Madam Speaker, I congratulate the member for Pickering—Ajax—Uxbridge on this bill and for the opportunity to say a few words about the subject of gas pricing in Ottawa.
As the hon. member noted in his opening remarks, Bill C-235 is directed at ending predatory pricing practices of the oil companies which also own refineries and retail outlets, the so-called vertically integrated companies. We think particularly of near monopolistic practices such as the Irvings in the Atlantic region.
I note a recent letter from David Collins who is with the Wilson Fuel Company Limited to our caucus to support the upcoming introduction of this bill or amendments to the Competition Act. About these amendments he says in part:
—amendments provide some much-needed definition to the concept of predatory pricing. As local independent marketers of petroleum products, we have found ourselves singled out to face retail prices which are below those made available at wholesale. The result has been to discipline our company into retail price conformance. (This) bill would provide firms such as ours some form of legal recourse to remedy such a situation.
Mr. Collins goes on to say:
It is interesting to note that the U.S. market is far more “regulated” when it comes to the marketing of petroleum products than it is in Canada. The Americans also enjoy lower prices on average.
He concludes by saying:
(The) bill goes only part of the way toward bringing Canada's regulations in harmony with those afforded to the U.S. consumers.
I also recognize and applaud the work of some folk in Atlantic Canada who have been fighting this stranglehold on the market to which I referred a moment ago. I will particularly single out Elizabeth Weir, the leader of our party in the province of New Brunswick, and John Holm, the house leader in Nova Scotia, for the work they have done in the recent past on the whole matter of predatory pricing.
The bill that is before us would provide for the enforcement of fair pricing between a manufacturer that sells a product at retail either directly or through an affiliate and supplies a product to a customer that competes with the supplier at the retail level. This provides a supplier's customer with a fair opportunity to make a similar profit as the supplier at the retail level in a given market area.
I note in passing that we have a member in our caucus, the member for Regina—Lumsden—Lake Centre, who has also done a lot of work on the unfair pricing of gasoline in Canada generally but specifically in the province of Saskatchewan. He has been arguing for some time that what we need is a commission to regulate the wholesale and retail prices of gasoline, taking into account both the public interest in having reasonable and consistent pricing and the need for manufacturers, distributors and wholesalers to have reasonable costs covered. The commission could also conduct hearings on competition in the oil industry referred to it by the competition tribunal.
In Canada we accept that some prices of goods or services which are central to our well-being and to the economy in general and often controlled by monopolies or near monopolies should be regulated in the public interest. I am thinking, for example, of telephone and cable television costs.
Naturally the oil companies do not agree. They recently launched an ad campaign, as I understand it, in Ontario and in eastern Canada to explain some of the things that drive Canadians crazy on an annual basis about the oil and pricing regime as it has existed ever since I can remember.
I will give three examples. Why do prices go up just before seeding season or the harvest season in my part of the world on the prairies? Why do they go up across the country just before summer long weekends? Why, when Saskatchewan is clearly a net exporter of oil products, do we end up paying a higher price than we do in Ottawa when the tax regime is exactly the same in both provinces? Today in Regina the price at the pump is 56.9 cents as compared with 49.9 cents in Ottawa.
It is interesting to note that these ads that are running in eastern Canada are not running in the west. I would offer it is because the oil companies simply cannot answer that last one, that Saskatchewan is a net exporter yet ends up paying 7 cents a litre higher than is currently being paid in Ottawa.
As the agriculture critic for our caucus one of the things that is a real bugaboo for people on the prairies, especially at this time of the year—and it is nice to see some of the other members of the standing committee on agriculture here tonight—is the high input costs being paid out as we speak, as farmers are out on the land putting their crops in the ground. Among the highest are the costs for fossil fuels.
We in this caucus believe that the bill introduced by the member for Pickering—Ajax—Uxbridge is a good bill. It is worthy of support. We commend him for the work he has done and for encouraging us as a parliament to continue to work on this very important issue.