The price at the gas pumps has hit a record-breaking $1.82 per litre in Vancouver. That’s the most expensive gasoline in North America
By Kris Sims
B.C. Director
Canadians Taxpayers Federation
The price at the gas pumps has hit a record-breaking $1.82 per litre in Vancouver. That’s the most expensive gasoline in North America.
While some readers in Winnipeg and Calgary might chuckle at the karma coming back to bite a city whose mayor personally blocked the building of pipelines, it’s important to remember that bad ideas spread and the Trudeau government worships Vancouver’s gas pump prices.
If we don’t hit the brakes on this nonsense soon, the $1.82 pump price could soon be surfacing at a gas station near you.
Taxes are a big part of the problem.
Let’s look at what this cost means for everyday families.
While some West Coast folks can ride their bicycles to go shopping at urban boutiques in the dead of winter, millions of other Canadians don’t and can’t live like that.
Hardworking families in Metro Vancouver are struggling to afford to commute to work, drop their kids off at school, and do their weekend grocery shopping. For a city that already has housing costs higher than New York and Los Angeles, the hike in the cost of living is painful.
At these record-breaking pump prices, it now costs about $135 to fill up a family minivan and about $200 to fill up a light duty pickup truck. If a family in Langley – a suburb of Vancouver – fills up their minivan once a week and their pickup truck twice a month, these pump prices will cost them more than $11,000 per year.
While some of the price increase is caused by speculation connected to unrest overseas, Canadian governments are doing their best to make the pain at the pump much worse via high taxes.
In Vancouver, the tax bite on gasoline is about 72 cents per litre, including both carbon taxes.
Yes, B.C. has two carbon taxes and the rest of Canada will soon too.
The first carbon tax is $45 per tonne, costing about 10 cents per litre of gasoline. The second carbon tax is a fuel standard embedded into government regulations that costs about 17 cents per litre. That means the two carbon taxes cost about 27 cents per litre of gasoline. That’s about $20 extra to fill a minivan.
These kinds of carbon tax costs are going to go national under the Trudeau government soon.
The federal carbon tax is set to jump up to $50 per tonne this April, and it will skyrocket up to $170 per tonne within eight years. Those hikes will ultimately put the first carbon tax up to more than 37 cents per litre for gasoline, 45 cents per litre for diesel and 32.8 cents per cubic metre for natural gas.
The second carbon tax is expected to come into effect across Canada this year, increasing the cost of gasoline by about 11 per litre within the next eight years.
This second carbon tax will be layered on top of the existing carbon tax, totalling about 48 cents per litre of gasoline, costing families nearly $40 extra every time they fill up their minivan.
The prices you see at the pump in Vancouver will soon be surfacing across Canada, and taxes are a huge reason why.
Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and B.C. Premier John Horgan both claim to care about the struggles of average working people trying to afford the inflated cost of living.
But, with their sky-high gas pump taxes, they have a twisted way of showing it.
Kris Sims is the B.C Director of the Canadian Taxpayers Federation.
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