment that is comparable to what Measurement Canada would use and that has been calibrated by Measurement Canada. They must document the procedures they use, and these procedures must be accepted by Measurement Canada.

So this is the whole qualification process. Once they're finally recognized, they do the work. Most of these companies that are authorized service providers, that's their livelihood. They go out and they're either--

[John McKay, Liberal, Scarborough—Guildwood, ON]

Sole livelihood, or do they sell other services too?

[Sonia Roussy]

For the most part, they are repair companies for the industry.

[John McKay, Liberal, Scarborough—Guildwood, ON]

They're repair guys. They go out and repair pumps.

[Sonia Roussy]

That's right.

[John McKay, Liberal, Scarborough—Guildwood, ON]

They do that sort of stuff and they do inspections on the side, and that is the issue. The issue is that if I want to keep a customer happy I'm going to say your pump is a little out of compliance but not a lot, and I think we can let it go for the time being; I'll come back in another year or so, and we'll fix it then. But a government inspector could care less: it's either in compliance or it's out of compliance. It does strike me as an anomaly. I can't think of a perfect analogy, but it's like a policeman who says that a person did commit an assault but the police could provide legal services for him too. It's not an entirely perfect analogy, but nevertheless it does seem right.

My second line of questioning has to do with the declining rates in terms of compliance with respect to retail gasoline, then wholesale trucks, and then you get to home heating. Am I interpreting your information correctly to say that the average home heating truck that's delivering oil to some rural consumer is 50% out of compliance?

[Gilles Vinet]

No, it's not 50%. What we said before is that 60% of them are not measuring accurately, but the error is close to the tolerance. It's not 50% measurement error, but 60% of them had measurement problems.

[John McKay, Liberal, Scarborough—Guildwood, ON]

So the average truck going around, if there are 60% measurement problems, if I'm filling up for 200 gallons, there's a good chance I'm not getting my 200 gallons.

[Gilles Vinet]

But for a truck carrying home heating oil, the tolerance is 0.25%. It's smaller even than for gas pumps. So you would have maybe 40% or 35% of the meters--

[John McKay, Liberal, Scarborough—Guildwood, ON]

So for a truck that's out of compliance, what does that mean in terms of an average fill-up of a 200-gallon tank? A gallon, two gallons, three gallons?

[Gilles Vinet]

The tolerance is 0.25%. So if for example we look at 400 litres--

[John McKay, Liberal, Scarborough—Guildwood, ON]

Okay, go for 400 litres, yes.

[Gilles Vinet]

--that would be one litre. That's the tolerance.

[John McKay, Liberal, Scarborough—Guildwood, ON]

One litre--that's the tolerance.

[Gilles Vinet]

It could be off two litres.

[John McKay, Liberal, Scarborough—Guildwood, ON]

So in terms of the truck pulling into the driveway, there's a good chance that I'm going to get ripped for what--two, three, four litres?

[Gilles Vinet]

It's hard to say. For a truck.... I would have to look at our stats to see the average error that has been found.

[John McKay, Liberal, Scarborough—Guildwood, ON]

Most trucks are in fleets. I don't understand why it's so difficult to inspect fleets and actually have an inspector show up more frequently than they apparently do and just run a test on the whole fleet.

[Gilles Vinet]

We need equipment to test truck-mounted meters that measure home heating oil. We have portable and fixed provers, and testing involves delivering oil in the provers.

[John McKay, Liberal, Scarborough—Guildwood, ON]

In the provers...?

[Gilles Vinet]

There are environmental issues. We have to be careful. We cannot do that anywhere, because there are safety and environmental issues. We cannot do those tests anywhere.

Yes, we can test those devices, but again it's....