Madam Chairman, I will be sharing my time with the member for Churchill River. I have attended for two hours now. I am not as patient, of course, as the hon. minister for rural development, but I have sat many times very pensively watching his work and his deliberations. I applaud his efforts, not only for being here for all these very good and valued questions but also for being the first, I think, to deal with one of the more substantive issues that confront the House of Commons, usually in a very partisan and very confrontational way.
Tonight, my comments will deal with a subject that is perhaps a sort of hub of the major issues of the day concerning the energy sector and the market structure. We see now that oil prices have increased, although they have not reached $28 a barrel yet, and we also see prices at the pump of 80 cents a litre in Toronto and 90 cents in other areas such as in Quebec, and even a little higher, depending on tax variations.
I am concerned. I cannot for the life of me think of something that is more debilitating to bringing us together, under the question of not just our nation but of natural resources, and to overcoming the divide between rural and urban sectors in our economy than knowing that the people who produce the product—and knowing that there could be an abundance of jobs in those areas—are at the same time perhaps suspect on the part of those who are consuming the products at the other end.
Consumers across Canada, whether they be in rural or urban areas, quite often are subjected to very high prices for products. At the other end, of course, those who produce the products, whether they be miners or farmers or those who are working on the derricks in this country, will find that the price may be satisfactory. However, no one is making a whack of cash at the platform level and certainly jobs are being created there.
I say all of this in the context of the government's interest in the area of continental energy policy. I am perhaps borrowing from previous members of parliament and from one who is no doubt familiar, Madam Chairman, to you and to the Governor General, Ray Hnatyshyn. As a member from Saskatchewan, he said on the question of a continental energy policy that for Canada it is like swapping partners but with a bachelor.
Of course this creates some difficulty, because a lot of people would naturally assume that providing new opportunities for a hungry, thirsty energy deficient U.S. may on the surface appear to be an important way of ensuring that we are able to get other concessions from that country, particularly in areas that deal with natural resources, such as potatoes, agriculture and of course softwood lumber. We are at the same time perhaps risking the rise in energy costs to the extent that those energy costs may be prohibitive not to the Americans or to others within that continental arrangement, but more specifically to Canadians.
Today I would like to point out for members of parliament what I believe to be a rather interesting phenomenon that is occurring right across the country. People may be paying as much as 80 cents to 90 cents a litre for gasoline, yet crude is $10 less than it was six months ago. As I mentioned earlier, it was hovering at the $28 range. Six months ago it was near $36 or $38 and the price was averaging roughly 75 cents or 76 cents. What has changed is the market structure and the ability of those who process. Again, it is that big middle ground between the producer of the product and the consumer. Those who refine or transport or create this new product are able to take a lot more as a result of a lack of or a deficiency in competition.
There have been a number of excuses or reasons given. One which was been cited was short supply. Canada does not have a shortage of supply. Maybe there is the odd refinery that shuts down from the United States. However let me be very clear on the question of natural resources for all my colleagues here.
The excuse that is trotted out before winter is that it will be a cold winter therefore we will have low inventory. During the summer there are more people driving and therefore we have a low inventory. These are realities of our geography and climate in Canada. We have cold winters and warm summers.
However Canadians have experienced not only high prices for gasoline but for other energy products, more so than we have seen in many years. Of course that may be owing to the fact that we are already part of a continental arrangement where NAFTA has prevented us from keeping a supply. Perhaps that is not such a good thing. It certainly is not what I am advocating.
What I am concerned about is the ability to tack on an extra few cents. Today, when Canadians are reading about record profits being made by oil companies to the tune of almost $1 billion in the downstream alone in 12 short weeks, there is something seriously wrong with the transfer of wealth from the Canadian economy to the bottom lines of major oil companies.
I do not disagree for a moment that a continental policy which allows Canadian products to be refined and created here in Canada but produced and sold back to Canadians in U.S. prices is in itself a bad thing. Canadians and many members of parliament I am sure are not aware of the fact that it constitutes virtually 12 cents of a litre of gasoline.
I have some concerns about the object of a purposeful discussion on dealing with resources and making productive uses of them for all Canadians and for the international market. I do not think Canadians should volunteer themselves as international boy scouts and assume we should be looking in the other direction, saying that that is fine and that we can supply energy to other nations but that we are not looking after the interests of Canadians.
Today on April 24, 2001, it would appear to me that that is a very serious problem for Canadians. However I believe there also is a problem with the structure of the market. Those who control the product are in a position to also control and determine what the price is going to be.
If we control the infrastructure, if we control the pipelines, if we control the ability for the product to be refined, it is very conceivable that those who are producing, whether in the industries of agriculture or fishing or mining, will wind up with lower and lower prices.
This brings me to the issue of agriculture. It seems rather unfortunate that we simply are looking at the issue of agriculture from the perspective of depressed international crises. Most analysts are now looking at agriculture from a different perspective and that is to see that there are changes of concentration, dynamic, quick, evolving changes of concentration in the areas of processing and manufacturing to respond to the new realities of concentration at the retail sector in our economy, certainly as it relates to food.
For instance, although Wal-Mart does not have a large presence in terms of groceries in Canada, certainly the weight and the substantial size and power influenced by Loblaws, or Sobeys or by other smaller but nevertheless important regional players, such as Dominion and A&P, have an impact on artificially raising manufacturing costs and in turn take this out on farmers.
This is not just something that has been invented by this member of parliament at this time. Policy-makers and a lot of us do not want to enter into the more substantive and critical area of determining what the structural problems are with the industry.
If we are not prepared to accept that Canada has, perhaps more than other nations and certainly more than our trading partners, a much more concentrated market environment, we are inevitably going to find ourselves in a position where all the solutions we are looking for are really band-aids and very short term.
So I would plead with members of parliament that when we are dealing with the issue of natural resources, we look further than simply saying that these are industries that have to compete on the international market or that these are industries that have a similar product but the processes might be somewhat different. We must examine whether or not the markets in which those products are to be sold are already predetermined and precontrolled in which there is already a fixed or set price, which is harmful and detrimental to the competitive process but is also detrimental to the very people who are working day in and day out across Canada.
We are dealing with a dichotomy of people in rural areas, as I have heard from the minister, who are not making enough and who do not have jobs. We have heard about the mining sector and the agricultural sector. We heard about consumers who felt they were paying too much.
Let us start looking at what is in between and we can come to a much better understanding of the realities in the country. In the process hopefully debates like this will be more meaningful.