Mr. Speaker, my biggest problem is with the oil companies. In Halifax oil tankers come in once every three months. In April the tankers came in and when the hurricane hit about six weeks later, the new price on the old stock kicked in, anywhere from 10¢ to 15¢ to 20¢ higher. If that is not price gouging, I do not know what is.
Representatives of the industry should be made to appear before a federal committee to justify any increases to their cost. That would be transparent. We do that with the provincial regulations in Nova Scotia. Prior to any increase to fuels, companies have to appear before a board to justify them.
If the government or anybody else truly wants to give an energy rebate to consumers to offset the high cost of energy, the simplest way to do that is to remove the GST or in Atlantic Canada the HST. If those taxes were removed from fuels and home heating energy, that would give an immediate dividend to all people who use fuel.
Would my colleague agree with that? Any other system will leave out a large amount of people. If this is truly an energy rebate, then we should do it for energy itself.