Mr. Speaker, the correction is accepted.
The leader of our party, the member for Toronto—Danforth, came to Sault Ste. Marie. The people of Sault Ste. Marie know that if they want something done in this place, they talk to the leader of the NDP, the member for Toronto—Danforth and his 18 colleagues in this place because they know that we will get something done.
We were the only party whose members had their noses to the grindstone. We came here day after day in the spring of this year. When everything was falling down around us and other parties were looking to their own benefit, we came here to actually get something done, to pass a budget with $4.6 billion for spending on programs for people and communities across this country, some of which we now see showing up in Bill C-66.
Our caucus will support sending the bill to committee where we will have a chance to make some amendments and work with all of the parties to see if we can make the bill better. There are some things in the bill that will help a few people. It will not help the large majority of people who will need relief this winter from the cost of fuel for heating their homes, for driving their trucks and operating their machinery, to do their business, to participate in industry and to drive their vehicles to school or to pick up groceries. In particular in northern and rural Canada, people need fuel to live, to do the things they do on a daily basis.
There is some money for a very important group in our society, those at the very low end of the spectrum. Seniors who collect the GIS and poor families with children who collect the child tax benefit supplement will get money out of this. However, there are a whole host of others, low income, middle class, lower middle class, hard-working men and women who will not benefit one little bit from the bill. That is tragic.
The folks who came to our town hall meeting the other night in Sault Ste. Marie were the truckers, the farmers, the seniors, the small business people represented by the Chamber of Commerce, and the low income people in my riding. The union hall in Sault Ste. Marie was full.
The leader of our party and I listened to people as they told us of the impact of the horrendously high rise in the cost of fuel, particularly over the Labour Day weekend and what that did to their ability to make ends meet, their ability to participate in the economy, in the industry that we all know we need to be supporting if we are to have a good economy, jobs and a future in northern and rural Canada.
That night they said that government has to get tough with the industry. That is not what the bill is about. Yet again, the taxpayers, the men and women across this country, are subsidizing an industry that is actually doing quite well, thanks very much. It is making record profits these days as the price of fuel goes up. While people are hurting, it is taking advantage of natural disasters to pad its own bottom line, to pad its own profit margin and to do better than it has ever done before.
The oil industry knows about this contribution that will be made to some people. Money will be spent on retrofitting homes and buildings across the country. Money will be spent in other ways to help in this very difficult time when it comes to the cost of fuel. That money will come from general revenues in Ottawa, the tax base, to yet again subsidize an industry that really does not need to be subsidized. That industry needs to be challenged.
It needs to be met strength to strength, face to face, at a table where the government has the power to actually do something. The government must have the power to challenge it and make it do something, to at the very least have it justify the cost of fuel, the price that it is putting on fuel, or to do at the very least what the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives did very quickly. It was not rocket science. It did not take forever and it did not cost a fortune.
The centre did a quick and dirty study to indicate, for example, that while the price of crude oil has gone up and the centre's calculations find a 7% to 9% per litre increase, which would have matched the crude oil price increase, the 15¢ increase that the industry put on the cost of fuel for us is profiteering, as far as the centre is concerned. The 40% increase that we were all paying over the Labour Day weekend was just plain gouging, according to the centre.
If an organization like the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives can very quickly do that analysis, do the math and present the reality to us in that fashion, why can the government not do that? Why can it not challenge this industry and let it know that it is not acceptable to profiteer or to gouge in the market that we all support in this country today?
According to Hugh Mackenzie, who did this report, a reasonable price for gas in Ontario would be around 95¢ per litre. A 10¢ per litre difference may not sound like much, but every penny per litre generates an additional $2.5 million for the industry every day.