Yes, the fact is that we are in a minority Parliament and we have the fourth party in this place continuing to run as a coalition with the government. It is most astounding. We have the NDP continuing to prop up the Liberals under any excuse, in any disguise and for any manufactured reason. All of this is an insult to representative so-called democracy.
With that, I will talk about Bill C-66, if I may. Bill C-66 is another example of legislation inspired by a crisis. The crisis of course was the run-up in prices at the pump. The crisis was the fact that natural gas has gone from $2 per unit to about $13 per unit for Canadian consumers, based on a government that cannot get its act together in terms of an energy framework or strategy for the country.
We have constrained supply because we do not have our northern pipelines sorted out, and with these guys in charge, we are not going to get our northern pipelines in order on any kind of timely basis. What we had was a price at the pumps that led to a huge spike as a consequence of some shortages due to hurricane season and hurricane Katrina and all of that.
Parliament was set to resume sitting in the last week of September. We received a request from the government chair of the Standing Committee on Industry, Natural Resources, Science and Technology to have an emergency meeting on September 22, in order to have a televised discourse with witnesses on what to do about fuel prices.
I wanted ministers to take part in that meeting because ministers more than anyone else in this place can influence what happens. There was not a single minister whom I suggested who could or would make the commitment to appear on September 22. Many committee members were inconvenienced, especially the ones who had to come from farthest away to arrive in Ottawa on a Thursday. We had to change all our plans. Those days were important for members of Parliament prior to returning to Parliament after the summer break. That is when many constituents are back in their regular duties and it is a good time for members to carry out their functions.
September 22 turned out to be the day hurricane Katrina was hurtling toward the southern gulf coast in the U.S. At that meeting we witnessed government members finding every reason in the book to point fingers. They thought up inventive ways of suggesting that it was a conspiracy that did not involve the government, that it was because of the oil companies or some other factor that the prices were ridiculously high on that very day, and of course they were because it was a one week event.
The real crux of the issue is what has the government been doing? Where is it headed when it comes to taxation issues surrounding what Canadian consumers pay at the pump, or for heating oil or natural gas? Let us not forget industries such as the air transportation sector, the trucking sector and agriculture and resource industries that use huge amounts of fuel as part of their input costs. What is the government's approach to all of this, other than doing everything possible to protect maximum extraction of tax revenues to the detriment of consumers of every stripe?
We heard witnesses from the finance department. They did not act like witnesses from the finance department. What became very clear is that this announcement comes to a very small portion of government revenues. The portion is so small that the finance department officials said if that same amount of money was reflected in a tax decrease, it would be insignificant.
The government is still protecting its revenue sources. The government still has no strategy on how it is going to deal with all of this. The government takes this revenue, puts it into general revenues and returns 2¢ on the dollar for highway infrastructure. It blatantly transfers a very small amount to the municipalities with the future promise, which the Conservative Party is also committed to, of eventually getting to 5¢ a litre.