City Councillor Mike Anthony put forward a successful motion on Monday for council to request an investigation by the federally-operated Competition Bureau into the higher gasoline prices in North Bay. PHOTO BY LIAM BERTI
After city councillor Mike Anthony took an Eastward road trip across the country recently, he couldn’t help but notice an intriguing trend: almost every gas station in each town he stopped in along the way was cheaper than back home.
The frustration he felt on his trip was only aggravated by a recent timely complaint from a North Bay resident, asking council to try and help the gas price problem in any way they could.
That was enough to pique Anthony’s interest into why North Bay’s gas prices are consistently above the national and provincial average.
On Monday night, Anthony put forward a motion for City Council to request that the Competition Bureau investigate the issue of higher gasoline prices in town, which his colleagues unanimously supported.
“We’ve seen it, we’ve been upset by it, we’re frustrated with it; but until you look into it sometimes you don’t realize what it is that you can do,” Anthony explained to his fellow councillors on Monday. “We probably got numb to it and felt like there wasn’t much we could do about it, but I think the time has come to try and do something.”
The motion also calls for a copy of their request to be forwarded to Nipissing-Timiskaming MP Jay Aspin asking for his support.
“Although this Bureau exists, they are very busy and very large, so it’s not a guarantee that they will look into it,” Anthony explained. “The end game is to hopefully get the support of our MP, because the Competition Bureau is a federal body, and to see if we can get some help to see if we can look into things here.”
Anthony read Monday’s average gas prices from Barrie, Orillia, Peterborough, Huntsville, Chatham, Kingston, Sturgeon Falls and even Thunder Bay aloud for his councillors, all of which were well below North Bay’s average.
As of Tuesday, the provincial average price according to gasbuddy.com was 116.2 per litre, while North Bay’s average was hovering around 126.9.
“It just defies logic, so I’m hoping the Competition Bureau will look into things and see if there is some particular reason why gas prices always seem to be higher in North Bay,” Anthony explained.
“I definitely think that we are consistently somewhere between five and 10 cents higher than most other areas,” he added. “How can that make sense repeatedly day-after-day, week-after-week? I know we get the odd break here and there, but come on.”
As Anthony alluded to in his speech to council on Monday, the Competition Bureau fined three gas stations in Kingston after an investigation three years ago for fixing the price of retail gasoline for a six-month period in 2007.
In that particular investigation, the Bureau discovered the three competitors in question had phoned each other and agreed to set gas prices at the pump.
After pleading guilty, the three companies were fined a total of $2 million under the Competition Act and were subject to a court order for 10 years thereafter.
"Consumers in Kingston and Brockville were denied a competitive price for gasoline as a result of this criminal price-fixing cartel," Melanie Aitken, Commissioner of Competition, said in the 2012 announcement. "The Bureau will not hesitate to take action when it uncovers evidence of illegal price-fixing."
“Price-fixing conspiracies are difficult to detect and prove,” the statement goes on to read. “High or identical prices are not in and of themselves evidence of criminal activity. There must be evidence that competitors have made an illegal agreement to set those prices. When there are substantiated allegations of wrongdoing in the marketplace, the Bureau will not hesitate to investigate.”
Just over a year ago, the City of Timmins also began investigating price-fixing at their pumps after countless complaints and observations similar to Anthony’s. Timmins, too, enlisted the help of their area MP for support, which is what catalyzed Anthony’s request to Aspin.
On Monday night, Coun. Chris Mayne warned his colleagues about sending the wrong message to the local businesses and said a situation like this is worthy of a fulsome investigation and effort on their part.
He even suggested looking at how they might be able to use city staff and potentially even city dollars to take it on as it develops.
“Making aspersions that local businesses are potentially acting criminally is a very serious charge,” said Mayne. “So I hope that the Chamber of Commerce will be involved, as many of these businesses are their members, and I hope there will be some serious work done to this and that it won’t simply be an email to the Competition Bureau.”
But as Anthony emphasized, his probe into the situation is simply to try and understand why North Bay seems to be an anomaly in the greater gas price picture.
“By no means am I accusing anybody of anything; I haven’t said anything about anybody, any group, or any particular location or store,” Anthony reassured. “I’m not saying that anyone is doing anything dastardly here…but what I did say was: let’s find out what this reason could be. What is it that makes gas so special in North Bay?”
