FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

OTTAWA, Ontario — This morning Prime Minister Mark Carney announced that his government would attempt to address elevated fuel prices by temporarily suspending the federal excise tax on gasoline and diesel, beginning next week and running through Labour Day.

Dan McTeague, President of Canadians for Affordable Energy, said the move is welcome, but insufficient.

“Canadians are in desperate need of relief at the moment,” McTeague said. “But this is a drop in the bucket.”

Said McTeague, “Suspending all federal taxes on fuel, including the excise tax, the GST applied to gasoline and diesel, along with the permanent elimination of the so-called Clean Fuel Standard, would have been preferable.”

“One effect of this will be to knock about 4 cents per litre off diesel prices, which is especially meaningless,” McTeague said. “Diesel is the lifeblood of the modern economy, and the price has the biggest inflationary impact on everything. If he had to choose, the Prime Minister should have dropped the GST, which adds about 11 cents a litre onto the current price of diesel. In eastern Canadian provinces that have a harmonized tax of 8-10% on top of Ottawa’s GST, it’s more like 28 – 33 cents a litre. That is a major driver of inflation for all goods, including food.”

“Instead,” he continued, “the government’s limited, short-term suspension leaves other taxes in place, meaning that Ottawa will continue to benefit from the crisis it helped create.”

According to McTeague, “High fuel prices can’t solely be blamed on events in Iran. Liberal policies, like the Industrial Carbon Tax, the Clean Fuel Standard, Bill C-69 (the “No More Pipelines” Act), Bill C-48 (the “Oil Tanker Moratorium” Act), and a host of other Net-Zero policies, have left Canada exposed and vulnerable to this type of volatility.”

Said McTeague, “If we had acted sensibly over the past decade, building pipelines, prioritizing domestic energy production, and avoiding the expansion of a virtue-signalling regulatory regime, we would have been well positioned to step into the void created by the closure of the Strait of Hormuz. That would have shielded consumers from global shocks, created thousands of jobs, shored up our dollar, and positioned Canada as a reliable, responsibly produced hydrocarbon energy supplier to the world.”

Canadians for Affordable Energy urges the federal government to expand relief measures immediately and pursue the structural reforms needed to protect Canadians from elevated energy prices in the future.

Meanwhile, to help Canadians stay informed on current gasoline and diesel prices, McTeague publishes daily next-day gas price predictions HERE.

Canadians for Affordable Energy is a registered not-for-profit organization with approximately 125,000 supporters nationwide. McTeague, a former Member of Parliament, has been predicting gas prices for more than 20 years. More information is available at affordableenergy.ca.

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