Big Oil gouged Canadians with those 13 cent a liter increases at the gas pumps yesterday. The spokespersons for the petroleum companies excused the sudden, concerted price jump as the consequence of the threat of Hurricane Ike to the refineries on the U.S. Gulf coast.

Call it a crock, or a lie if you like, because that is what it was.

First, the gasoline we consume in Canada does not come from Texas refineries and second, there is a time lag between refining and selling gas at the pumps. The gas that you’re buying for $1.36 a liter or more was in the pipeline well before Ike was a puff of wind off the African coast.

Jack Layton was right to say that we need a gasoline price ombudsman to blow the whistle on petroleum company price collusion. Collusion in this oligopoly has been the norm for more than a century.

We need to go well beyond putting a referee in place, though.

The privatization of Petro-Canada, begun by the Conservatives in 1991 and completed by the Liberals in 2004, ripped Canadians off to the tune of many billions of dollars. The Canadian public, through their tax dollars, took the risks, put up the capital and created Petro-Canada. In the last five years alone, Petro-Canada made a net profit of $9.2 billion. (Last year the Canadian oil patch made a total net profit of $26 billion.)

Had the company remained publicly owned, its earnings could have been used for future investments, not only in the petroleum sector but in the green energy projects on which our future depends. As well, Petro-Canada could have served as a sentinel in the industry, committed to an anti-price gouging policy. That alone would deter the other majors from playing the game they’re playing this week.

Jack Layton should propose the joint takeover of the major oil companies by a consortium to include the petroleum producing provinces, the federal government, municipalities and the pension funds of Canadian wage and salary earners.

That kind of model has worked well in many countries, as it once did, in part, in Canada in the days when Petro-Canada was owned by the federal government.