Thank you, Mr. Speaker. When I first read this motion I did have the feeling that, from a business perspective, to say, well, let’s stay fair and let business do business, but I think there’s a lot of people in the general public that are concerned with pricing and the way the pricing of fuel and gasoline happens. We have an event that happens in the Middle East one day and the next day the prices at the pumps in Hay River, Yellowknife, Inuvik and Tuktoyaktuk change immediately where that has nothing to do with the inventory that sits in those tanks at that time.
So I support this motion in the fact that it gives direction for our Cabinet to investigate and evaluate the processes similar to the ones in New Brunswick and PEI, where they have a regulation in place that controls the pricing. It’s a very big cost to the Northwest Territories. Our cost of living is one of the issues that the general public is out there talking about all the time, and it doesn’t hurt us out there to investigate the possibility to do some sort of regulation.
Like the mover said, I don’t think this is dealing with the mom and pop operation that’s selling fuel. It’s more the conglomerates that are dealing the prices, the fact that Houston makes a decision that they want to increase the prices on a May long weekend or some sort of a long weekend, and then the next day it comes along and the next day the price rises, but the inventory that was there two days ago has nothing to do with the price that Houston decided they were going to charge the people for the May long weekend.
So I think we should investigate this, look at the potentials of implementing this in the Northwest Territories, and once we have that information, let’s make an assessment and let’s go from there. Thank you.