Price-fixing, as the member yelled out. I think we should look at the facts on this.
They talked about the creation of a petroleum monitoring agency. The facts are that the Competition Bureau has investigated this six separate times since 1990 alone. Each and every time it found no collusion and no price fixing. The Conference Board of Canada recently investigated whether there was price fixing at the pumps or collusion and each and every time it found that there was none. Both of those agencies are independent.
Members from all sides of the House and from every party who sat on the House of Commons Standing Committee on Industry investigated this, not once but twice, and they found no price fixing and no collusion.
If the members opposite or anyone else in Canada want to bring forward a complaint they should bring forward evidence where they believe there is collusion or price-fixing and the Competition Bureau will investigate it because that is its job. Creating another level of bureaucracy, another monitoring agency, would only result in spending millions of dollars more of taxpayer money. How is that efficient?
I would remind members that all these investigations happened when the Liberal government was in power. It was under the Liberals' regime when there was no collusion. It was not a biased or partisan investigation.
There is no question that as consumers we will face challenges as the demand for gasoline and energy around the world increases but with those demands also come opportunities. Canada exports an enormous amount of energy and crude oil. The tax benefits that the government derives from this sector are what allow us to deliver our social programs and to have a strong economy.
Alberta alone exports something in the magnitude of $71 billion a year in energy. Most people do not realize that more tax dollars from the oil sands in Alberta, which is an important part of our economy right now, come to Ottawa than go to Edmonton. Those are facts and every Canadian right across Canada benefits from that.
What can we do as a government? We will do everything we can to try to stabilize it but at the end of the day the price of crude oil will be driven by global market forces. We either believe in free enterprise and a market-driven system or we do not. If the members opposite want to go back to a Pierre Trudeau national energy program because they think that would be good for the country, we fundamentally disagree. That is not where this government is going.
Other forces, which we do not have control over, also have an impact on the price at the pumps. We all saw it last year when Hurricane Katrina, a natural disaster, had a significant impact on the refinery capacity. The market fluctuates but Canada also had opportunities to pick up the diminished capacity. Those are the forces we must deal with.
We believe that putting a surtax on major oil companies is fundamentally the wrong way to go. We do not move toward command and control. We believe in the market-driven system. We want to work with industry and with our provincial counterparts to invest in these sectors with technology to ensure all Canadians can benefit.