Mr. Speaker, the parliamentary secretary has put her finger on the right thing, but is not giving it the right interpretation.
How can she state that an objective study has been undertaken, when the organization carrying it out was the Conference Board of Canada, to which the oil and gas companies themselves belong?
Similarly, as far as the matter of a competitive market goes, we agree there must be one. But when, in an industry like the oil and gas industry, there is a maximum of five or six actors who decide to raise prices at the same time—as everyone has seen in their own home town—when all gas stations change their prices at the same time, does this constitute an acceptable competitive market?
Finally, the competition commissioner himself has acknowledged in committee that the law did not have the teeth needed for carrying out studies that are not quasi-judiciary. Such studies require evidence of equivalent quality to that required in court to establish guilt.
In this case—and the minister has acknowledged this himself, since he is carrying out a study at the moment on it—ought not the Competition Act to confer sufficient powers on the competition commissioner to allow this type of study to be carried out and the matter settled for once and for all? This would mean that, in future, it would be possible to prevent refinery profits from being absolutely overinflated in comparison to what the market reality ought to be.