Mr. Speaker, I want to ask my colleague a couple of questions to clarify some matters.
He seemed to question the validity of the figures that are available to us. As he correctly pointed out, it was in 1995 through program review that the current Prime Minister, then the finance minister, eliminated a lot of the functions within the Department of Natural Resources to examine gasoline prices. However, there are public companies, such as MJ Ervin & Associates, that publish the prices every day on the Internet. I was on the committee when we studied this issue. In fact none of the witnesses who appeared before us, even those who alleged collusion, questioned the validity of the figures put out by MJ Ervin & Associates.
I would like to get the member's comments. Does he accept the figures that are put out by MJ Ervin & Associates? Are those figures correct in his view, or are they wrong? Is that one reason he is proposing this motion?
Also, the Competition Bureau can already investigate these matters if it gets letters of complaint from six citizens. This seems to me to be a fairly low threshold. If he thinks that is not sufficient, and obviously he does, why then does he see that as insufficient?