Madam Speaker, I listened with great interest to what my colleague had to say. He obviously has very special experience in the oil business. He made some very thoughtful remarks.
However, I am being approached all the time by citizens who feel that the price of gasoline is simply too high. It has gone up again and is projected to go up yet again during the summer. The people in my riding feel they are being jerked around by the oil companies, by OPEC or whatever.
The hon. member says there is no place for government in the oil industry, but one example of where the government has been very effective is the oil sands, or the tar sands as they used to be called.
I am told that the reserves in the oil sands are as great as the reserves in Saudi Arabia. Despite what was said by an NDP member earlier, I have also been told that the price per barrel now, as a result of government subsidy into research for methods of extracting the oil from the tar sands, is down around $12 or $13 a barrel. Yet OPEC is maintaining prices at $25 or $26 a barrel.
Would the hon. member comment on the roles of this government and previous governments in the development of the tar sands? How should we manage this resource, which is even larger than the resource he was tapping offshore, in the best interest of Canadians, particularly fixed income Canadians who are suffering at the present time from high gasoline and oil prices?