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.
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'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
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.
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.
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 shortage side effects by avoiding 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.
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.
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.
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