Industry committee  We have retail petroleum, which also includes the truck refuelers and home heating oil meters, which have very low compliance levels as well. Retail food and the dairy, mining, forestry, and grain industries are sectors that would first be addressed by the bill, because the bill would cover everything.

Industry committee  There are a lot of factors that contribute to that. We are very concerned about that compliance level, and that's why we believe that Bill C-14 would address a lot of the issues by introducing regular inspection--we're talking yearly--in those sectors. Of course at the same time we're doing other things in Measurement Canada that do not require changes in the act to address that.

Industry committee  Yes.

Industry committee  That depends on the number of gas pumps they have. The inspections are done every two years. If one considers the volume of gasoline that flows through gas pumps during the course of a year, there is obviously no relationship between the $50 or the $200 paid out and the quantity of gasoline measured by the device.

Industry committee  On what's an acceptable range, for gas pumps our target is 100% compliance. We hope we can get there. Of course these are all mechanical devices, so there will be things that will happen. If we look at what is going on in other countries--because this is not something that's unique to Canada, and other countries do also have regular inspection of devices--our analysis shows that it increases compliance significantly.

Industry committee  The 94% means that 94% are measuring within the legal tolerance.

Industry committee  Which is, for gas pumps, half a percent, or 0.5%.

Industry committee  It is every five years.

Industry committee  It must be stated that the devices used in the retail sector are in a rather protected environment; there is no rain, no temperature variations, etc. These devices therefore maintain their calibration over a longer period of time, contrary to gas pumps or to devices that are outdoors and subjected to all kinds of weather conditions.

Industry committee  It applies to everything.

Industry committee  To all devices, in both acts. However, the introduction of mandatory periodic inspections only applies weight and measuring devices, because electricity and gas meters are already covered.

Industry committee  With regard to inspections, it is rather the same situation: our ability to inspect devices in the retail food sector is limited. The compliance rates are quite high with regard to the devices, but many of them in the retail food sector are not in compliance.

Industry committee  That is not the conclusion we have drawn from our inspections carried out in the retail food sector. When we did a review of the sector and consulted retail stakeholders, be they consumers, consumer protection groups, merchants, measuring device manufacturers, it was agreed that five years was an acceptable period for these devices, in a commercial sector context.

Industry committee  Our evaluations cover the year 2008, but we checked again in 2009, and the results are more or less the same. With regard to gas pumps only, for Canadian consumers, we are talking about the equivalent of 20 million dollars worth of gasoline that was not poured out because the pumps registered errors that were over and above the legal tolerance level.

Industry committee  No. The vast majority of the measurement errors that we see are not due to fraud or tampering. They are due to either a failure to properly maintain and calibrate these devices, or to wear and tear... These devices often remain in service for a long time without being calibrated.