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Petition
Presented March 30, 2009
Price freeze
of gasoline
in zone 11 from Lodge Bay to Cartwright
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MR. SPEAKER: The
hon. the Member for the District of Cartwright-L’Anse
au Clair.
MS JONES: Thank
you, Mr. Speaker.
I rise today to present a
petition on behalf of the residents in my district, and
I will read it into the record because it is the first
time it has been presented.
WHEREAS
the price of gasoline in zone 11 from Lodge Bay to
Cartwright is frozen at a rate that is substantially
higher than the remainder of the Province; and
WHEREAS
this freeze is implemented early in November prior to
all winter stocks being brought into the communities;
and
WHEREAS
consumers in these regions are paying for gasoline that
is still being trucked in at the lower cost at a huge
profit to oil companies; and
WHEREAS
the government must recognize the ineffectiveness of
this freeze and have the Petroleum Pricing Commission
act to remove the freeze; and
WHEREUPON
the petitioners ask the Minister of Government Services
and government to take steps to have this freeze policy
removed to ensure that consumers in the region are no
longer being gouged.
Mr. Speaker, this is a
petition that has been sent by the people in my district
and it is being sent simply because they live in an area
of the Province that pays the highest price for
petroleum products of anywhere in Newfoundland and
Labrador.
Mr. Speaker, there are
times when the prices of gasoline alone, from one zone
to the zone they live in, which is only seventy-six
kilometres, have had a differential of up to thirty and
thirty-one cents on a litre. Now, Mr. Speaker, that is
extremely high pricing of petroleum over a region that
small and that size. They have been asking through
myself and through the minister for a number of months
now, to have the freeze lifted because they feel that if
they were in the same competitive pricing regime that
exists everywhere else in the Province, that their
prices would not be escalated as high as they are.
For example, if you look
at most zones across the Province, and there are
something like twenty-four or twenty-five zones in
Newfoundland and Labrador, you will notice that the
pricing difference on gasoline, for instance, between
each zone never really escalates more than about three
to four cents in a litre. However, you get into Southern
Labrador, into the area that I represent, and all of a
sudden you start seeing those differentials in prices
escalating very high. You certainly do not see the norm
of the three to five cents in the difference of a litre
of gasoline. In fact, Mr. Speaker, the transportation
cost between one zone to the next zone, as I said, which
is something like seventy-six kilometres, is calculated
right now at more than ten cents a litre to transport
that fuel, which is an unrealistic number. There is
nothing else that is being calculated in that cost
category for transportation of products throughout that
region of the Province, so it has caused a great deal of
difficulty for the people in that area and they have
certainly found that they are not getting the
co-operation that they had hoped from the Petroleum
Pricing Commission.
In fact, Mr. Speaker, in
previous years, people would be notified indirectly in
one fashion or another that prices were going to go up.
There were set dates in the regulatory policy for that
area, that stated that freezing on gas prices would be
implemented at a certain time during the year and that
freeze would be lifted at other times during the year.
Well, in fact, Mr.
Speaker, those schedules have not been honoured. In the
last two years, we have seen situations where the
Petroleum Pricing Commission has just implemented the
price freeze when they felt they wanted to do it, and
sometimes it was up to three weeks earlier than what was
normally allowed for in the regulation.
It has caused hardship
for people in that area to the point that they have
asked that the freeze be lifted altogether, that they be
calculated on petroleum products in the same manner that
the rest of the Province is calculated on, and they have
asked government to undertake to do that through the
Public Utilities Board and hopefully they will see that
it is necessary and it can provide for some relief on
both home heating oil and gasoline products for people
in that area.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker |
