Madam Speaker, in listening to the hon. member, I could not help but note that she said “We in government are responsible”. Never have truer words been spoken. From what we have heard, the government's big concern, if there is a tax reduction, is where it will go, to the consumer or to the rich oil companies.
I want to remind the government of the figures that I used in my speech earlier on. These are the facts. Over an 18 year period the price of the gas component of gas taxes has gone down 25% in real dollars. The price of the excise tax component, or the total tax component of the price of gas, not just federal but all governments, has gone up 57%. These are not Canadian Alliance facts, they are Statistics Canada facts. When the member says “We in government are responsible”, those facts certainly support what she says.
I would also like the member to comment on the fact that not only has the hon. member for Pickering—Ajax—Uxbridge, who is sitting beside her, been on a task force, but so has the hon. member for Ottawa Centre, who spoke earlier. He was on a 1990 all-Liberal task force while in opposition studying municipal infrastructure. That task force recommended that there be a dedicated commitment of fuel tax revenues to highway infrastructure, a commitment that suddenly slipped out of the Liberals' minds when they became the government.
Therefore, the real question is not whether can we trust the oil companies but whether we can trust the government.