Think the government is screwing us at the pumps? You're right!
...scuse me while I pull a Jayx1 here... 
I knew it! 
- Amount of tax Canadians pay on a liter of gas? Up to 40% of the per liter price.
- Amount of gas emanating from blowhard (mostly) liberal-leftist politicians? Infinite. (And supplied free at the retail level by liberal media)
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Feds' claims run empty
By LICIA CORBELLA
The federal government keeps on repeating, over and over again, many untruths about the price of gasoline.
Both Prime Minister Paul Martin and Finance Minister Ralph Goodale keep saying that reducing federal gas taxes on a litre of gasoline would have no effect on the price at the pump.
On Monday, Goodale said any tax break of one to two cents per litre would become "invisible".
On another occasion he said the decrease in taxes would be "gobbled up" by those greedy oil and gas companies.
Firstly, he's giving the impression to uninformed Canadians that the federal take on a litre of gas is one or two cents. It is not. It is much higher than that.
The feds get 10 cents for every litre of gas sold in Canada PLUS they charge the 7% GST on the entire cost. In other words, they tax their tax and provincial taxes too.
So if a litre of gasoline costs $1 at the pump, the feds would take 16.6 cents per litre. Coupled with provincial taxes, some jurisdictions pay as much as 40% of the cost of gas to taxes.
As Conservative Party Leader Stephen Harper said in the House of Commons Monday, for every one-cent increase in the price of gas at the pump, the feds rake in an EXTRA $40 million in taxes, thanks to the GST -- the tax on tax.
But is Goodale right? Would a cut, of say, two cents a litre just be gobbled up by the oil and gas companies?
Experts, and more importantly, the hard data, say no. What's more, they say the biggest gasoline profiteers are governments, not oil companies.
Cathy Hay, senior associate with MJ Ervin & Associates -- a Calgary-based consulting firm -- says, "once taxes are removed there is virtually no significant variance in the price of gasoline," with a few exceptions, such as enormous freight costs associated with shipping gas to hard-to-reach areas such as Yellowknife, or Whitehorse, or because the volumes sold are so low.
Obviously, the spikes in price caused by hurricanes Katrina and Rita, which closed down as much as 25% of the U.S.'s refining capacity, make September an anomaly.
Michael Ervin, president of MJ Ervin & Associates -- the pre-eminent authority on pump prices in Canada -- states the case more emphatically.
"There's not much I can predict about the oil industry," admits Ervin, "but one thing I can be very certain of is that any reduction in tax would be immediately passed onto consumers."
How does he know? Because he has the numbers, and what a story those numbers tell. Between Jan. 1 to Aug. 31, MJ Ervin & Associates tracked the pump price in 44 Canadian cities and towns.
The average pump price during that eight-month period was 89.4 cents per litre. Taxes averaged out at 32.5 cents and the average price for a litre of gas excluding taxes was 56.9 cents.
In other words, taxes make up 36% of the cost of a litre of fuel on average -- but even more in some jurisdictions.
Americans, for instance, pay much less for their gasoline than Canadians. Are U.S. gas companies less "greedy" than Canadian ones, or is it just the difference in taxes?
When the U.S. gallon is converted to a litre and the differences in the currency rates are accounted for, the average pump price in five U.S. cities tracked by MJ Ervin & Associates is 71.9 cents per litre -- a whopping 17.5 cents per litre lower than what Canadians pay. So what fuels the big gulf?
It's the taxes -- almost exactly. U.S. consumers, on average, pay 15.1 cents in taxes per litre on their gas -- or 17.4 cents less than Canadians pay in taxes per litre of gas.
In other words, the tax-excluded price per litre of gas is almost exactly the same as the Canadian price -- 56.8 cents per litre to Canada's 56.9 cents per litre -- just one-one-hundredth of a cent difference!
Need more proof?
There's lots of it. Let's look at Charlottetown, P.E.I., where the provincial government regulates the pump price, and compare it to Toronto, where the market decides.
In Charlottetown, motorists paid an average pump price of 91.6 cents per litre or 56.8 cents when taxes are excluded. Torontonians paid 86.6 cents on average at the pump which is 56.2 cents per litre when taxes are excluded. The only real difference here is the taxes. Not greedy gas companies gobbling up any difference.
Canadians should be outraged every time Goodale repeats his misinformation and slander of gas retailers.
In fact, the average margin on a litre of gas for gas retailers is 4.5 cents per litre and they must pay expenses out of that.
Once that is done, Cathy Hay says gasoline retailers are left with one cent per litre in profits.
"It's a very slim-margin business," explains Hay.
"What retailers in today's market are doing is they've expanded very significantly their non-petroleum offering," she adds, referring to the convenience stores and restaurants that accompany many, if not most, gas stations now.
"Your average service station would not be able to survive financially on sales of gasoline alone," Hay says.
So, instead of the feds setting up a new money-wasting government agency to monitor how energy companies set prices, as they vowed to do on Monday, they should look in the mirror to find the main cause of high oil and gas prices in Canada.
Therein lies the answer.
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>>Source<<
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"...End? No, the journey doesn't end here. Death is just another path...one that we all must take.
The grey rain-curtain of this world rolls back, and all change to silver glass...and then you see it...
...white shores...and beyond...the far green country under a swift sunrise."
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RBC Energy Fund.
