Mr. Speaker, I am delighted to hear the hon. member agree with me on the basic point of my speech, which is that we are taking moneys, normal tax revenues contributed by every Canadian who pays taxes, that could be used for education, environmental purposes, health or to pay down this terrible debt we are leaving our children, and we are helping poorer Canadians to meet the energy increases.
We are not taking it from those whose very profits have come from those poor Canadians as well as other middle class Canadians. That is the point. The oil industry has made a substantial profit. One senior executive told me that in his entire lifetime in the industry there has never been a year like it. He would not comment any further than that, and he was right. This has been a remarkable windfall year but we made no effort to take the excess profits, the windfall profits, which came, let us face it, largely out of the misery of hurricane Katrina. To profit from misery and disasters of that kind raises a major moral issue, and I think my hon. friend agrees with me.
In any event, if we are not going to do it from the government side, and I certainly have urged them to do so but I have failed to do that, I suggest we ask them to voluntarily to do it. They should make their own funds available for the impact of those dramatic spikes that have led to these enormous profits. It is ridiculous to say that they will use it up creating more energy sources, discovering more, expanding refineries, et cetera.
They have so much money. If we look at the Imperial Oil quarterly results and the results in the United States, which again, for the same company were astronomical, I think it was $8 billion. If we look at that kind of money we have to wonder why some of that has not been diverted to the people who need it. The government needs to answer that question. Why did it not do it through the tax system or why did it not call in the people, as I recommended to the Prime Minister, and tell them that this should be done?
I told the Prime Minister that this issue was about the unjust enrichment of the industry through the totally unearned price increases. The issue is the immorality of allowing the industry to benefit from the natural disaster of hurricane Katrina, from the misery of those affected and from the financial exploitation by the industry of gasoline consumers everywhere. That is the nub of what happened and that is why something should be done about it.