Mr. Speaker, I too am pleased to take part in this important but I would suggest relatively simplistic debate today. The motion before us talks about a portion of the oil profits.
Canadians have a difficult time digesting the oil situation, the cost of gasoline at the pumps and the cost of home heating fuel. They know that taxes form a small component in this regard. However if we were to ask Canadians their concerns with regard to the reality of the prices, we would be told that they are twofold. Well ahead of taxes is the oil cartel, the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries. The second concern would be the high, obscene profits enjoyed by Canadian oil companies about which we will talk a bit later.
Those numbers in any public domain polling are far higher than the component of gasoline but they are not mentioned. Gasoline profits are not mentioned in the resolution before us this morning. In fact the reform alliance party never mentions this topic, obviously because it does not want to offend its friends in the oil patch in Alberta when the newly crowned leader of the party is looking to sell tables at $25,000 a pop or when he is meeting or has met with the Conseil du patronat and he identifies himself with the business community. I am splitting my time with the member for Kamloops, Thompson and Highland Valleys.
I was looking back this morning in preparation for this speech and I noted that there were 75 sitting days between February and June in the House of Commons. On any given day the reform alliance had an opportunity to ask about 19 questions. If my math is correct, and it may be suspect, that is about 1,425 opportunities.
How many questions were there on gasoline pricing? None, nada, zero, nothing, except to repeat the lines of the big oil companies. If we are not prepared to talk about oil profits and we are not prepared to talk about OPEC, we are not really dealing with the heart of the matter. I think Canadians understand that especially when they see that gas company profits for the last quarter have jumped by an average of $558 million or a percentage increase year over year for the second quarter of 2000 of over 500%.
Someone who has talked a lot about this topic in the House of Commons this year is my colleague, the member for Regina—Lumsden—Lake Centre. He has been indefatigable on the subject of fuel costs since arriving in the House some seven years ago. In fact 10 times in the past year he has had specific questions for the Minister of Natural Resources and other ministers on the subject of gasoline pricing.
He has warned the House that oil companies have driven down their inventories on home heating fuel by some 39% since last year and that the result inevitably will be sharply higher heating bills this fall. He has asked the Minister of Natural Resources to organize or arrange a summit with the oil companies and to put a plan into place. There is no hint of that in the motion before us today.
The member for Regina—Lumsden—Lake Centre has private member's Bill C-488 calling for an energy prices commission, something that the member for Regina—Qu'Appelle was asking about earlier in this debate. It is an energy summit to make the oil companies accountable for their actions. Because energy is the underpinning of our economy it is vital in a geographically dispersed country such as ours.
Energy price shocks have triggered rounds of inflation before that have ultimately put many Canadians out of work and have driven up the cost of living for everyone. Surely, if we accept the regulation of freight rates, drug pricing, stamps and cable TV, it is not out of line to consider regulating the price of a key commodity and economic input like energy that is used by virtually every Canadian family.
The member's private member's bill seeks to avoid unreasonable increases. On that topic, it was instructive for me, as my colleague from Winnipeg Centre mentioned earlier in the debate, that Prince Edward Island is one province that has some form of an energy review commission.
When I was there earlier this year I noticed that not only were prices lower in P.E.I. than they seemed to be in other parts of the country but what was even more interesting was that the spread between premium and regular gasoline was about 4 cents a litre as opposed to the 9 cents or 10 cents a litre that the rest of us pay. When I asked an official at Petro-Canada about it some time ago he just dismissed it and said “That is our profit margin and we are not going to touch it”.
For those of us who are old enough to remember when it was sold in gallons rather than litres, the price spread was not anything like a 40 or 50 cents a gallon difference between premium and regular fuel.
Something else is noteworthy and could be done. When the energy price shock first hit after the Arab-Israeli war in the early seventies many Canadian provinces, perhaps all of them, implemented a program whereby there was no price increase. If the cost of a barrel of oil went up, they determined that there was a 60 day supply in the line and that no price increase could therefore take place at the pumps prior to 60 days. It seems to me that would be useful and worth exploring by the government.
As an aside, I am sure I would have the support of the hon. member from Labrador opposite who I recall was most upset last year about a tanker on its way up to Labrador in September filled with home heating fuel. The price was jumped while the tanker was in transit. Even though they had paid one price, they were to reap a windfall profit from the good folks in Labrador when it got to port.
Bill C-488 would reduce the risk of collusion by involving the Competition Act. We feel that the government has refused to take appropriate action and obviously the reform alliance has moved this motion on pricing—