Mr. Speaker, as I indicated in my speech, out of a litre of gas that costs the consumer $1.33, only 16% is federal revenue. By his statement, I think the member agrees that we do not have a lot of room to play with, with the massive spikes we have seen, but the member should also know that six years ago the world price of a barrel of oil was $10. Today it is about $67. If we look at a graph of the price at the pump compared to the world price of a barrel of oil and follow it, we will see that it tracks very well.
The member has raised the issue, which I think most Canadians have also raised, that people just cannot believe it. The profits of the petroleum companies are up 500% over the last few years. How are they making so much money unless they are gouging us? There are these questions, yet we have had the Competition Bureau do these reviews and it has not been able to find any anti-competitive activity.
But I do know the only way we are going to improve the confidence level of Canadians in terms of making sure there is no anti-competitive activity going on is to give more teeth and more power to the Competition Bureau, such as triggering its own investigations, to make absolutely sure.
I have to tell the House that these corporations are blue chip stocks in the Canadian economy. They are held in virtually everybody's RRSP and in company pension plans, et cetera. I do not believe they would ever risk somehow taking money they should not have, but I think Canadians do. As a member I agree that Canadians want greater assurances and independent and frequent monitoring of the pricing mechanism to ensure that those spikes are due to real and unforeseen or uncontrolled activities.