Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to have this opportunity to speak to my Bloc colleague's motion. This is one of those issues that is a true intersection of government and business. It speaks directly to the interests of many Canadians in their day to day lives. Many times in the House we absorb ourselves in debates about which Canadians may find themselves confused and searching for relevance, but this one clearly speaks directly to the interests of Canadians.
I would like to take the debate in a direction that is slightly different from much of what has gone on here this morning. It feels to me that this is a representation of intent and purpose in what vision the government may or may not have, both for Canadian consumers and the environment in particular.
We see a striking inequity taking place when we look to the oil and gas sector and Canadians hear of record profits. There is a responsibility that governments hold. There is a responsibility that the business community holds. Sometimes they are in alignment, but sometimes they are at cross purposes.
The business community of course is meant to represent the interests of their shareholders and to maximize profits for those who have invested in companies. I do not begrudge them that and I expect them to pursue that effort at all times. The effort might take place over a 20 year period or through the next quarter or the next shareholders' meeting, but the maximization of those profits is what shareholders demand and what they expect of their boards of directors, if the companies are constituted that way.
The responsibility of government at times is in line with this to allow for competitiveness and a strong economy, although I have heard comments about a multiplier effect of the tar sands jobs of one to 300 or more. In my experience in this place and having run businesses before, I have never heard of such a multiplier effect. It seems absolutely astronomical. I would be very much interested in the source of such job creation. It seems incredible.
I speak to Canadians about this issue. We see companies achieving extraordinary profits, by their own terminology. We saw that in the wake of Katrina companies came forward to acknowledge that the profits had been beyond anything they had seen before, setting record after record after record. So be it. In order to achieve that, part of what was created was a regulatory environment, a taxation environment, that in part allowed them to pursue their interests of profit maximization. I say congratulations.
At the same time, we have a government making choices year in and year out to take taxpayer dollars that Canadians earn every day in order to allow the government to follow through on its intentions. Taxpayers' dollars worth $1.5 billion or more are arriving in direct subsidies to the tar sands at a time when those companies seem least in need of such subsidies.
One can understand this if an industry is in great distress or is at the formation stage of a new development and the market needs signals from the government of the day that it will encourage the marketplace and wishes to pursue greater profitability. But to have this continue to go on year in and year out while at the same time companies are making so much money seems, at the very basis, an inequity to Canadians. How can there be any sense of justice or fairness?
I can understand the government's reasons. We heard the Minister of Natural Resources this morning decrying any suggestion of, heaven forbid, having oversight of what happens with prices at the pump in particular. I can understand that from an ideological basis, and the boardrooms in Calgary are singing those praises, but at the same time, the government must always maintain its central principle, which is to defend the rights and interests of those they represent. Those are both social and economic rights.
In this case it is around the competitiveness of our own market, outside, if for a moment we can take a gander beyond the oil sands and the big oil companies in this country. I represent an area that does not have any such production, as do the majority of MPs in this place. The small business operators in my area of northwestern British Columbia, in particular the logging truck drivers, are almost donating their time when they work these days, because the prices they pay have risen so dramatically and the industry has been restructured to such a point that the drivers are themselves picking up any cost overruns.
At this point the government must look at what is happening to what has become an essential commodity for Canadian businesses. It must ask if we are doing right by these small and medium business owners in our country. I would suggest that we are not.
It is incredible, and humorous if it were not so sad, to hear the environment minister day after day in this place talk about the environmental efficiencies and energy efficiencies called for under the Kyoto protocol and climate change protocols around the world. She said that to increase and improve the efficiency of our energy sector and our energy economy would be the equivalent of taking every plane out of the sky and every car off the road. Such hyperbole would be laughable if it were not sad. To suggest that cutting a program that helps Canadians reduce their dependence on oil, gas and electricity like the EnerGuide program did, is somehow intelligent and efficient for the Canadian economy and for taxpayers is irresponsibility at its most fundamental level.
The minister stood in this House and suggested the reason for its cancellation was that half of the program dollars were going to bureaucrats. The next day the deputy minister, who obviously is somewhat familiar with the file, mentioned the figure of 12¢ on the dollar. We still have not heard an apology from the minister for that incorrect assertion.
If the government is going to cut a program such as that one, it seems to be irresponsible not to put forward a vision for its replacement. If the government is not going to follow the Kyoto protocol, then it should put forward a replacement and encourage the competitiveness of this economy on a global scale.
When I drive around my riding in northwestern British Columbia, which admittedly is very large, within 400 kilometres and three to four hours, the price of gas can change by as much as 15¢ a litre. This is somehow held up as a competitive market.
I can recall a very interesting moment just as hurricane Katrina was hitting. In southwestern Ontario one of the marketers made a mistake at the pump and set the price at $1.70 a litre. He had incorrectly interpreted a fax that had come through his office. What was the response of the local market? They immediately drove all their prices up to $1.70 a litre, and when asked, they said that clearly it was because of Katrina.
We have to have an independent arm's length organization in this country that defends not the rights of the boardrooms of Calgary, but the rights of consumers on a day to day basis.
We must look toward the future and what this country must become. George Bush in the United States has said that Americans must break their addiction to oil, which is quite a striking and difficult thing for an oil man from Texas to say. Yet in this country, one of the first acts the Minister of Natural Resources did upon entering cabinet was to suggest that we need to drill for offshore oil and gas in the most environmentally contentious place in this country, off the west coast of British Columbia. He knows full well there is rampant and strong opposition to such an act. His energy vision for the future is to get that offshore oil and gas, which the vast majority of people who live in that area do not want us to do.
In order for this country to truly enter into this millennium, which I do not think it has in terms of the policies of the current government or the previous government when it comes to energy, it will require a fundamental shift. For years we have heard the auditor of this country say, and I will repeat the phrase because it is an important and fundamental one, that ecological fiscal reform allows the use of the taxation system to promote those values and ideas that we actually want to see: energy efficiency and greener energy production.
This makes sense for the very same reasons that we were able to create the tar sands and the oil sands production in the first place. The government lined up the taxation system, its policy regime and its clear intention to the marketplace in order to create what has become a boon for the tax coffers and private industry and that is what enabled the tar sands to exist in the first place. It would not have been created if government had not taken any kind of a lead.
If the government took a green and progressive approach to energy use in this country with the same energy and initiative that was taken into the tar sands, imagine what this country truly could become. We could stand on the international stage with pride rather than embarrassment and address the world as a progressive player on the energy file.