House of Commons Hansard #43 of the 40th Parliament, 3rd Session. (The original version is on Parliament's site.) The word of the day was pumps.

Topics

Statements by MembersPrivilegeRoutine Proceedings

3:55 p.m.

Conservative

The Deputy Speaker Conservative Andrew Scheer

Order, please. I am going to stop the hon. member there to remind him that there may have been issues at committee, which the members of the committee may wish to delve into further, but the point of privilege that was originally raised was specifically on the S. O. 31.

What happened at committee may be a subject for debate or discussion for remedy at committee and a report might be made back to the House, but for right now we are dealing with a point of privilege raised on the S. O. 31.

We have been discussing this for quite some time and I have heard submissions from a number of MPs discussing it. I will allow the member a brief time to wrap up but I encourage him to be very brief, as we have already discussed this for quite some time, and to refer specifically to the point that was raised. If he has other points that may have happened at committee, there are mechanisms for him to raise that in the appropriate place.

Statements by MembersPrivilegeRoutine Proceedings

3:55 p.m.

Conservative

James Bezan Conservative Selkirk—Interlake, MB

Mr. Speaker, the S. O. 31 that is in question here is based upon the performance of the member for Mississauga South at committee. I think it is important that the House and you, as Speaker, understand that, before you think this a prima facie question of privilege, because I am trying to build the case here that it is not. It was because the member for Mississauga South abused his powers as chair at the committee meeting on Thursday. That was the point of the S. O. 31 that was raised.

I think we need to have a fulsome debate on that issue based upon the contents of that S. O. 31 raised by the member for Peace River versus what actually happened in that committee, which I witnessed and am more than happy to continue to outline how he breached the privileges of committee by overstepping those bounds. He overstepped the means of that committee in his overbearing role as chair and superceded the power of the House and the independent officers of this House, being the Information Commissioner, and then using that in committee. I think that was a breach of privilege of this House.

Statements by MembersPrivilegeRoutine Proceedings

3:55 p.m.

Conservative

The Deputy Speaker Conservative Andrew Scheer

I thank all hon. members who have made submissions on this point.

I think the hon. member for Peace River has already risen and given a lengthy--oh, you are seeking permission to table some documents. I will allow you to describe which documents you might wish to table.

Statements by MembersPrivilegeRoutine Proceedings

3:55 p.m.

Conservative

Chris Warkentin Conservative Peace River, AB

Mr. Speaker, in my time up, I referenced two different documents, one is the reference for the transcripts of the meeting that I was discussing and the other is the transcript from The Hill Times, which I would like the opportunity to table because I think they are pertinent to the discussion that we have had this afternoon.

Statements by MembersPrivilegeRoutine Proceedings

3:55 p.m.

Conservative

The Deputy Speaker Conservative Andrew Scheer

Does the hon. member have unanimous consent to table these documents?

Statements by MembersPrivilegeRoutine Proceedings

3:55 p.m.

Some hon. members

Agreed.

No.

Statements by MembersPrivilegeRoutine Proceedings

3:55 p.m.

Conservative

The Deputy Speaker Conservative Andrew Scheer

The Chair will take this matter under advisement and will report back to the House in due course, I am sure.

The House resumed consideration of the motion that Bill C-14, An Act to amend the Electricity and Gas Inspection Act and the Weights and Measures Act, be read the second time and referred to a committee.

Fairness at the Pumps ActGovernment Orders

4 p.m.

Conservative

The Deputy Speaker Conservative Andrew Scheer

The hon. member for Abbotsford has a minute and a half left to conclude his remarks.

Fairness at the Pumps ActGovernment Orders

4 p.m.

Conservative

Ed Fast Conservative Abbotsford, BC

Mr. Speaker, it is good to get back to the real business of this House, which is to protect consumers.

When I was last speaking, I was discussing the bill that we tabled in this House called fairness at the pumps act. The whole purpose of the bill is to ensure that the consumers who purchase gas at the pump are protected and that the weights and measures that are used in determining how much gas has flowed through the pumps is accurate.

We know for a fact that there is somewhere around a 1.2% difference between what consumers actually receive and what they should have been receiving at the pump. In other words, there is about a loss of 1.2% of the quantity of gasoline that goes through the pumps, and this concerns Canadians. When we add up the price of gasoline in Canada and look at that much gas going to waste and being charged, that should be of concern.

In this bill we have also introduced administrative penalties, not only a Criminal Code offence, which is already there, but we have introduced administrative monetary penalties that would allow the measurement advocate to impose financial penalties, which are not as severe as criminal penalties. Let us face the fact that some offences that take place are actually fairly minor in nature. We want to ensure we are able to address those as well and get people back on the right track and ensure that Canadian consumers get what they are purchasing.

Fairness at the Pumps ActGovernment Orders

4 p.m.

Liberal

Dan McTeague Liberal Pickering—Scarborough East, ON

Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to hear the hon. member for Abbotsford talk about real issues. I want to ask him a couple of questions about real issues.

Could he explain to me the 15° Celsius temperature compensation ripoff, which his government continues to allow, that allows as much as a litre for every 80 litres dispensed to simply be lost by some calculation that has no meteorological or scientific bearing to the temperature in Canada?

Could he also explain why the wholesale price of gasoline in Abbotsford is 65¢ a litre, and that is for every player there? If he believes that is not a relevant issue, perhaps he could also explain to us why he does not focus on the promise that he and his party made, concomitant with that argument two years ago about dealing with gas pumps, about dropping the diesel tax by 2¢ a litre.

I have a concern about the member of Parliament making a number of comments, which he probably has very little knowledge of, with respect to, and more specifically, the fact that the price of fuel at any given time is overinflated by as much as 40% as a result of hedge funders and the manipulation of the commodities market, very similar to what we saw in the stock market last week. Would he like to comment on some real issues presented by this party, yes or no?

Fairness at the Pumps ActGovernment Orders

4 p.m.

Conservative

Ed Fast Conservative Abbotsford, BC

Mr. Speaker, there were many questions there and, as the House knows, we do not have all day to answer one member's questions.

However, the member raised the issue of Abbotsford. One of the most frequent complaints I receive from the people of Abbotsford is about the price of gasoline. Some residents complain that different gas stations have different prices and they wonder why that is. Others complain that the gas stations all have one price and they wonder if some kind of collusion is going on.

In 2006 our government made a pledge to look at the whole issue of pricing and fairness when comes to weights and measures. What surprises me about the member's question is that he was part of the Liberal government during those 13 dark years and the sponsorship scandal. The Liberals had 13 long years to remedy the issue of temperature but did they actually do it? Of course they did not do it. In fact, today they will probably make the argument that all they needed was a fifth term and then they would have done it.

Our government is fulfilling the promise we made in 2006 to look at this whole issue of weights and measures and ensure we brought accountability into the retail sector, which is exactly what the bill would do. We are actually moving forward and fulfilling our promise.

It would not surprise me if there were more to come to address all of these loopholes and all of these failures by the Liberals to deliver on over 13 years and which we now need to deliver on.

Fairness at the Pumps ActGovernment Orders

4:05 p.m.

NDP

Jim Maloway NDP Elmwood—Transcona, MB

Mr. Speaker, I take exception to the member's attack on my Liberal friend from Pickering—Scarborough East. If the Conservative member had been around for the last number of years he would know that the member took on his own government consistently over many years on this very issue and others. The member has always said that the problem with high gas prices is that the Competition Act needs changing.

One hundred and twenty-five studies have been done by various governments over the last few years and they have all come to the same conclusion, that no price fixing is going on, when we know there is. The definition in the Competition Act needs to be changed and if it were changed we would see actual convictions. The member knows that.

The member is fair in attacking the Liberal Party but I would ask him to be very careful about that one particular member who has done a very admirable job on this issue and others over the years.

Would the member consider--

Fairness at the Pumps ActGovernment Orders

4:05 p.m.

Conservative

The Deputy Speaker Conservative Andrew Scheer

Order, please. I must stop the member there. The member for Abbotsford has less than a minute left.

Fairness at the Pumps ActGovernment Orders

4:05 p.m.

Conservative

Ed Fast Conservative Abbotsford, BC

Mr. Speaker, the member has spent his whole time defending the Liberal-NDP coalition, so it is alive and well. The reality is that there is only one government that actually steps forward and protects consumers. By admission, the Liberal member must admit that his party would not even listen to him, which is probably a reflection of the kind of influence he has within that party.

The NDP member should know that it is this government that actually fulfills its promises. We are promise keepers. We delivered on a promise we made back in 2006. Today we know consumers are going to have protective legislation--

Fairness at the Pumps ActGovernment Orders

4:05 p.m.

Conservative

The Deputy Speaker Conservative Andrew Scheer

Order, please. Resuming debate. The hon. member for Burlington.

Fairness at the Pumps ActGovernment Orders

4:05 p.m.

Conservative

Mike Wallace Conservative Burlington, ON

Mr. Speaker, I thank the member for Abbotsford for sharing his time with me today. He is a leader not only in Abbotsford but within the Conservative caucus. I appreciate the effort he has put in today and every day.

It is a pleasure to speak today in support of Bill C-14, the fairness at the pumps act.

I am proud to stand before members as my government takes decisive action to protect Canadians from inaccurate measurements at the gas pumps and other measuring transactions across the country. We pledged in our 2008 election campaign to expedite the issue of measurement inaccuracies, and today we take an important step toward making good on that promise.

The Weights and Measures Act has for many years set the measurement rules for the purchase and sale of products that Canadians enjoy every day and the Electricity and Gas Inspection Act sets rules for the purchase and sale of electricity and natural gas, critical commodities for sustaining our Canadian way of life.

Bill C-14, the fairness at the pumps act, would amend those two pieces of legislation to protect Canadian consumers and retailers from inaccurate measurements. The bill is just one more instance of the Minister of Industry's energetic commitment to ensure fairness in all business practices across the country.

Bill C-14 may strike some of my hon. colleagues as a housekeeping law, but I can assure them that it represents far more than that. When measurement inaccuracies occur, whether deliberate or inadvertent, they represent a great potential liability for Canadians. The fairness at the pumps act attacks this critical and compelling consumer issue by increasing the onus on retailers to take charge of their measurement practices and ensure all customers get a fair reading of their product purchases.

The act would accomplish this by imposing fines on non-compliant businesses and by calling for mandatory inspection frequencies. This means that businesses would be required to have their measurement equipment inspected by a third party every one to five years, depending on the industry. If the equipment does not operate accurately, the business must have it repaired.

I refer to this consumer issue as critical and compelling because it has been top of mind with Canadians since 2008 when the news media reported on how very often gas pumps inaccurately measured the fuel they were dispensing. Canadians also learned from those news stories that the consumer was the loser in three out of five instances of incorrectly measured fuel.

Understandably, Canadians have become increasingly concerned about whether they are getting their money's worth at the pump. They wonder if they are being overcharged because they have no means of judging for themselves the accuracy of the neighbouring gas pump in question. It is a situation that is completely unacceptable, which is why the Minister of Industry and his predecessor have followed such a decisive course of action in developing this bill.

Despite the bill's name, the fairness at the pumps act, it extends well beyond gasoline retailers. It calls for inspections in other sectors, including downstream petroleum, dairy, retail food, fishing, logging, grain and field crops, and mining. My government may add additional sectors to this list in the future according to the needs of Canadians.

One great strength of Bill C-14 is that it has been carefully crafted to anticipate a wide range of offences, from the relatively minor to the serious. The fairness at the pumps act would ensure not only that retailers have their measurement scales inspected frequently enough to guarantee accuracy in nearly all cases, but it would also impose stiff penalties on retailers who fail to comply.

As my hon. colleagues know, some people will only make the effort to comply if there is a criminal charge to be had, only if circumstances are dire. By raising the fine of non-compliance from $1,000 to $10,000 for minor offences, from $5,000 to $25,000 for more serious offences and up to $50,000 for repeat offenders, the Minister of Industry is sending a strong signal to gas pump operators and retailers across this country: comply or pay.

Canadians are tired of being victimized by lax measurement standards. This new legislation would protect them from that. At the same time, Bill C-14 offers a means of penalizing offenders without actually prosecuting them as criminals.

Although the bill calls for swift punishment when necessary, it also recognizes that some measurement offences are relatively minor and inadvertent. As such, Bill C-14 offers what we have called a graduated enforcement approach, which means the penalty can fit the offence.

Canadians believe in appropriate justice and this legislation reflects that ethos. Indeed the fairness at the pumps act approaches the very issue of enforcement in the spirit of fairness and constructive encouragement rather than casting all offenders as hardened criminals.

Not only does Bill C-14 protect consumers and make allowances for minor offenders, it is also a boon to small business operators who will act as government appointed inspectors under the legislation. One of the media's principle criticisms of Measurement Canada's performance in 2008 was the organization's lack of capacity to protect consumer interests. My government has addressed this issue by requiring businesses to manage their own inspection schedules in compliance with this new legislation.

The fairness at the pumps act calls for the use of private sector operators as authorized service providers. These businesses would conduct inspections under the Weights and Measures Act on behalf of the government and charge for their services according to supply and demand.

Rather than imposing a top-down government-driven inspection regime, Industry Canada will train small businesses to undertake this important work. It will evaluate them every year to ensure they are doing the job correctly and then trust them to carry out their job with accuracy and integrity. If they violate that trust, Industry Canada may revoke their authority.

Will Bill C-14 put undue strain on small business operators required to comply? My government believes it does not. There will be minor additional costs for small businesses, but the conveniences inherent in the new system may well offset those costs.

For example, authorized service providers, the inspectors who the Minister of Industry will designate, could also service and repair measurement devices as they perform their inspections. In this way, small businesses will find that they can kill two birds with one store and keep their equipment working at an optimally at all times.

Gas and food prices continue to be a concern of all Canadians. With these price pressures comes a great responsibility to ensure that the quality of the product is near perfection. No purchased good can approach perfection if its weight or volume has been calculated incorrectly.

This reality rings especially true for the single mother who is feeding her family on a shoestring budget, for the small business landscaper whose company has to pay onerous gasoline bills to reach rural customers and for working parents who have to heat their home with increasingly expensive natural gas through a bitter prairie winter.

I call on my hon. colleagues to recognize that on the issue of measurement standards, these Canadians cannot afford anything less than the protections in Bill C-14. If retailers fail to comply with the perfectly reasonable stipulations of the fairness at the pumps act, they must be made to pay.

Fairness at the Pumps ActGovernment Orders

4:15 p.m.

Liberal

Dan McTeague Liberal Pickering—Scarborough East, ON

Mr. Speaker, the hon. member for Burlington and I sit on the committee together and we look forward to having more discussions about this.

The hon. member will appreciate the fact that I am concerned that this action is so infinitesimally small as to be virtually meaningless to Canadians. The reason for that is simple. The minister's announcement over a month ago, predicating this bill, attacked good independent gas retailers and called them chisellers. He forgot to point out that in his own facts and information 94% of all the random surveys of pumps in Canada were correct, 2% turned out to favour consumer and 4% did have an impact on consumers, 1 in 25.

The hon. member for Abbotsford suggested nothing had been done on the consumer side. The member will have to recognize that WestJet exists as a company in his riding as a result of initiatives by this member and this party to ensure fairness in the airline industry among other initiatives we have taken in the Competition Act.

Specifically is the member concerned about the fact that the regulation will require only two years of inspection? As he knows, in his riding, as in mine, the volume, the throughputs that many of those pumps go through are in the tens of millions. The breakdown and the probability of a breakdown that might occasion a civil response is serious. Would the member not consider an early term? Is this something to which he has given any consideration?

Fairness at the Pumps ActGovernment Orders

4:15 p.m.

Conservative

Mike Wallace Conservative Burlington, ON

Mr. Speaker, I was honoured to speak to this point. I used to work in the retail gasoline business. At one point it was with Texaco Canada, which has left Canada, and then it was with Imperial Oil.

We need to understand the actual gasoline business. I can only speak mostly for urban areas. Oil companies own 99.9% of the fuel at gasoline stations in urban areas. Agents work there. They are not independent retailers. The fuel is owned by the company.

My first career out of university was as an auditor of gas stations. I would check the meters against the volume that the retailer said was sold. There was a dipping system and at one point I would dip tanks. That system is now electronic. As an auditor, I was always looking to see if those meters were accurate and to be frank, it was hard to tell. There was a variation in measurements. We were really looking for leaky tanks, to ensure that no gas was leaking and that the retailer was reporting sales correctly.

A two year time frame is appropriate for this. The quality of the pumping systems now is much greater than in the past. They are much more accurate. A two year time frame is an appropriate length of time for retailers to ensure those measurements are accurate.

Fairness at the Pumps ActGovernment Orders

4:15 p.m.

Bloc

Robert Bouchard Bloc Chicoutimi—Le Fjord, QC

Mr. Speaker, Bill C-14 imposes rather stiff penalties. The hon. member also spoke of the fact that gas pumps and gas meters are quite precise.

Does the retailer have to exceed a specific margin of error in order to be found guilty?

Fairness at the Pumps ActGovernment Orders

4:15 p.m.

Conservative

Mike Wallace Conservative Burlington, ON

That was an excellent question, Mr. Speaker. Off the top of my head I do not have the answer as to the amount of air that could be there, the variance. Gasoline expands and contracts with temperature. That is why the 15° is in the bill now. I assume that when our inspectors are trained, they will be able to deal within that variance.

We have to be careful when we say retailers will be facing the vast majority of these fines. Let us hope that nobody gets ripped off, that is the first goal. The vast majority of gasoline pumps are owned and operated by the gasoline companies, whether it is Imperial Oil, Shell, Sunoco. It will not be the agent who will be responsible. The oil companies will be responsible.

Fairness at the Pumps ActGovernment Orders

4:20 p.m.

Conservative

The Deputy Speaker Conservative Andrew Scheer

It is my duty pursuant to Standing Order 38 to inform the House that the questions to be raised tonight at the time of adjournment are as follows: the hon. member for Madawaska—Restigouche, The Environment; the hon. member for Burnaby—New Westminster, Canada-Colombia Free Trade Agreement.

Fairness at the Pumps ActGovernment Orders

4:20 p.m.

Liberal

Dan McTeague Liberal Pickering—Scarborough East, ON

Mr. Speaker, I thank my hon. colleagues who have preceded me on the debate. I apologize I was not able to be here at the outset, so the parliamentary secretary and I did not have a chance to exchange a few ideas, but I am sure his colleagues will take it to him. I also want to thank our industry critic from Montreal.

I greet today, with some degree of trepidation, this legislation. Although much vaunted as being the panacea for all consumers in Canada, it is in fact significantly short on substance, short on proof and short on the deliverables. This seems to be one of the few things that could have been done, which would be, in some respects, a no brainer.

However, there are much more important issues dealing with the price of fuel and energy that should concern Parliament and the government. However, we need to consider the heat of the moment. An election campaign was triggered by the Prime Minister, who went back on his own word. In one evening gas prices went up 12.9¢ per litre. Most Canadians know that because this member and this party pointed out that the industry had become so monopolistic in the downstream that what took place was nothing short of tragic. The Americans had a major hurricane shut down refinery alley along the Texas Gulf coast. They witnessed a 6¢ a gallon increase at the most. I know that because I spoke to Ali Velshi, a senior correspondent at CNN, to get my information. In Canada it was 60¢ a gallon, converted to 12.9¢ to 13¢ a litre.

If that does not address the fundamental concern about just how clued out we are when it comes to the price of gasoline and energy costs, then I need ask members to look no further than the context in which that legislation was proposed two years ago. It took the government two years to finally come up with something and it said it would probably deal with one in twenty-five gas pumps which it thought was faulty, that it would call them pumps and that the likelihood was they had been tampered with. The minister referred to them as chisellers.

I can not think of an example that demonstrates such ignorance from a minister who obviously does not know anything about a gas tank, let alone how to pump it. Perhaps he spends a little too much time here with his driver and does not pump his own gas so he does not recognize that there can be mechanical failures.

The hon. member for Burlington talked about his experience working at a gas station. No doubt he will be familiar with the former 25, 30 year old equipment, which is used in many parts of the country that is not served by a number of gas stations. Very small communities may be using old electronics and very old equipment. It is very difficult to compromise and to break the electronic sequence that is in those pumps. What often happens, if there is an error, and that is assuming the error does not in fact benefit the consumer, is the product breaks down as a result of wear and tear.

That is why I asked the hon. member a very pointed question and I will ask the experts. In some communities pumps are not used as much. The introduction of ethanol could have an impact. Where we have higher use, there is a probability of breakdown. It is not someone's fault. That is the result of wear and tear on machines, and no machine is guaranteed to go forever, especially if it goes through sustained high use.

I am sure we will hear from Dresser Wayne, or Gilbarco, or Oppenheimer, which has been taken over by Dresser Wayne. We will hear from those individuals who work in the industry and who will pinpoint the shortcomings of their fuel.

Suffice it to say, my website, tomorrowsgaspricetoday.com, receives 30,000 or more hits a day. Out of those are generated hundreds of emails. I probably receive more emails on this subject than any member in the House combined, especially when the prices go up or when they go down and we see the fluctuation which is out of sync with world pricing.

I am concerned because this legislation is a distraction. It is a façade. It can be dealt with by regulation if indeed there is the presence of a problem. The minister has admitted that only 6% of pumps were found to be faulty. Of that 6%, 4% of the 100% that were done, did not favour the consumer.

If we are to prepare ourselves to embark on an idea of working to fix these problems, I want the committee, and I certainly want Parliament and the public listening right now, when we come to fairness at the pumps, there is a suggestion that there has been unfairness at the pumps. I can say with some certainty, it would be almost impossible for independent retailers or agents, as the previous member talked about, to trigger a mechanism that might make those pumps not work. It is very difficult to do.

More important, if we look at the way a pump is made and the way retailers take inventory, to skew the numbers to try to play games for a couple of days would only hurt their inventory. They would get a call saying, “You've used this much. How come you have this much left?” Unless, of course, there is a leak or a problem with the tank, in which case there might be some environmental concerns.

However, what it does not do is address the fundamental concern that I have, and I think many colleagues in this House should have, about where there is in fact a disconnect between consumer value for what they purchase and what in fact they get.

I can say with some certainty, with years of working on this file, that the last problem we have is accuracy in the pumps. If it were such a big issue, we would have had more than one conviction over the past three or four years. I am not saying it does not happen, but I am certainly convinced it is not because people are deliberately fixing the pumps. First, as I just mentioned, it is difficult to do. Second, it skews the inventory to such an extent that it becomes a self-defeating exercise. If they in fact do these things, they are only hurting themselves.

I received two emails this morning that dealt with a far more credible issue that the government could have addressed and may fall into the very same category that we had when we were in government. I note that the hon. member for Abbotsford and some of his colleagues said our government did very little about it. I want to encourage the members of the government to recognize not to make the same mistakes of fooling themselves into the belief that somehow what they provided here is a panacea. In fact, it is very much a tinkering, a glossing around the edges of a very serious problem.

By that I mean the following. In every region in this country today, every community has the identical wholesale price, and I see that the rack price is out as of just a few minutes ago. I cannot think of a more vivid example of the lack of competition than when we see the exact same price in any community across Canada. I will be glad to show members, for the purposes of their edification. If I look today, for instance, I will see that the rack price is identical everywhere in Ottawa. Everyone will charge the same thing tomorrow. It will be somewhere in the vicinity of 60.8¢ a litre; Quebec's will be 61.4¢; Montreal's will be 61.4¢; Toronto's will be 62¢. The hon. member for Abbotsford will happy to know his will be 66.8¢. The point is that the price is determined by one player. No one challenges that price at the retail level nor at the wholesale level. And so, what Canadians are faced with tonight is a 2¢-a-litre increase. That is above world prices as established at the NYMEX just 25 minutes ago.

So when members talk about a skew in a pump of 1% on 80 litres, which would be the average fill-up of most cars in my community, that is .8¢.

How about the 2¢ ripoff that is going to happen tonight?

Let us deal with some real issues in this House for once and not go around contenting ourselves with some idea that we have a better widget than the people who preceded us or than the ones who preceded them. The reality is far more serious.

I know that members on the industry committee should have the benefit of all the questions, not just Measurement Canada, but to look beyond this first step. I am hoping it is a first step, because members will recall that, in the 2008 campaign, the Conservative Party pledged to deal with the issue of potential problems at the gas pumps, which I might point out came from an Ottawa Citizen article during the 2008 election. That Ottawa Citizen article seems not to have a lot of people backing it. Certainly people at Measurement Canada have not verified it. So, it is interesting that we have erected today two years of investigation based on an article for which no one really wants to take credit. More important, why should they?

When the CBC national news runs with a story saying 75% of all pumps are skewed, what a great horror. Every pump we are using now, almost every one is going to rip us off.

Let us try to infuse some facts into a debate on something that is important to Canadians. For every penny they save at the pumps every given week, that could mean hundreds for a family at the end of the year.

As members will know, if someone can get away with having a monopoly in the gasoline industry, one might be able to have the same or near monopoly in the propane industry or the natural gas industry.

I will not get into the issue of arbitrage because that is not for the debate today. However, it is important for us to understand another ripoff, which the government fails to understand.

How is it possible that a wholesale price of 60¢ a litre for regular versus mid-grade at 62.3¢, which is a 3.25¢ difference, or premium, which is always 5¢ above regular, translates into a 13.5¢ ripoff?

Someone has to have a lot of control and a lot of power to be able to move prices from a wholesale differential of 3¢ to 13¢. I want hon. members in the House to understand that we are dealing now with not one penny or one-eighth of a penny or 1% when it comes to premium, when it comes to mid-grade, which many vehicles must run on, or when it comes to diesel. We are dealing with a wholesale margin translated to the retail level that could be in excess of 8¢ to 10¢ a litre. Then multiply that by 50.

I can guarantee that, when we look at those kinds of numbers, it is very clear that the government has either tried to distract the public with this legislation, a bit of smoke and mirrors, a bit of a smokescreen, or it just does not want to address the fundamental problem that exists with this industry, as it may with others.

I am not saying there is not a desire to change. Members know that I have built part of my career on trying to deal with this, but I am very suspicious of the context of this legislation. It is a quick fix aimed at the wrong people, which gives false hope that somehow people are going to see better prices at the pumps come this summer.

Let us be honest. Summer driving season is coming up. Although demand for fuel across North America is low and supply is very high, we now see prices heading north for no reason. If we had competition that would not be the case.

Every week the Americans provide what is called the weekly petroleum status report. Since 1979 the Americans have ensured that every drop of energy that they produce, that they use, that they anticipate using for inputs and refineries, is accounted for.

I see three citations in this document, which gives transparency to the Americans and to the world as to what the price should be every Wednesday morning at 10:30. I see three footnotes here from Natural Resources Canada. We supply the Americans with data to help them get a better understanding of the world, to protect consumers and to ensure transparency, but we will not do it for Canadians. Why?

There was an attempt to do this in 2006. The member for Abbotsford talked about what he did in 2006 during the election. Wonderful. We had a little proposal that said we would replicate the exact same thing, a weekly petroleum report, through something called the office of petroleum monitoring. We would give Canadians a better and more accurate understanding of how much is produced in this country, including the stock market, the commodities market. Why would we want to fly blind? The rest of the world wants to know how much they are producing. That makes sense. But no, the first act of the Conservative government was to kill the petroleum price monitoring system. I still have not received an answer.

Some anecdotal discussions with people in the industry, the downstream, have told me that it was really the folks at Imperial Oil who did not like it. Esso did not like it because it did not like it. That is funny; Imperial Oil's parent Exxon Mobil in the United States has been required by law since 1979 to furnish all data on supply and demand. It just makes sense.

I would have thought that the government might have actually dealt with that particular issue, but it did not. It chose instead to go to defective pumps and translate that and torque it somehow into greedy little retailers conspiring in the dark of night to wreck their pumps to make sure Canadians do not receive full value for that which they have worked so hard to obtain.

It is important for us to recognize quite a few things that have not come forward yet.

The margins and the racks that Canadians are forced to pay are substantially higher than those around the world. This means that the infrastructure in which so much taxpayers' money has been invested over the years, to build a pipeline to serve the entire country, energy self-sufficiency being one of the goals, has now been translated into virtually a network, a system, an infrastructure that is controlled by a handful.

I come from Toronto, and my region used to have three or four refiners. How many do we have today? None. Half the supply in my riding comes from Montreal because of the number seven line that was produced to push petroleum from the west to the east to create energy self-sufficiency.

My colleagues from the Bloc and all hon. members of the House are well aware that another refinery is closing. I told them that would happen in November. The declining number of refineries is worrisome. In 2007, a report indicated that the small number of refineries in Canada would create a supply problem. Even before the Petro-Canada and Sunoco merger and the proposed closure of the refinery in Montreal, regulatory officials were concerned.

To put this in proper context, if Canada is in a tight supply situation and, even though there is plenty of crude going around, we cannot produce enough, it puts us at a strategic disadvantage not only for our ability to ship abroad but, more importantly, to make sure premium prices are not charged to Canadians because we do not have enough refinery capacity in this country.

It is important for the government to recognize this. It can pay lip service to the idea that fixing the pumps is going to somehow prevent prices from going up unduly. Frankly, that is hollow. It is irrelevant and untrue.

I can say with some certainty that, if we do not deal with the issue of supply in this country, we are going to wind up as truckers did in western Canada. Yes, western Canada. I am speaking of Saskatchewan, Mr. Speaker, your very region. Truckers were scrambling for supply because of the way in which crude can be bent or configured and the way in which refineries are made. Some emphasize gasoline and some emphasize diesel.

It is very clear to me that we cannot afford a repeat of what happened in 2008. It seems to me that the first responsibility of any government is to ensure adequacy of supply, regardless of what party it is. It failed. It utterly failed, and it is important for the government to clue into that as well.

I will come to my last concern. I want to devote the last three minutes remaining to something far more serious, which Parliament appears not willing to understand, much less address. The government, in particular, must understand this in the context of the comments by the Minister of Finance and I am sure it must concern the Minister of Industry. That is the speculative and changing nature of our markets.

Ten years ago it was acceptable to see NYMEX, the New York Mercantile Exchange, as being the way in which prices were derived. A producer or consumer would go in and trade, and on a 30-day or 60-day basis, act on the deal, sell a bit of oil and take delivery of the oil. That has all changed.

With the growth of Goldman Sachs Commodity Index, AIG, Lehman Brothers, Bear Stearns, Morgan Stanley and over-the-counter derivatives, traders right here in Canada, in Winnipeg, through the Intercontinental Exchange, we have seen massive distortions in the price of fuel, which hurt industry, retailers and refiners. Bringing the price of crude up to $147 and then dropping it to $35 is in no one's interest. Yet it happened.

Whereas that happened two years ago, what happened just last Thursday? I know some are wanting to say there are fat fingers and someone made an error and put million or billion. The way in which trades take place today is that there are high-frequency traders on computers who, if they see something drop 1%, will suddenly sell everything they have. The market then closes and many companies are left in ruin.

We have a golden opportunity at the G20 and G8 next month to lead the charge to regulatory reform, which is at the heart of the cost of energy for Canadians and the price they pay for gasoline. I know what I am talking about on this subject. The Obama administration is trying to tackle this, and I think Canada can play a leading role at precisely the right time to signal to the rest of the world that we want real people consuming and producing. We do not want index investors or sovereign investors, people who go in high, bid, hold the product at a certain price and create volatility in the market, which destroys the market.

I call on the government to look a lot further than the nano or micro step it has taken with respect to regulation of gasoline pumps. Look at the bigger picture, stand up for constituents, hear what I have said and measure it against what we have seen around the world today. Stand up for Canadians and I think Parliament will have their support.

Fairness at the Pumps ActGovernment Orders

4:40 p.m.

Bloc

Robert Bouchard Bloc Chicoutimi—Le Fjord, QC

Mr. Speaker, the member says that Bill C-14 does not really solve the problem of the price of gas at the pumps. It is my understanding that he believes that competition is the solution.

Does my colleague believe that if the Competition Bureau had real investigative powers, it would foster more competition? We know that more competition often results in consumers paying the true cost.

Fairness at the Pumps ActGovernment Orders

4:40 p.m.

Liberal

Dan McTeague Liberal Pickering—Scarborough East, ON

Mr. Speaker, I thank my colleague from Chicoutimi—Le Fjord. I still believe that the objective of people who draft laws such as the Competition Act may be to respond to or create a situation that gives an advantage to other competitors. We must recognize the power of that approach and also recognize that the Competition Act needs to be overhauled.

The last significant amendment dates back to 1986—I know one amendment was made two years ago—and was suggested by representatives of the oil companies, Imperial Oil in particular. It was a misunderstanding. Peter C. Newman said something interesting in his book Titans:

He states:

It was the only time in the history of capitalism that any country allowed anti-monopoly legislation to be written by the very people it was meant to police.

That is quite odd. I think the government could have gone in that direction but it did not and it wants to give the impression that it is doing something.

We must also find out about certification of the people who will be doing the inspections. Are these people certified? The bill says nothing about that. The bill before us states that the company must be certified. The people carrying out the inspections will not solve the problem. That is one amendment I would like to suggest.