I think, though, that the intention of the act is to ensure compliance and to get higher compliance rates. Obviously if you get fined $2,000 the first time around for having a pump that's not measuring properly, and you haven't fixed it, and down the road you deliberately don't fix the pump and have all these pumps that are measuring inaccurately, of course you would then expect that there might be a case of fraud.
That's if you know your pumps weren't measuring properly and you didn't fix them over the course of time, but the idea of these lower penalties in that first case, as it was explained by the officials when they were here the other day, is that it's unreasonable to expect that we're going to go through months of criminal proceedings to attack a private retailer who simply didn't know he had a pump that wasn't measuring properly over two years but then eventually got fixed.
I think that's why we've seen less compliance or less conviction, I guess, on these things. It's because it's simply not practical, given the way the process works. This AMPs process will certainly see increased compliance, I think.
In terms of the compliance agreements, you were talking about admission of guilt possibly resulting in a reduction of the penalty amount, either in whole or in part. We might have a gas station with 16 pumps, for example, and maybe something is wrong within the system. They get an inspection done, and there's a problem. Something within the system identifies a problem that is affecting all of the pumps at the same time. Rather than fining that retailer for every single one of those pumps--whatever the penalty is, times 16--there might be a discussion around how the fine might be adjusted to affect the practical reality of that situation.
Does that seem like a reasonable approach? It would not be if there was a fraudulent, intentional manipulation of the pumps to the benefit of the retailer or to the detriment of the consumer, but it would be if a systematic problem was identified after a couple of years through a regular inspection process and the retailer immediately fixed that problem.
Does that seem to make sense?