Mr. Speaker, I am very glad to be able to join the debate on Bill C-3. I am probably one of those people who the member for Prince Albert was talking about. I firmly believe the federal government has not just a role but an obligation to try to ensure that Canadians have good access to affordable energy, especially in our harsh winter climate. Energy is not a luxury commodity it is a necessary commodity.
Something that is our birthright, something that is our common wealth, something that is part of our Canadian heritage should be accessible to Canadians at a preferential price than we sell it offshore. I am proud to say that on behalf of Canadians.
Many Canadians, especially people in my riding, have phoned me and asked for help, for some relief, for the federal government to stop being so impotent when it comes to giving them access to affordable energy. They are asking why it cannot be that way. They sent us here to represent their interests. This winter their interests or needs were better access to affordable energy because they thought they were being gouged, ripped off and cheated by big oil.
There was a time when Canadians collectively decided to try to take steps to represent their interests when it came to energy. That is when people with more vision apparently than those who occupy the House today came up with the idea that perhaps we should not have our entire energy industry foreign owned and foreign controlled because we do not know when we are being gouged or overcharged.
They did not say, as the hon. member for Prince Albert was trying to imply, that we should nationalize the whole industry. They did not come on that strong. They said we should have one oil company, a watchdog, a window on the industry. We would be part of the industry and we would have one company owned by the people of Canada, not owned by the Liberal government.
What is wrong with that idea? What is it about that idea that so frightens small minded people? The hon. member also tried to imply that crown corporations are owned by the party in power. I get tired about hearing about it.
It is very fitting, timely and appropriate that we are having this debate today because I think energy is a top of mind issue for most Canadians. Certainly judging from the calls I have received in recent months, frankly this past winter, Canadians are very concerned about a constant and reliable supply of clean, affordable energy.
I am mostly concerned about the homeowners who live in my riding. They are my primary concern, but small businesses, schools, hospitals, institutions and non-profit organizations are reeling with shock and horror at what is happening to their operating costs, for seemingly no rhyme or reason. Seemingly arbitrary skyrocketing prices in energy are what infuriates Canadians the most. That is why recently people such as me in my private member's bill have been advocating some kind of government intervention, some kind of regulation, no matter what form it takes.
If it bothers the hon. member for Prince Albert so much, we will not call it a national energy program. That seems to irritate him. It seems to set him off. We do not want to provoke him and make him any more hostile than he already is, so we will call it something else. Let us call it an energy price commission. There is a good moderate sort of phrase. It would not have broad sweeping powers to nationalize every oil industry.
All we are saying is we want some stability and some regulations. If we had an arm's length energy price commission, the oil companies would have to come, whether producers or retailers, to that commission and justify why they deserve a rate increase, a hike.
We would not let it happen every long week. Perhaps twice a year or perhaps every six months, they could come before that panel and argue the merits of their case as to why they deserve an energy price increase and then that would be it. If it were justifiable, the people of Canada would know the rationale and they would not feel so gouged, cheated and ripped off as they do today.
The hon. member who spoke previously can call that whatever he wants. I call it a good idea. I call it advocating on behalf of Canadians. It is not just the NDP that seems to think that way. The Government of Newfoundland introduced such a thing a short two months ago. We have been talking about it all winter. I am sure it was not our initiative that gave it the idea. It actually learned it from the Government of Prince Edward Island because it had been doing that for 40 years.
The Government of Prince Edward Island had the common sense to represent the interests of its own people and put the interests of its citizens before the interests of big oil. It could stand up on its hind legs and stand up to big oil. Now Newfoundland has followed. Perhaps now it does not sound like such a crazy idea to the small minded people who are afraid of that concept. Canadians would be proud of us if they could hear a debate in the House in which we represent their interests and not the interests of big oil.
We have heard a lot about energy pricing today. I should like to raise another element. The member for Pickering—Ajax—Uxbridge talked about the real costs of margins from the producer to the refiner. I should like to talk about the whole cost of energy.
We have to start viewing energy pricing. We have to look at the whole cost of burning fossil fuels. When we look at the whole cost of oil as a fossil fuel it is amazing. It is not the $12 a barrel that it costs to produce a barrel of oil in the tar sands. It is not the $28 a barrel that we are charged by OPEC. It is more like $150 a barrel when the cost of the American military to keep the gulf shipping lanes open is factored in. When the environmental degradation that takes place every time we burn a litre of fossil fuels is factored in, that is the whole cost.
When it is viewed that way all other sources of alternative energy such as solar power or wind power seem like a bargain by comparison. Demand side management becomes the logical choice. Instead of trying to find ways to get cheaper access to fossil fuels and soiling our own nests to the point where we cannot live on the planet for very much longer if we carry on, we should be looking at ways to enjoy the same quality of life or even an improved quality of life using less and less energy.
Canada should be a centre of excellence in demand side management. Obviously we have needs that most countries do not have in terms of a harsh winter climate. We should be experts in the field of doing more with less. I certainly advocate that as being the direction we should go.
To meet the actual immediate needs of Canadians I believe there is a role for government to play in intervening to represent the interests of Canadian citizens before the interests of oil companies. The idea of a national energy program should not be frightening. It should not be met with such fear and trepidation. It is not a two headed monster. It is looking after people's interests.
The only real thing that we have seen the government try to do to recognize the plight of Canadians this last winter was the gas rebate, the home heating rebate program. I received a phone call from a person in Cambridge Bay, Nunavut. I do not know how he got my number. It is not in my riding, but the argument was the rebate system was flawed and that we should think about what it does to northerners. Northerners make higher salaries because of the increased cost of living. Nobody in Cambridge Bay, Nunavut, got the $125 because none of them were at the low income cutoff line that we see in most cities.
Even though they have $500 and $600 per month home heating bills in Cambridge Bay, Nunavut, nobody was getting the rebate. The rebate of $125 would heat their houses for one week but they did not get a penny. It was getting so bad that the home heating retailer would not give credit any more. People had to show up with cash on the barrelhead to purchase a barrel of home heating oil because he was concerned that they simply would not be paying those bills because they did not have the money. That is the kind of crisis we are facing when we do not intervene on people's behalf.
We have heard a great deal about energy supply and energy strategies. Now we are starting to hear about a continental energy strategy, that George Bush has a vision of being able to tap into the resources of the whole hemisphere. We heard recently he now plans to open up the natural gas fields in Alaska, causing the need for the Mackenzie Valley pipeline or a pipeline like it to run down through Yukon or through Alaska into the southern states.
I can see why he is interested. There is 33 trillion cubic feet of natural gas in that one natural gas field. It seems like an astronomical number until we consider that every year the United States uses 22 trillion cubic feet of natural gas. He is going to open up the north and arguably, although I think the argument is pretty good, it will do serious environmental damage to Canada with the Mackenzie Valley pipeline that has been studied to death. There is no way to build this pipeline without serious interference with the flora and fauna of the Yukon territory so that the United States can have natural gas for one and a half years. He will do all that damage for one and a half years of natural gas.
This is staggering to me. It is probably the best and most graphic illustration I can find to make the point that we cannot continue to do what we are doing. The jig is up in terms of energy consumption in North America.
David Suzuki had a good statistic recently. He said that for everyone in all the developing nations to live with the same level of energy use as we live with in Canada today, we would need six more planets. There are not enough resources on this planet for everyone in China to have 2.2 vehicles in the garage, an outboard motor and all other things we use energy for. There simply is not enough. There simply would not be enough air to breathe if we were fuelling that many vehicles.
We need to take a sensible approach to an energy strategy. I would argue that our energy price commission would comment on alternative forms of energy. This would not only help set the price of energy and the length of time at which those prices would be fixed, but it would also promote alternative sources of energy. It would promote Canada as a centre of excellence for alternative energy sources so that we could develop the technology and export it. This would benefit the planet instead of just flooding the world with more and more natural gas and oil.
If we used an interventionist hand or at least took a regulating role, the Government of Canada could not only benefit Canadians by better access to affordable energy but also benefit the world in terms of showing some vision and some recognition that what we are doing is wrong and sooner or later we need to wean ourself off fossil fuels.
In terms of being a fiercely proud Canadian nationalist, Bill C-3 seems like the death rattle of a national dream. I hearken back to a time when people in the Chamber had enough sense, foresight and political courage to take active steps to represent the interests of Canadian citizens before the interests of oil companies. That manifested itself in a national energy program, part of the strategy which had one oil company owned by the people of Canada so that we had a watchdog on the industry and a window into how the industry really operated.
That was a time of courage. That was an era when people had some vision and some political courage. That has been eroded and stripped away by the mania that everything must be deregulated, the free hand of the market must prevail and the government must not intervene whatsoever.
It has not served us well. It was the mantra of the Business Council on National Issues and groups acting out of self-interest and not the common good. We used to have people who were taking steps for the common good. What a concept.
I believe our precious natural resources are part of our common wealth. It is a term we also do not hear too often. Some of us feel strongly that the oil under our feet is part of the common wealth we all share as Canadian citizens. Our children should be proud of it and we should be able to feel secure about it.
One of the galling things is that we have now watched successive governments trade away our ability to intervene on behalf of Canadians when it comes to preferential pricing of energy products even though it is ours, is under our soil and we seem to have quite a bit of it. We have an abundance of natural gas.
I used to work on the oil rigs in Alberta. Every time we hit natural gas everybody would collectively curse under their breath because they did not want more gas. We would cap those wells off and move on to the next well. That is a fact. One cannot swing a cat in northern Alberta without hitting a capped off natural gas well. There is no shortage. There is a manufactured shortage if anything so prices can be jacked up.
Returning to my original point, there was a time in 1975 when men and women in this place with political courage, with vision and with a fierce national pride inspired whole generations.
I was a young man then and I was very proud of the fact that we were taking active steps to represent ourselves and make sure we did not lose whole industries to foreign ownership.
In fact, Liberals such as Walter Gordon and Paul Martin Sr. and people like them were against too much foreign ownership. They passed laws to regulate how much of our industry should be controlled by foreigners. Frankly we want the interests of Canadians to be put before the interests of others. That is only natural.
Why, then, would successive governments, the Tory government under Mulroney and now the Liberal government under the current leadership, trade away to our export market our ability to make sure Canadians have access to our precious energy resources at a preferential price? I call it economic treason when someone trades that away.