Mr. Johnston, Mr. Vinet, Mr. Cotton, Madame Roussy, thank you.
I want to get to some very helpful questions, I hope, that will allow you to provide us some guidance here in this committee as it charts its way through what appears on the surface to be a very easy issue but in fact can be very complicated and have unintended consequences. I think that's one of the missions that certainly our party is trying to resolve.
The issue of pump accuracy, as you can appreciate... My experience with tomorrowsgaspricetoday.com is that it gets 40,000 to 50,000 visitors a day with commentary even when there is no change in the price of fuel, so the public is extremely sensitive to this. We're all caught as legislators and you are as administrators, as those who are behind that wonderful seal that is put on every pump, or most pumps, across Canada.
I'm wondering, and it's further to what Mr. Rota suggested, and it leads to where I left off, about the concern about throughput volume. I take it that responsible retailers will in fact inspect more frequently. I give the example of the one in my riding. It's an Esso station next door with a substantial volume of throughput, and it will inspect every two to three months. They just get that much, and they are concerned about wear and tear. At the same time, we may have a prospect of a small pump, a single pump, an old Tokheim that's been around for 30 years. Sullivan's Grocery Store in Ennismore, Ontario, has a single pump whose throughput is 115,000 litres every year. It's hardly worth keeping there, but it is nevertheless filled there and they do maintain it.
Since we have not seen the draft regulations, I want to ask you if any consideration has been given to looking at the prospect of regulating on a sliding scale for the purpose of certification, where the time period would be relative to throughput. I think this would demonstrate that the government clearly recognizes that two cars coming off a parking lot, one will change oil every 5,000 kilometres, and the other changes every 100,000 kilometres, even though it's in the same period of time. I think you will find the analogy is very apt.
Would it not be preferable to have a sliding scale, considering what you're trying to address here, which is the prospect of wear and tear? Retailers have told us that wear and tear is primarily responsible for the skew. Is that something you would consider?