Madam Speaker, I am glad that we are having this important debate. This definitely is the issue that has rocked Canada over this past summer. All of our constituency offices had had our phones ringing off the wall and our phones at home are ringing with people concerned about the rising fuel costs. We are hearing a lot about future possibilities but people want relief right now.
I represent a rural riding. Contrary to what the hon. member over there was saying about his urban industrial area, there is no doubt that the people who are feeling the pinch the hardest right now are rural Canadians. People in rural ridings have the farthest to travel to get to work and to school. Our school boards are now dealing with a huge increase in costs to run their buses in rural ridings. In some cases it is adding on over $50,000 to their operating budget which they did not budget for and which they do not have. They cannot go back this year to the municipalities and ask for more money and to increase the mill rate retrospectively. They have to deal with the problems right now. Rural Canadians, such as the farmers and the truckers, are the ones who are really taking the hit here. There is a cumulative effect here that all comes down to the consumer and we have to offer some relief right now.
We have the GST which is excessive right now. We are only talking about a few pennies a litre right now but that type of relief put back into the economy and into the people's hands would have a lot more benefit.
The one thing that we have always adhered to as kind of a policy in government is that we should not be taxing food production. Most provinces already recognize that when we are producing food the provincial excise taxes are exempt from that fuel. It is time that we started considering maybe doing that at the federal level for people who use farm fuels because we do not want our food to have that excessive tax built into it.
I would like to hear some of these types of comments coming out tonight, something that we can do immediately as government, to offer some relief to industry, to farmers, to rural Canadians and to consumers so that the cumulative effect is negated as much as possible.
There is no doubt that this is a world market price spike that we are seeing. As somebody who is in farming and who has been in business, sometimes we get to enjoy those price spikes as well but there are also downturns in industry. There is no doubt that the oil and gas sector has gone through downturns as well. It was not that long ago that the price was selling at below cost production when it was sitting around 45¢ to 50¢ a litre.
Even though things are up, let us talk about some real advantages. Tax rebates to low income and fixed income Canadians with huge heating bills this winter is another way that we can deal with it. Let us talk about what we can do as government right now and that is in how we design our taxation and those policies for Canadians. That is the type of information I think Canadians want to hear coming from this place.