Mr. Masse, it certainly wouldn't hurt. There are a lot of vested interests. In my experience of 19 years of looking at this, a lot of people have looked at this and from certain perspectives have used the industry's own figures to summarize what I've just done. I'm glad to see that Mr. Greenberger agrees with some of the comments I've made, including the irony of supply increasing today yet the price of fuel going up in Canada as in the United States.
The idea of an ombudsman who would in effect be an independent umpire is perhaps an idea that should be considered very strongly, considering the not-so-subtle but dramatic changes that have taken place that are affecting the bottom line, bread-and-butter affordability issues for Canadians.
When we refer to gasoline, this is only one of many where we have seen substantial increases. Probably Mr. Greenberger and I would agree. We have never met, nor have we spoken before, I can assure you of that. Wheat this past year alone is up 78%. Corn is up 52%. Gasoline is up 37%. Crude is up another 30%.
What is really critical to understand here, and perhaps Mr. Huffaker and I would also agree on this, is it does the industry no good to have prices, as we saw, go up without any rhyme or reason or any bearing on supply and demand fundamentals, to $147 a barrel, then three months later drop to $31 a barrel. I can tell you that was disruptive, not only to the oil industry but it did nothing to ensure that in the long term Canadians could rely on greater refinery capacity.
I suspect that in the United States, with Sunoco having shut down some of its refinery capacity, some of the decisions that were done with respect to Montreal east last year had a lot to do with that unpredictability. The volatility can be controlled, and it must be the role of governments, however they can do this, to ensure there is global oversight over the commodities derivatives markets. If we avoid this point, I don't care how many competition inquiries these committees do, you are going to fail to address the fundamental concerns of Canadians on volatility. An independent ombudsman would be an important step that could bring together the shortcomings of Natural Resources Canada supplying to the United States weekly petroleum information for Americans.
Page 29 will show you we're providing Americans data about their own industry and what we're supplying here, but we're refusing to give it to Canadians.
We've ensured the Competition Bureau is brought up to speed with some of the other best practices, with which they are very involved around the world, in terms of how Europe and the United States are dealing with their antitrust legislation.
We could at the same time resolve this problem of economic interests of economists, who might be in favour of efficient markets, and those out there who obviously have a stake in protecting their territory.
At the end of the day, an umpire would be there to serve as an officer of Parliament, perhaps, and ultimately serve to expose and to ensure that the truth is maintained on a monthly, bi-weekly, or whatever basis you choose. It is an idea whose time has come.