Mr. Speaker, I am only recently into this position so naturally I was not at that industry committee meeting, but I gather I might be receiving an invitation to appear. I can tell members that I will be very happy to do so and to offer my views on this subject.
When it comes to refineries, the industry minister just made comments about the need for sustainable return. In my remarks I mentioned that in the longer term, even though there were distortions because of the hurricanes, the world price of oil tends to move in lockstep with the price of gas.
I am not making accusations in my comments but, as both the Minister of Industry and I did say in our remarks, we do believe that there is a need for better monitoring of those prices, so Canadians can be assured of these facts and a need for greater transparency in terms of information regarding prices. This is something that we are working on at this time.
Regarding the rush to buy gas, perhaps the hon. member exaggerates a little the importance of his industry committee. My impression was that the panic had more to do with hurricane Rita and fears of what that might do to the oil refining capacity in the southern United States, which would be a large fraction of total oil produced in the U.S., than it did with anything that happened at the industry committee.