Mr. Speaker, I must first inform you that I will be sharing my time with the hon. member for Jeanne-Le Ber.
Everywhere in my riding of Saint-Bruno—Saint-Hubert, people are saying that consumers really feel they are being taken for a ride by the oil companies. How is it that the price of gas can jump every Thursday, just before the weekend, only to come back down on Monday, when everyone goes back to work? We must absolutely find out what is going on behind closed doors.
That is also the intention of the Bloc Québécois motion here today. The Bloc presented this motion in order to shed some light on gas prices, which are constantly going up, while no one understands why and we are left to imagine the schemes behind these increases.
The motion reads:
That, in the opinion of the House, the government should move an amendment to the Competition Act so that the Commissioner of Competition have the power to initiate investigations of the price of gas and the role of refining margins in the determination of the said price.
As we all know, the price of gas results from adding the cost of four factors: the price of crude oil, the cost of refining, taxes and the retail margin. The concentration of refining activities during the 1990s caused an increase in prices. These increases are profitable to the oil companies, whose profits continue to grow astronomically. The public therefore has the right to know how these prices are calculated and, above all, what is behind the refining margin.
Prices are skyrocketing. Refining margins are three times too high. Oil companies are making obscene profits. Last week, the price at the pump for regular gas was $1.15, on average, in Quebec City. The average refining margin reached a record high at 23¢. That is three times too high, when we know that a profit of 5¢ to 7¢ is enough for the oil companies to earn a reasonable profit on refining. The price of petroleum products could remain high over the summer, especially since the cost of crude oil continues to rise.
The oil companies pocket the profits. There are six major oil companies in Canada: Imperial Oil, Petro-Canada, Husky Oil, EnCana, Suncor and Shell. These companies had record profits of almost $12 billion in 2006, a 25% increase over 2005 and a 70% increase compared to 2004. Is there collusion? It is impossible to say. However, the five major oil companies supply 90% of the gas sold in Canada and get along so well that they even supply one another.
Therefore the oil sector must be brought into line. The whole economy is threatened by the increase in value of a strategic resource. The Bloc Québécois believes that it is possible to limit, at least in part, price increases for gas and other petroleum products. Given the record profits of oil companies in recent years, there is a transfer of wealth in the order of billions of dollars and that worries us. First, the industry must be regulated to ensure that the middleman does not take advantage of his position or circumstances.
The Bloc Québécois is proposing measures to discipline the industry. First, it proposes to strengthen the Competition Act, which presently has some shortcomings. The Competition Bureau cannot undertake an investigation on its own unless it receives complaints or is requested to do so by the Minister of Industry. The Competition Bureau is severely lacking in powers to undertake a general review of the industry. It cannot summon witnesses or guarantee their protection to get them to talk. It cannot ask for the release of documents. Without these tools, it is almost impossible to prove collusion or any other anti-competitive practices. Even in the case of agreements among competitors, the Competition Bureau bears the burden of proof for the collusion. the Competition Act must be strengthened by giving real investigative powers to the Competition Bureau. At the end of its mandate, the Liberal government tabled Bill C-66, which was based for the most part on a complete plan tabled one month earlier. The bill died on the order paper and the Conservatives did nothing.
To bring the industry into line, a real petroleum monitoring agency must be created.
In its November 2003 report on the price of gas, the Standing Committee on Industry, Science and Technology proposed the creation of a petroleum monitoring agency. It is quite incredible to think that the oil industry supported this initiative and the Conservatives were against it. The Conservatives are even more inflexible than the oil companies when it comes to defending the interests of the oil companies. They hardly need lobbyists, when they have the Conservative government.
To make it look as if it was doing something, the Liberal government—which was no better—set up an Internet site that gave the price of gas in major cities. It was just an Internet site. It did not conduct any study on the oil industry and was unable to recommend any course of action. In other words, it achieved nothing. It takes a real office to monitor this industry.
Oil is making Quebec poorer. We have to stop this bleeding. All the oil Quebec consumes is imported. Every litre it consumes is money out the window that makes the province poorer and the oil industry richer.
In 2006, Quebec imported $13 billion worth of oil, an increase of $7 billion in three years. At the same time, Quebec went from a trade surplus to a $7 billion deficit in 2006, not to mention that the increase in Albertan oil exports made the dollar go up, which hit our manufacturing companies and further emphasized our trade deficit. The increase in the price of oil alone plunged Quebec into a trade deficit. Last year, every Quebecker consumed $1,000 more than he or she produced. Oil is making us poorer.
We have to redistribute resources in order to stop the oil industry from making our society poor. We have to impose a $500 million surcharge on the oil companies' profits. We have to repeal the accelerated capital cost allowance for investments in the oil sands, when the price of crude exceeds a threshold of somewhere between $40 and $50. The government announced this measure in its last budget, but it will not come into effect for another three years.
We have to repeal the changes made to the 2003 natural resources tax system, which allows oil companies to lower their taxes by another $250 million a year. We have to make the oil companies pay for the environmental damage they cause by establishing emissions caps, together with a carbon tax and a permit trading system.
But in the long run, the solution is to reduce our dependence on oil.
Prices of petroleum products have been on the rise for several years. The figures I am going to quote come from the Régie de l'énergie du Québec. The price of crude oil is increasing and today is fluctuating between US$60 and US$62 a barrel. It has gone up 13% since the beginning of the year and 83% since the beginning of 2004. It is even exceeding the level reached in September 2005, when hurricanes in the southern United States pushed the price up to $69 a barrel.
The price of heating oil is also going up. It has averaged 70.7¢ since the beginning of 2007, up more than 10¢ or 20% over two years ago. According to Statistics Canada, roughly 500,000 households in Quebec still heat with oil or another liquid fuel.
The price of gas is rising. Two years ago, in April 2005, a new record was reached in Montreal when the price of regular gas topped $1. Fluctuations aside, gas prices in Quebec are rising steadily.
Until we put measures in place, one by one, to decrease our dependence on oil, we need to clean house and find out who is making unfair profits. The government therefore must move an amendment to the Competition Act so that the Commissioner of Competition has the power to initiate investigations into the price of gas and the role of refining margins in determining gas prices.