The Canadian Taxpayers Federation called on Ontario Premier Doug Ford on Wednesday asking him to honour his promise to cut the gas tax by 5.7 cents per litre by March 31.
“Ontario Premier Doug Ford owes you a tax cut,” said Jay Goldberg from the Canadian Taxpayers Federation.
He refers to an election promise that Ford affirmed as recently as last November when he said, “we’re going to commit to making sure that we cut 5.7 cents off before the next budget.”
With the average price at the pump now sitting at $184.9 cents per litre, the federation says there is plenty of room to cut.
“The reality is, that 55 cents out of that pump price is just taxes,” Goldberg says.
The breakdown for gas in Ontario is as follows:
The wholesale price in Ontario today is just over 122 cents per litre and retail margin is eight cents. When it comes to taxes, there are four different federal and provincial taxes.
Fixed gas taxes, that is taxes that don’t change, are a federal tax of 10 cents. There is an Ontario road tax of 14.7 cents, and the carbon tax at 8.8 cents per litre.
The HST is 13 per cent of the price at the pump. Today that works out to 21.27 cents per litre.
The total taxes on a litre of gas is 54.81 cents.
The carbon tax is set to rise on April 1 to 11 centre a litre, but it comes with a tax rebate.
Premier Ford is saying he will cut taxes if the federal government will do the same.
“I’m frustrated because I feel that when you take off the 5.7 cents and all of the sudden, the feds throw in this carbon tax and it wipes it right out,” Ford said back on Feb. 28.
Just recently, Alberta announced a 13-cent decrease in the price of gas effective April 1. The tax cut is tied to the price of oil, which allows Alberta to offset the tax cut with increased oil revenue.
Dan McTeague from Canadians for Affordable Energy says, “We don’t have that flexibility in Ontario.”
McTeague says rising gas prices are creating a windfall of cash for both levels of government, but “in an environment where prices are going through the roof. It’s not likely that governments are going to be successful in mitigating the increase.”
He says the best course of action would be a rebate to consumers to help ease the burden while world oil prices are volatile.
