Madam Speaker, I was not intending to speak on this matter, but there has been such good debate and provocative ideas presented that I could not resist it.
I picked up some of my Liberal friend's comments which I found very interesting. I give him credit for standing up and not just taking the party line. He gave a fairly damning indictment about competition law in the country saying that it was ineffective, that it was geared against the consumer and that we really did not have competition. He alluded to the U.S. and how good things were there, how much better the consumer was served, how much better the prices were and that it had good competition.
I would invite the government to look across the border at the U.S. competition law and policies and then bring forth legislation in the House that would create a more competitive economy in the country to better serve our consumers. I thank him for pointing this matter out. This has to be heard by other people on the other side of the House, and I give him credit for raising this point.
For people my age in Saskatchewan and Alberta, who I believe are thinking people and can remember things, if they are depressed today, the word Petro-Canada is not like Prozac. It does not have good vibes in my part of the country. It brings back bad memories about a thing called the national energy plan.
My New Democrat friends do something that I have seen very few people do in my lifetime. They are good at forecasting the future, or they think they are. Lenin and Marx predicted the future, and there were a whole slew of socialist thinkers after that time who projected the future of civilization. I would like to know which one has actually predicted the future accurately. I think just about every one of them totally struck out.
Back in the 1970s when we brought in Petro-Canada, the prime minister was worried about the $100 per barrel oil price. The energy minister at that time talked about the same thing, that the invisible hand of the market would bring prices up that high and Canadians had to be protected. The NDP members at that time were the government's cheerleaders. They said the government was right, that they could see the future. We have not seen $80 per barrel oil prices and we have not seen $100 per barrel oil prices.
Something else concerns me. There is an aspect of the bill with which I have a good deal of difficulty. There are a lot of restrictions on the shares and the ownership of these shares. I do not buy fuel from Petro-Canada. It is a matter of principle with me because I am one of those people who remembers the experience from the 1970s. However I drive by every once in a while to check Petro-Canada's prices. Believe me it is the same price as Shell, Imperial Oil, the Co-op and other competitors in the marketplace. If I and my learned friends over there were somehow going to get a benefit ownership, I have not seen it.
There was much lamenting about how the oil industry gouged the economy with excessive pricing. I would suggest to most folks in the House that if we got rid of the wellhead price, the royalty structure, the excise tax on fuel and so on we would probably see an instant 50% plus reduction in the price. If there are any benefactors out of increased energy prices in this economy, it is the provincial and federal governments.
I would suggest to the members from Saskatchewan who spoke earlier that if oil and energy prices were not at the levels they are today their NDP government in Saskatchewan would have an enormous problem trying to balance the books. It is about the only thing in that province these days that pays the bills.
I am amazed that the member for Palliser would say that we should go back to a two price, made in Canada price. Was he actually saying that we should price 15% to 20% of Saskatchewan's oil and energy for Ontario, Quebec and other regions of the country at a dramatically lower rate than what we would for an export price to the U.S.? I would find it very surprising if people in Saskatchewan would accept that as good logic.
I want to raise a few comments about the share structure. I am trying to figure out why they would have a restriction that nobody could own shares in excess of 15% or 20% or whatever the amount is. I have a lot of problems with that. In my view Petro-Canada is no different than Shell or any other oil company. They are in the marketplace and are privately held companies. Why does the government want this restriction in the bill?
The auditor general commented that a lot of our crown corporations and government owned operations were vehicles to appoint unqualified people to important positions. Many of them are not doing a very good job. I would say the government does not want to lose control of Petro-Canada because it wants to retain the ability to appoint people to the board of directors. It is one of those plums that it still has and it does not want to give it up. That is one explanation why it would be that way.
It was mentioned that the share price of Petro-Canada is $36 a share. If my math is right, if those shares were sold at $36 a share that would be $1.8 billion. If that was paid on our national debt that would mean we would save about $136 million every year on interest charges. That would go right to the bottom line of this national federal government.
This money could be used to build highways or buy MRI machines for Saskatchewan. Saskatchewan does not really have many MRIs. It could be used to help children. As my learned friend with the Liberals mentioned, maybe we could do what Mike Harris did in Ontario and pay that money back to the taxpayer in the form of a dividend.
I am glad some of the Liberal members are starting to learn that some of the things Mike Harris is doing in Ontario are all right. There is one over there that is not in agreement with the proposal of her fellow colleague but he was quite bullish on that. I want to point that matter out.
If these restrictions were removed from the shares and these shares could be freely traded, maybe we would be talking about $45 a share. Then we could be looking at $2.5 billion or $3 billion on these things. These restrictions diminish the value of those shares.
What about the head office being in Ottawa? I think that even lawyers who graduated from law school with a D average could find a way to get around that loophole. They could hire one secretary, put a telephone in that office, put up a sign saying head office and that would qualify. I really do not know where this sort of thing comes from. If anyone thinks about this seriously, this could be a way of maintaining some sort of Canadian control. We have too much of this. We have the same sort of problem with Air Canada with that sort of thing in legislation. It is another restriction on ownership. It is about politics and not good business.
I have a few more comments about the province of Saskatchewan. Much was said about our crown corporations. I want to bring up one matter which is Wascana Energy, a crown corporation owned by the New Democratic government. Some Canadian owned companies in Calgary tried to purchase that company. The premier and his cabinet did not want to give up ownership of the company and opposed it. A year or so later, lo and behold they sold it to Occidental Petroleum, an American corporation out of California. Guess who sits on the board of directors of Occidental Petroleum? Allan Blakeney. He lost his socialist past and is part of that corporate agenda.
A couple of other crown corporation ownerships in Saskatchewan were used to balance the budget in that province. Believe it or not the NDP government sold its shares in Cameco and applied it to the public debt. That is amazing.
The Saskatchewan government owned shares in the Potash Corporation of Saskatchewan and sold those. It owned a big stake in the heavy oil operator at Lloydminster. Guess what the NDP government did with its shares? It did what Mike Harris or Ralph Klein might have done and sold them. Then its government members went around Canada and said they were good fiscal conservatives. I am not going to disagree with them. That is good fiscal conservatism.
However I find all these comments about the Saskatchewan family of crown corporations rather strange. I also find it strange that a member from Saskatchewan would talk about returning us to the national energy program where Saskatchewan would sell its oil to other Canadians at well below market prices. I wonder how the premier of that province would balance his books? He would probably come to Ottawa, ask the Prime Minister to give the province more money because it had a shortfall in its budget and needed more financial assistance. I find a lot of those comments hard to defend from a Saskatchewan perspective.
There is one last comment I would like to make. If atomic energy ever takes off, we will be the Saudi Arabia of the world in terms of atomic energy. There are a lot of interesting things on the go in atomic energy. South Africa has a interesting project with a 100 megawatt nuclear reactor, not a 1000 megawatt reactor, and it uses modern ISO standards of construction. If this ever catches on and is a safe way of delivering energy, Saskatchewan will be the place sitting on the energy in North America, not Alberta or Texas.
Saskatchewan is sitting on a great opportunity if it can find the technology to deliver atomic energy safely to consumers in North America. I do not think our governments should close the door to that.
We know coal and hydro are problems. We certainly know with some of the treaties of the problems with hydrocarbons and petroleum. Atomic energy is starting to look like it has some possibilities, especially with modern technology. Most of the nuclear industries we know use 1950 or 1960 technology in developing their plants. We have an opportunity to use much more advanced technology to develop high quality nuclear reactors today that could deliver clean energy to consumers in North America. We should be looking at that as an opportunity in the future.