Editor:
The Sunshine Coast Labour Council has been monitoring the price of gasoline on the Coast since January 2019 when we first brought our concerns to the public.
We believe it is important to point out that since our Letter to the Editor, the local stations have been keeping the price of gas at around the 11 cents per litre below Vancouver prices that it should be. We are happy about this, but we know if we are not diligent the price will certainly begin to increase again, with millions of dollars at stake. We also know that this confirms they have been overcharging us whenever the difference was less than 11 cents. The price of gasoline has reached record highs and it is for this reason that the Sunshine Coast Labour Council has passed a resolution asking that the B.C. government regulate gas prices. The B.C. Utilities Commission already regulates electricity and natural gas so it only makes sense that if the government really wants to help British Columbians feel “relief at the pumps” they will have to regulate the price of gasoline as well.
As it stands now, the oil companies are determining the rise in price at the pump. According to Marc Lee, a senior economist with the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives, gouging by the suppliers, not taxes, is the real cause of higher gas prices. Mr. Lee, in his recent report, says that in April 2016 prices in Vancouver were $1.15 per litre compared to over $1.70 per litre today: a 55 cent per litre increase in three years. Of that price hike only 6.3 cents per litre is from tax increases. The remainder is mainly from the increase in markup at the refinery by the oil companies. In B.C. this is almost double the amount as in the rest of Canada.
Companies have been charging higher prices and they have been getting away with it. On the Sunshine Coast we are going to be asking the government for regulation of gas prices through the B.C. Utilities Commission and working to secure fair prices at the pumps, so they aren’t “getting away with it” anymore.
Ed Erickson, President, Sunshine Coast Labour Council
