I have been doing a lot of travelling in the past four weeks. The travel has brought me firsthand to gas stations and one of the differences when I fill up with octane 87 is the difference in price. Gasoline prices have dropped dramatically in Fort Frances from $1.639 per litre to $156.9 a litre. Yet when we were paying that much, in Manitoba the same fuel was selling for $1.329 and on Monday the price in Winnipeg had dropped to $1.249 while here in Calgary the price is $1.449.
British Columbia on Monday had the highest prices for gas at $1.649 for a litre of gas. The price of this every day necessity raises the hackles on every Canadian taxpayer. One must wonder how the price of gas can be so different between provinces.
On April 1 of this year, the federal carbon tax increased by 3.3¢ per litre. That increase cost the average Canadian an extra $1.65 at the pump, for a 50-litre fill. That increased the total carbon tax up to $8.80 per fill.
Those same increases also fell on homeowners who heated with natural gas or propane. It was an obvious inflation creator by the federal government. It created anger against the sitting Liberal government in Canada. Monday night on Stephen Colbert Justin Trudeau admitted “People are hurting. People are having trouble paying for groceries, paying for rent, filling up the tank”
Pierre Poilievre, the leader of the Conservative Party has crisscrossed Canada on a platform calling to “Axe the tax”. He has found sympathy among Canadian from coast to coast. He wants an immediate national election, something that the other opposition parties are not prepared to assist in.
The Liberal tax on carbon fuels was to make Canadians participate in reducing green house gases. It was meant to encourage Canadians to reduce the temperatures in their homes in winter or choose other means of heating their homes in colder weather. It was to encourage Canadians to use more public transportation.
It has succeeded and Canadians do receive two checks annually from the federal government in the form of rebates offsetting some of the taxes collected. Canadians have not connected the rebate checks with the added costs they are experiencing to heat their homes and operate their motor vehicles. They have connected that the carbon tax has increased the cost of products in their grocery stores from the farmers who grow the crops to the transports that bring them to their community.
The carbon tax has been successful in Canada. Poilievre’s policy is that someone else will solve the greenhouse gas problems in Canada. He has not defined who or what will replace the carbon tax, and the slight of hand and tongue is winning over Canadians for the next election. It is up to Canadians to demand from Poilievre more information on how he and his party will fight the growing climate crisis.
