Madam Speaker, I too would like to take this opportunity to congratulate my colleague, the member for Nickel Belt, a fellow northerner from northern Ontario, on his private member's Bill C-266. It is important before we get into the substance of the bill to examine the historical context of why we are here today.
Madam Speaker, if you were a northerner from Ontario you would know that over the last number of years from the sixties through to the nineties a number of studies have been done. There have been discussions between northerners and southerners about the unequal treatment of consumers depending on where they live in the province of Ontario.
Those individuals have asked their governments, both provincial and federal, on a number of occasions to look at the fairness to consumers of gas prices in the south versus the north, to look at gas prices at the pumps at different times of the year and at different times of the week.
By looking at different studies, I know that every time one of those studies is completed its results and recommendations show that there is no proof that there is price fixing, but obviously something seems wrong with the system.
I will give an example from a southern Ontario perspective, which is hard to believe coming from a northerner from Kenora-Rainy River. When I drive to my residence during the week after I have finished my day's work in the House of Commons, the gas price will be fixed, at around 56 cents a litre. Lo and behold, come Friday night the price goes up. The price then stays up around 57 cents to 58 cents all weekend long. Monday morning the price goes back down again. It does this in unison at practically every service station all the way down Bank.
If the price changed every three or four months when there were fluctuations in oil prices around the world, I think consumers could buy the argument that because the price of oil was going up or going down by the barrel then the prices at different pumps at different service stations could be the same. The perception is that the prices are fixed but at least they could feel comfortable that it makes some sense to them as a consumer.
However, we do not like to drive down the road and see the price changes on a weekend. As consumers, we know there is more business, more travel, more tourism and more people coming and going because they have Friday, Saturday and Sunday off. Gas companies are going to allow prices to go up in order to make a bigger profit.
That is sort of the long and short of why people have some major concerns about the way prices at the pumps are arrived at. They wonder whether something needs to be looked at in depth by parliamentarians or provincial governments in their jurisdiction
which will make us feel more comfortable as consumers that we are getting a good price and a fair price.
Obviously my colleague's inspiration is gasoline pricing. People need the opportunity to have it explained to them as I have. As the ex-chairman of the natural resources committee who instituted the investigation a couple of years back, I had the opportunity to ask Mr. Addy in committee why these fluctuations occurred and whether there was an explanation for them. I also brought the industry in to explain it to us as well.
Even when I sat as the chair of that committee I never got an explanation that I could buy, that I could feel comfortable with, that I could go and tell my constituents: "Here is the reason". They were all over the map.
I will give another example. We buy our gas in northern Ontario from Winnipeg. It is shipped by Paul's Hauling. Paul's Hauling ships gas from Winnipeg right across my riding. It takes about two and a half hours to get to different points in the riding.
The gas prices in Kenora, which is about two hours from Winnipeg, let us say for the sake of argument are 63 cents or 64 cents today. I have not called so it may even be higher. It might even be 66 cents. Fifteen miles outside of town close to Winnipeg gas prices are five cents less. For people who are listening in major centres, this is in the middle of nowhere. It is small tourist place called Clearwater Bay. All the folks in Winnipeg come to spend their holidays in their cottages at this particular place. We have a little wee liquor store, a convenience store and two little gas pumps which have gas prices at five cents less. Drive to Kenora and the price goes up five cents. Drive to Dryden, an hour to an hour and a half away, and it goes down two cents from the price in Kenora. Dryden and Kenora are almost identical in size. I have asked the competition bureau and the people who run these companies to explain this. Members would like a fair explanation of how those prices could vary like that.
You cannot say "it has to be the transportation cost " as my colleague has said. We are not buying that answer because I am told it is about a half cent difference, in the neighbourhood of 300 or 400 miles on a litre of gas, based on the cost of transportation if you are hauling a huge semi. They said that is not the real reason. There are differences in the local competition. Local competition means that different gas stations have prices that they build in, therefore, the prices will naturally be different in a different community.
We spent time blowing holes in that argument and they switched gears on us again. They said the reason why the gas prices are high is because there is no competition. Now we do not have any competition, transportation is not the problem and the different gas stations have different mechanisms of coming up with what their expenses are. Therefore the cost would be different but everybody's price is the same in the same community. At this point we still do not have a legitimate explanation of why those prices are the way they are.
Madam Speaker, you can understand why we have difficulty when politicians from either the provincial or federal level tell us everything is okay.
My colleague from Nickel Belt has taken the bull by the horns and has said that if what the corporations say is true and if what governments say is true, then let us put in a mechanism to make it very easy for people to give us information if they believe there is something wrong with the industry. If the industry is clean and its explanations are solid, it should not have any problem with whistle blowing legislation.
We have whistle blowing legislation in other jurisdictions, for example, in different acts, labour codes and labour protection acts. We have mechanisms where employers will be fined for breaking the law and helping employees. All these arguments are legitimate arguments that should be looked at.
For the sake of my colleagues thinking it is a wrong term, this is a very simple bill. It is not complicated at all. All it asks is that the Competition Act have built into it a way for the competition bureau to make sure that there will be anonymous information given by employees or contractors without them feeling they are putting their livelihoods at risk.
Some of the members I have listened to this evening suggested there may be individuals who will put in frivolous complaints just for the sake of getting back at their employers or a competitor. I doubt that very many people will realistically get into that kind of scenario where they are going to phone the competition bureau and suggest that there is an illegal act, if it does not have some legitimacy, for one simple reason. Can you imagine the hassle that would incur once they start putting forward these potentially illegal acts into the system? What could they incur if it was found to be nothing more than a frivolous act?
We have waited as consumers-I put myself in the position of a consumer-for 30 years in northern Ontario, to have someone explain the best way to deal with this perception that things are not right. At this point we still have not had a government willing to look at this in a comprehensive way.
If we continue to ignore the wishes of Canadian people and consumers, then what you will get is a process that is driven in a much more radical fashion. For example, in Quebec just lately, a process was brought into play where that government is going to pass legislation that which will be much more severe than what my colleague is suggesting. It is less competitive in the sense of having free market forces deal with how prices will be set.
They are now getting into and going down the road of setting limits and monitoring the price of gas in such a way that it may hamstring fair competition.
What a lot of people who believe in capitalism in this country would suggest is it is not good overall for the economy or for the consumer in the long run.
That is what they get when they continue to ignore consumers and good solid pieces of legislation and ideas like those of my colleague from Nickel Belt.
Another issue is that this is a very cheap way to deal with difficult problems. In times of financial difficulty, in times when there is financial restraint and we are looking for ways to improve the efficiency of the system, we ask members to come up with innovative solutions.
My colleague has done that. He has come up with a solution that we all could live with financially and which may just help us with the problem we are trying to solve.
I have said this in my constituency and I will say it here on the floor of the House. If governments are not willing to be reasonable and act in the best interests of their constituents, they will be surprised with radical ideas like those we see coming from the third party which are a simplistic way of solving problems.
It will eventually catch fire and be worse for a lot of individual Canadians because people get very frustrated when they know there is a problem, they are waiting for a solution and they are not getting one.
In the last few seconds I have, this is a very good private member's bill, a very good start. In the next two hours that we have at this reading, there will be other members talking about examples in their regions saying how difficult it is to show that there is nothing wrong with the way the pricing of gas is arrived at. We need to look at mechanisms to be sure that it is fair.
The government would be smart to enact this as part of an overall package of reforms to the Competition Act to make sure that Canadians are protected not just now but of course in the future.