Carney and Co are lowering gas/diesel taxes:
The move means that the cost of gas will drop by 10 cents on a litre of gasoline and four cents per litre of diesel starting on Monday and lasting until Labour Day. The fuel tax holiday, which Carney said would also see the four cent per litre excise tax removed on aviation fuel, is expected to cost an estimated $2.4 billion.
One of the aims is to improve the affordability hit we’re taking because of the US/Israel war with Iraq.
Does the tax holiday make sense to you? Could it be done better?
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Free transit and work from home orders would bring the price down.
This is just campaigning.
Free inner city transit for all and EV subsidies for the outliers. This would be a big kick in the ass to big gasoline.
Does the tax holiday make sense to you?
Politically, yes. It was going to be the new “axe the tax”. Now the Conservatives are back to convincing you to vote for them, which isn’t really something they’re good at, at least under this leader.
As policy, no. Markets don’t really work if you try to fix prices, which is what’s happening if you change taxation to counteract any swings. When you consider federally funded highways are free to use, no gas tax actually amounts to a subsidy, as well, while we’re trying to move away from fossil fuels.
What would be better than reducing the gas tax?
It’s a long, long list. Just focusing on affordability, something that actually helps the poor and struggling primarily, as opposed to anyone who drives a lot regardless of income. UBI is a perennial suggestion.
Alternately, just doing nothing would at least leave the federal budget in better shape.
Subsidizing gas makes no sense. Gas companies will just leave the price and pocket even more profits.
Open up the market to Chinese EVs assembled in Canada.
MAGNA is making Xpeng EVs in Austria for the EU market. Why did Carney not insist on this for Canada?
Why the fuck is a Canadian automaker making Chinese EVs for Europe when all we make here is trucks and muscle cars?
Methinks Mark Harper may have only one industry in mind.
Gas companies will just leave the price and pocket even more profits.
Historically, gas prices have gone down sometimes, and it’s not because they were feeling generous.
something something NATIONALIZE ENERGY PRODUCTION AND DISTRIBUTION etc etc
We did that once with PetroCanada.
And then the government will be under pressure to give gas away almost for free, since they can?
This doesn’t sound like a great idea from a climate perspective.
Alberta did this, in less than a year they roled it back because it did nothing, turns out that petrol industries boost their price to match the price reduction.
Tax cut to people earning less than 100,000$ a year and investing in bus, metro and tram. That’s the only way
Every single tax discount the government offers plays out like this. When Trudeau rolled out some green building initiative, every single Window vendor I was getting quotes from, raised their prices to match the discount
I did the Greener Homes grant thing, I was being quoted $25000 for a heat pump installation where I pulled a permit, bought the pump for 4500 and installed it myself in a weekend. Bought about $1000 worth of tools just to do the job, and couldn’t submit it for the grant because it wasn’t done by a company.
Fuck that bullshit, it was corporate welfare, not an actual attempt to reduce energy costs. Typical fucking Liberal smoke and mirrors bullshit that gives tax dollars to private industry.
I agree with your first paragraph but not the second.
While I agree this is corporate welfare, the Conservatives, if they do anything of this sort, just skip the middle man and gift money to companies directly via tax cuts with no strings attached (that is all Harper ever did)
To clarify, I am NOT defending the liberals here. But if we compare, the Conservatives don’t even participate
I’d go for a cheque sent to people earning under some cutoff, and public transit investments would be great.
Yeah a cheque will do. Now with the tax cut the only winners are petrol heavy industries and anyway refineries will boost their price and put the blame on the liberals
I’m trying to find out more about the rollback in Alberta.
From what I can find, they’ve institutionalized the cut by linking the tax to the price of oil. That means the tax will shrink as prices increase (as far as I understand).
Do you have links that would support your statement?
The only thing I found are recent, this is last year. They did it pretty silently, they didn’t want to look like morons
Manitoba had a gas tax holiday and prices actually went down $0.10/liter.
Leave the price high. Discourage people burning that stuff
This relief doesn’t help people who are making better choices already.
It should be given to everyone equally, and then people can choose to make better choices to save even more.
Canada doesn’t make better choices. The carbon levy was supposed to trigger people to make good choices but we all ran out and bought V8 pickups and Fuck Trudeau flags instead.
WE didn’t, I made better choices.
This isn’t given to everyone equally. Its given to people who drive.
Instead invest those funds in public and active transit. Things everyone can choose to use, yet are not forced to.
Ontario just invested $30M in a private jet for Doug Ford.
A private jet for Doug Ford also does not help those unable to drive or unable to afford to drive.
It’s a regressive move. The poorer someone is, the less likely they are to own a car and be able to drive. So it isn’t helping people who need it.
Worse, there’s no guarantee consumers will get ten cents off at the pump, since the sellers could just raise prices.
And, it’s encouraging fossil fuel use as the climate crisis is getting worse.
A better solution is to help people who need it directly. Up the GST tax credit, or offer a one-time cheque to low income households. That directly helps people who need it. Folks who make more still feel the pain, so they have incentives to change their behaviour.
I like this response. It’s common sense and looks at things from realistic angles instead of “Make gas free - yeah drive ma truck git r done!” or “The socialist enviro revolution must happen now and the people must be starved of gas and clamour for the government high speed rail to be built immediately in one year” - for the record, I would prefer people transition to EVs and for high speed rail to become commonplace (or just exist period) but at the moment those are longer-term goals.
Thanks! At the moment it seems like a short term problem that needs short term solutions.
It’s regressive in some ways, and not in others. If you’re completely unemployed, you might not drive but generally speaking low wage workers have to do the most commuting, often living furthest from their job, in places with poor transit access if any. They often are forced to use the least efficient older vehicles as well. The biggest savings however will be in commercial transport which would have been passed on through rising costs for groceries and essential goods, which again will hurt those already struggling more than the wealthy. Sudden unpredictable price shocks are always absorbed by the poor the most.
it’s a 5% tax. Almost anything has potential to be more effective.
Even if they succeed in temporarily nudging the price below equilibrium all it will do is result in shortages.
Better things they could do include taking 10% of the money that’s spent on highways and putting it towards restoring passenger rail service in this country, creating a crown corporation that makes and sells utilitarian electric bicycles, having the civil service and everyone else work from home as much as possible, prohibiting the sale of new vehicles powered fully or partly by internal combustion engines, and taking six months off to re-evaluate their life choices.
@sbv … if we were to properly tax the domestic oil/gas companies to backfil the $2.4Bn hole in our federal revenues? we DID buy them a pipeline a few years back, so you know, its only fair.
The country is very car-dependent.
The removal of the tax provides immediate relief. That said they could achieve even better result with a price control with the same to avoid firms jacking up prices to compensate.
With that said this should be coupled with immediate subsidy and price reductions in public transit in metro areas. Along with removal of RTO mandates for pub employees. Among other practical steps. The fact there’s nothing abt that tell is abt their priorities.
Longer term there’s a lot more to be done, including appropriating those windfall O&G profits.
The removal of the tax provides immediate relief.
It doesn’t provide direct relief to people without cars.
Fuel prices have already increased more than the amount of the tax holiday, so other goods will continue to increase in price.
The other measures make sense.
It doesn’t provide direct relief to people without cars.
For sure. Hence mentioning car-dependency. I don’t drive but everywhere outside of metro areas is car-country and there’s no alternative.
Either way a shortage is impending and distributing based on price means the wealthier get more for often less than necessary purposes. Which is why I’d look for a different distribution mechanism, a need-based mechanism. E.g. rural transportation and farming should get more/cheap fuel, F150/RAM1500 commuters in the GTA should get less/more expensive fuel.
I don’t drive much anymore because of the cost of gasoline; however, giving the small tax break in diesel fuel some thought, I would sooner donate my 10-cent discount to the truckers who have to increase their transportation cost for the food they deliver. I would donate my share to the farmers who will also have to “up their prices” for the food they grow because of diesel costs. The price of Diesel fuel has not dropped much despite the widespread implications it has on consumers. Does the tax on Gas make sense to you? Na. “” Could it be done better? “” I would think. Diesel equipment did not get any tax relief, and we will feel that tenfold.
Ontario and Quebec, at least, already have tax exempt coloured fuel for farming. I think most provinces do.
Coloured fueling transportation is an option, but there are some second and third order effects that come to mind.
