Mr. Speaker, I would note that New Democrats are quite firm in our belief that as we look at the record profits that oil and gas companies have been enjoying, we do not think that oil and gas companies should be able to walk away with that money and pay it out in dividends to their shareholders or squirrel it away in international tax havens, but that instead there should be an appropriate tax applied to oil and gas companies.
We, of course, have also been open to the idea of having some kind of a public utility board that would regulate the price of oil and gas. We recognize that long before the carbon tax, a long weekend was enough reason for oil and gas companies to jack up the price of oil and gas. We think that Canadians ought to be just as concerned about the advantage that those companies are taking of Canadians in their basic pricing structure; never mind what is added in tax.
There is a larger conversation to be had about how we get fair pricing for oil and gas. I think that the Conservatives' kind of monolithic focus on the carbon tax obscures a lot of ways that Canadians are getting screwed at the pump by oil and gas companies themselves in order to outsize their profits.