(At the time Joseph Somers sent Niagara At Large this piece, the price of gasoline, per U.S. gallon, averaged around $3.19 to $3.29 in the Buffalo, New York area, versus what amounts to more than four-and-a-half bucks per U.S. gallon on the Ontario side of the border at a time when the dollars in both countries are hovering around par.)
By Joseph Somers
In Welland, Ontario this week, at an Esso station on Main Street East, we woke up to find an increase in gas prices per litre from $1.099 to $1.159 – an increase that amounts to 6 x 4.546, or an increase of $0.273 per imperial gallon overnight!
The gas prices, per litre and not gallon, that Canadians are slapped in face with on the Niagara, Ontario side of the border. Photo by Doug Draper
Meanwhile, gasoline across the Niagara River (in the Buffalo area) now runs around $3.29 per American gallon. At that a cost or however pennies more on the U.S. side, it costs Canadian consumers well over a dollar more to purchase the same gallon of gas on the Canadian side of the border.
Using U.S.A. costs, Canadians have to pay at least a $1.30 more per gallon for gasoline, much of it exported to the U.S.A. from Canada.
There is no excuse for this difference in gas prices other than unadulterated greed.
(Share your comments below on this or related topics, such as why can you purchase a gallon of milk at Wegmans grocery stores in Western New York for $1.49 when it costs $5.00 or more for a gallon of milk in Niagara, Ontario?)
Joseph Somers is a resident of Welland, Ontario. We welcome you to contribute posts on matters of interest and concern to Niagara readers on this site.
(Visit Niagara At Large for more news and commentary on matters of interest and concern to our greater binational Niagara region.)
Niagara At Large 
The obvious answer for the difference in price is that our governments TAX us to pay for our many government-run social programmes (eg. OHIP – and nobody’s going to get rid of it).
Remember, the question of What to tax is important – they often tax People (who can’t move to other countries) on things like Fuel, which we need to live.
If they put Low taxes on Corporations, they’ll often move to Ontario & Canada and give us JOBS (like Tim Horton’s moved back to Ontario from the USA in 2010). OTOH, Corporations can move very easily (like John Deere), while people can’t.
Tonight, we were discussing why the Europeans have substantially higher fuel taxes than North Americans. Maybe their governments use it to build their superior public transit systems. Guess we’re doomed to drive cars, eh?
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Drivers in Europe actually pay closer to what it actually costs to drive, as opposed to here where drivers are subsidized largely by all taxpayers including those that cannot or do not drive. Using taxes for transit is actually both horizontally and vertically equitable, as anybody can use the transit system. One may not want to, but if they wanted to, they can. Not everybody can drive or afford to own a car to do so.
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Behind the scenes happenings ..and of course …in MY opinion. ..GREED! ?
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Frankly, I think the Canadian government should tax fuel even more. If it cost more at the pump, we’d have more of an incentive to innovate and be world leaders in green technology. (We’d also have more money to expand Universal Health Care. ) We need to be more long-term oriented: the age of petroleum products for electricity and transit needs to die fast. Those countries that accept this reality will be the new world leaders.
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Lorne and Mark have both made points.
As Lorne states, we have much a better social safety net than the US which is 37th in healthcare, in the 30’s as far as education while Canada ranks in the top 5, they have a miserable minimum wage of @ $7 vs $10, a very unstable banking system with higher unemployment and mortgage defaults and a pretty scary society as evidenced by recent events.
That being said, our government still wastes a helluva lot of money. There is so much redundancy and graft that it is ridiculous. I believe it was Samuel Clemons who said he saw a tomstone engraved:
” Here lies a lawyer and an honest man”
He concluded there must be two men buried there. Personally, I think it was a misprint. It should have said “politician”.
Mark is also right in that we must have some incentive to develop alternative fuels and decrease the use of oil. Unfortunately, the extra money we pay for gas goes in large part to corporate greed. Even BP after last years fiasco, is seeing its shares increase in value again already. How do we get access to electric cars, ethanol or any such alternative if nobody produces them? I’m sure that inaccessibility is planned. We must have some form of transportation.
What is the secret of making these higher taxes go where they should? I don’t know. I hope someone out there does because that seems to be the eternal conundrum.
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Once upon a time a Prime Minister thought it was a good idea to have a made in Canada price for fuel and a window on the petroleum industry, so he went and bought an oil company that company was called Dome Petroleum, so now we the citizens of Canada owned an oil company the name was changed to Petro Canada, our gasoline was so cheap the citizens of Buffalo used to come to Fort Erie and fill their tanks, then the taxpayers voted for Brian Mulroney a conservative who proceeded to get rid of our oil company and sold it to his Alberta cronies. The Alberta oil patch now has no competition so we pay the world price and wonder why. why do we blindly vote against our own interests.???
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One idea is to have oil companies taxed at source (not sure of details, or if NAFTA would allow it). Basically, these companies are gettng a free ride in many areas. Examples: They pollute, but they don’t pay all of the ensuing health costs; they use roads and infrastructure, but they don’t pay to fix them, and so on.
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Who does the polluting?
Who burns the oil?
Who drives on the roads?
If we don’t buy their products, no company will pay taxes.
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Obama proposes reducing tax breaks for oil companies. I see that as a progressive idea. Those tax dollars would be better served empowering the transition to green technology, conservation, etc.
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Isn’t it nice to see Obama following what Harper & Flaherty did in their budget of ~2 yrs ago? With all the political anti-Harper hype (some of which he deserves), who would have thought that he’d raise taxes on oil companies?!?!
Canada is cutting the tax breaks for oil companies to zero over 5-10 years, to allow them time to adapt. Remember all those Alberta (& Ontario!) jobs that went south to the USA when Trudeau introduced his National Energy Policy OVERNIGHT? He certainly didn’t improve the recession of the early 1980’s by sending all those oil rigs south, did he?
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Marketing boards that govern supply and demand of dairy and poultry, hence higher prices for these food essentials. Multiple layers of taxes on gas , smaller market and limited refinery capacity all contribute to higher costs.
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Food Marketing Boards also gurantee decent wages to farmers, plus better quality food.
If you want to drink anti-biotics or growth hormone, go to Buffalo and buy their cheaper market-priced milk.
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If the petroleum industry paid for the real costs of what they are doing in Alberta, they would be bankrupt tomorrow, as they should be. Real costs include devastation to the hydrological cycle as well as irreversible planetary/atmospheric poisoning. Real costs also are economic: the more Canada relies on petroleum to temporarily fuel the economy (“quick and dirty” treasure), the more we’ll fall behind on global scenes.
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Canada is so far behind in this. What would it take for our leaders at both the government and economic level to stop pushing the oil so much?
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Naw, the oil companies wouldn’t go bankrupt – WE would by paying for the higher-priced oil.
I’m not going to stop driving or buying goods delivered by truck, train & plane, are you?
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The “Dutch Disease” might soon be renamed the “Canadian Disease”, as it pertains to petroleum issues.
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The US of A put duties via tarrifs on canadian softwood to the tune of a billion dollars, kept out wheat, pork, potatos ,and beef, so much for Free Trade, a level playing field? I think not, our jobs and factories went to Mexico a place with no regulations, they murder union leaders, no environmental laws, and starvation wages. thank you Chamber of Commerce USA and Canada, your lobbying killed trade between our two countries to the lowest in 28 years, according to a recent study by the Bank of Montreal and the TD bank.so why do we need a Mid-Pen Highway?
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Maybe we should put an enviroment tax on every barrel of tar sands oil a$1.00 levy to be used to clean up the mess done to our country?tit for tat.
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