El Duderino

I hear so many people blaming the outrageous gas prices on Donald Trump, but here’s a fact for y’all to ponder. Oil just topped $100 per barrel. As of five minutes ago gas is selling for $1.90/litre in my neighborhood. The last time oil hit $100 per barrel was under Stephen Harper, yet gas prices topped out at $1.38 per litre back then. Yes, the Iran war is affecting gas prices, but there’s about 52¢/litre that is the direct result of taxes, environmental taxes, and taxes on those taxes.

That “fact check” is economic cosplay. You don’t “adjust gasoline by CPI” and declare the debate over. Gas is not a couch, a haircut, or a basket of groceries. It is a globally traded commodity affected by crude prices, refining capacity, currency exchange, transport costs, taxes, fuel standards, and government policy. Poilievre’s point is simple: if oil is around the same world price as 2014, but pump prices are much higher, then you ask what changed in the cost stack. And one obvious answer is policy. Ottawa itself admits the federal fuel excise tax is worth 10 cents per litre on regular gasoline, which is why Carney temporarily suspended it. That is not “inflation.” That is tax. The consumer carbon tax also added 17.6 cents per litre before Carney scrapped it, and gasoline prices dropped after its removal. Again: not magic. Not CPI. Policy. Then there is the Clean Fuel Regulations cost, estimated by the Parliamentary Budget Officer at up to 16–17 cents per litre by 2030, with roughly 7 cents per litre cited for 2026. So no, this isn’t a “gotcha.” It’s a spreadsheet wearing a clown nose. Inflation matters. Obviously. But pretending inflation explains everything is how you protect bad policy from scrutiny. The real question is not whether prices rose over time. The real question is: how much of the rise was made worse by taxes, regulations, weak productivity, a weaker dollar, and anti-energy policy? That’s the part they don’t want to calculate. Because once you calculate it, the Liberal talking point falls apart like wet cardboard.

POILIEVRE: "Oil is high. It's about $100 a barrel. You know when it was last $100 a barrel? In 2014. And you know what the gas price was then? A buck thirty-eight. Forty-five cents cheaper. Even though the world oil price was exactly what it is today."

Canada is Booming