As gas prices remain stubbornly high across Canada, gas taxes at both the federal and provincial level vary from high to non-existent, as groups like the Canadian Taxpayers Federation (CTF) call for relief.

A Nova Scotia flashpoint

The CTF is calling on Nova Scotia Premier Tim Houston to suspend the province’s gas tax amid continued high prices at the pumps. This comes as several other provinces as well as the federal government have enacted full or partial rollbacks on gasoline taxes.

The CTF notes that the Nova Scotia gas tax amounts to 15.5 cents per litre on gasoline, the highest in Atlantic Canada. “Houston has never cut it,” Devin Drover, CTF’s Atlantic Director and General Counsel, told National Post by email.

He added: “The government has never given a real reason. When affordability comes up, the Houston government points to its one-point HST cut, but it has never touched the 15.5-cent-per-litre provincial gas tax.”

National Post has reached out to the premier’s office for comment.

Suspending the provincial gas tax would save Nova Scotians almost $10 on a 64-litre minivan fill-up, according to the CTF.

Drover said the fuel tax brings in about $297 million a year, per the province’s own budget estimates “A four-month suspension like P.E.I.’s would run roughly a third of that, about $100 million.”

Alberta takes a three-month break

Last month, Alberta Premier Danielle Smith announced that her government would eliminate its fuel tax for three months to help fight costs. The cut took effect yesterday, Oct. 1, and amounts to a 13-cent-a-litre savings on gasoline and diesel fuel.

“Every fill-up will cost Alberta families and businesses less,” Smith said last week at a speech to the Calgary Chamber of Commerce.

In June she opted to keep the tax but instead invited Albertans to apply for a $100 energy rebate cheque, available for households making less than $225,000. But Smith admitted the program was not well received, noting: “We have to be willing to take criticism and adjust and change course.”

Albertans still have until Oct. 31 to apply for the rebate, after the province extended the deadline.

Ontario, Newfoundland make change permanent

Newfoundland and Labrador had cut its provincial gas tax by 8.05 cents per litre in June 2022, and this year passed legislation to make that decrease permanent, a move applauded by the Retail Council of Canada . It keeps the province’s gasoline taxes at 7.5 cents per litre of gas and 9.5 cents for diesel.

Ontario made a similar move in the same timeframe, cutting taxes on a gas by 5.7 cents and on diesel by 5.3. The rate is now nine cents per litre for both.

P.E.I.’s temporary rollback

Prince Edward Island, meanwhile, has announced a four-month hiatus on gasoline taxes. The cut took effect Sept. 26 and lasts until Jan. 31, 2027. The change saves Islanders 8.47 cents per litre on gasoline and 14.15 cents per litre on diesel until then.

P.E.I.’s move follows a decision by the federal government to extend its own moratorium on gas taxes. Ottawa had already announced in April that the federal tax of 10 cents a litre on gasoline and four cents on diesel would be removed until Sept. 7.

Five days before the end of that period came another announcement that the suspension would continue until Jan. 31, 2027. At that point, the tax will come back at a 50 per cent rate through March 31.

“This will bring down everyday costs for Canadians, including truckers and businesses in the food, agriculture, housing, construction, and delivery sectors,” the government said in a release .

A politically agnostic choice

Nova Scotia has a Conservative government, but Drover said cutting gas taxes is not a party-dependant decision. The Liberal government in Ottawa suspended its tax in April, while Progressive Conservative premiers did it in P.E.I. and Ontario. In Newfoundland and Labrador, a Liberal government cut the tax in 2022 and a Conservative government later made the cut permanent.

“And Manitoba’s NDP ran a full-year fuel tax holiday in 2024, then brought the tax back 10 per cent lower,” he noted.

Taxes on taxes

Even with the federal gas tax suspended, taxes make up 26 per cent of the price at the pumps in Nova Scotia, according to CTF’s recent Gas Tax Honesty Report . Nova Scotia drivers also pay a tax-on-tax of about three cents per litre, because sales taxes are charged on top of all the per-litre taxes.

That report also noted that Montreal has the highest gas taxes in the country at 61 cents per litre, or 35 per cent of the price of gasoline. Drivers in Montreal pay a transit tax when fuelling up in the city, in addition to provincial and federal levies. The rest of Quebec had gas taxes amounting to 33 per cent of the total price.

Similarly, drivers in Vancouver and Victoria also pay transit taxes at the pumps, and had total taxes of 28 and 25 per cent, respectively. Manitobans pay just 17 per cent tax on their gas, with Saskatchewan at 18 per cent.

Meanwhile, Nova Scotia has just instituted a tax on electric vehicles , with owners charged a $500 levy in addition to their vehicle registration fee. Plug-in hybrid vehicle owners will pay $250.

“Ottawa, P.E.I., Alberta and Newfoundland and Labrador have all delivered meaningful relief at the pumps,” said Drover. “Houston controls Nova Scotia’s gas tax and he needs to suspend it now.”

• Most Canadians oppose Ottawa’s planned September gas tax hike
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Canadians are feeling relatively “jaunty” in the face of a trade war with a country they now view as an adversary and no friend, even while saying they feel worse off than they did a year ago, according to a new poll of more than 10,000 Canadian adults.

Most believe Prime Minister Mark Carney and his Liberal government are best suited to handle trade negotiations and American designs on Canada, and most voters overall feel the Liberals are making headway and “doing some good things” — or they’re at least giving them the benefit of the doubt that they will.

But while Carney is polling stronger than his party, which isn’t the case for Pierre Poilievre, the high cost of living and other bread-and-butter issues were ranked as more personally pressing than the trade war.

According to the poll, Carney leads on attributes like “understands the lives of people like me,” though only 32 per cent thought this was true of him, according to U.K.-based pollster, Lord Ashcroft Polls.

“If living standards continue to stagnate, it’s easy to see how an air of calm authority could, over time, turn into aloof technocracy,” Lord Michael Ashcroft, a British businessman, philanthropist and former deputy chair of the British Conservative party, wrote in a commentary for National Post.

While found 47 per cent of Canadians think the country is heading in the wrong direction compared to 40 per cent who believe Canada is on the proper path, the numbers are notably less pessimistic than in other western nations, Ashcroft wrote.

“Overall, Canadians say the country is on the wrong track by a margin of just seven points — positively jaunty numbers compared to their equivalents in Europe and the U.S.”

Recent U.S. polls put the “wrong direction” camp ahead by 20 to 30 points, with a similar picture in Britain.

U.S. President Donald Trump’s tariffs and bombastic rhetoric “didn’t just help to swing the 2025 election; they continue to shape Canadian politics” Ashcroft wrote. “Many see Carney almost as a wartime leader, his economic credentials making him the man for the times.”

In all, 10,098 adults in Canada were surveyed online between July 31 and Aug. 17. A poll sample of this size has a margin of error or plus or minus one percentage point.

In addition, 16 focus groups involving 128 participants — equal numbers of men and women drawn from a range of backgrounds — were held in four locations in B.C, Alberta, Quebec and Ontario.

While the poll found support for the way Carney is handling Trump, people were more likely to worry the country is off track, a finding that surprised Carleton University’s Richard Nimijean, given more recent polls have reported more upbeat results, with the “right direction” overtaking the wrong. It could come down to timing, said Nimijean, an associate professor of Canadian studies.

The Ashcroft poll was conducted at a time “when people were feeling pretty tired of and stressed by” the trade conflict, Nimijean said.

Days after the Ashcroft polling stopped, Carney pulled his negotiating team out of the trade talks, telling reporters: “You’re at war when you get attacked. We got attacked.”

The prime minister’s rallying call might have marked an important mood shift that could explain why more recent polls found higher optimism, and why the jaunty sentiment has continued, Nimijean said.

Still, when asked whether they feel better or worse off than they did a year ago, 45 per cent of Ashcroft poll respondents said they felt worse off, rather than better (17 per cent); 37 per cent said they felt about the same.

Those aged 45-54, the most hard-pressed group, felt worse, rather than better off, by a 37-point margin: only 15 per cent said they felt better off, versus 52 per cent who said they feel worse off.

Despite the “we won’t be bullied sentiment,” issues around affordability, housing and cost of living still deeply matter, Nimijean said. “Getting affordable housing hasn’t gone away. Accessible health care as an issue hasn’t gone away,” and people in vulnerable sectors are legitimately worried about their jobs, he said. This week, steelmaker Stelco Holdings announced plans to lay off up to 500 workers at its Hamilton and Lake Erie facilities.

When looking at political party affiliation, one third of Liberal voters (32 per cent) said they feel worse off than they did a year ago. More than half (57 per cent) of Conservative voters shared that sentiment.

On the economic outlook, while people were more likely to say they expect the economy will do poorly over the next year for Canada as a whole, they were more optimistic about how things will fare for themselves personally.

It’s a phenomenon seen globally, according to the pollster. People feel they have no control over issues like tariffs, the Iran war and international uncertainty. “But closer to home, when people think about their own lives and careers and prospects, things feel somewhat less gloomy and more within their power to determine,” the Ashcroft team said in an email.

Men tend to be more bullish about the economy, and women more guarded, according to the poll.

Canadians across all age groups and parties named the cost of living as the top concern facing Canada today. Housing was the second most important issue for voters up to age 44. Health care took second spot for the 45 and older.

Conservatives were more likely to name immigration and border control, followed by the economy and jobs.

Trade and tariffs came in fifth spot for Canadians as a whole.

When asked which party, regardless of how they intend to vote, does the best job handling issues they consider most important, “the economy was the most tightly contested issue among those who named it as a priority,” according to the poll. The Conservatives had a slight lead (43 per cent) over the Liberals (42 per cent).

On energy and natural resources, 71 per cent of those polled said they’d rather have a government that lets Canada use its own natural resources to reduce energy costs over a government that preserves its natural resources “even at a time of higher energy prices.”

Even a majority of NDP voters (57 per cent) preferred using natural resources to keep energy bills down.

In focus groups, a new oil pipeline to the West Coast drew mixed reviews. “Some saw it as a welcome and overdue investment that would promote energy independence and economic resilience, while others — particularly those who had switched from the NDP (in the last federal election) — worried about the environmental impact and the effect on First Nations,” according to the poll.

“I know sometimes it doesn’t seem like the woke options, but I feel like a lot of people don’t think about the alternative being to buy from countries like Saudi Arabia where they have terrible human rights,” remarked one Liberal participant from the B.C. focus group.

“I also think there are ways to get oil here where Indigenous people are partners and there is responsible stewardship of the land. And with gas being like $1.80, it’s really important to have our own supply.”

Overall, 51 per cent of respondents said they see the U.S. as an “adversary or threat,” and just 25 per cent viewed their southern neighbour as a friend or ally.

Four years ago, in 2022, the opposite was true: 73 per cent of Canadians saw the U.S. as an ally; 23 per cent saw the Americans as a threat.

“Those who voted Conservative in 2025 were the only group more likely to call the U.S. an ally than an adversary” by a four-point margin, according to the poll.

Focus groups supported the push to make the country more economically self-sufficient “though many felt this was long overdue and regretted that it had taken the Trump presidency to force action on this front,” according to the poll.

A closer relationship with China, however, was slightly more worrisome.

For Canadians as a whole, including for Liberal, Bloc and NDP voters, a trade war with the U.S. was the most serious threat to Canada. For Conservatives, it was immigration, followed second by trade tensions.

More than eight in 10 people polled (82 per cent) said managing relations with the U.S., even after Trump is no longer in office, would be at least as important as it is now in deciding their vote in Canada’s next federal election, “partly because they see Trump as a symptom as much as a cause of the movements in American politics over the last decade or more,” the Ashcroft team said in an email. Among the Republican Party, whoever succeeds Trump could have a similar agenda.

Overall, Canadians have a generally positive view of Carney and the Liberal government: 42 per cent, including one in five Conservative voters, said the Liberals are “making progress and doing some good things.”

Only just over a quarter, including just over half (52 per cent) of Conservative voters, said the Carney Liberals “won’t achieve anything good” and want them out as soon as possible.

On the leadership question, 34 per cent of Canadians as a whole said they would be more likely to consider voting Conservative in the next election if someone other than Pierre Poilievre led the party.

Among those who said there was some chance they’d vote Conservative in the next election, but probably won’t, 34 per cent said what most put them off was that “I don’t like Pierre Poilievre.”

Roughly another third said the party feels too close to engaging in U.S.-style politics; 23 per cent said they worry about what the Conservatives would do in government.

“The Conservatives have struggled to find a narrative or a story to tell Canadians that speaks to the moment, that speaks to how Canadians are feeling,” Nimijean said. “The challenge for Mr. Poilievre is, how do you reach out more to the centre or to the moderates while also speaking to the base you have? It’s not easy.”

The poll echoes what an annual public survey — the Confederation of Tomorrow survey of 5,600 adults — has found when Canadians are asked if they are satisfied, or not, with the way things are going. “It’s basically 50-50,” said Charles Breton, executive director of the Centre of Excellence on the Canadian Federation in Montreal.

What isn’t clearly captured by the new poll “is that Canadians still feel a relationship with the U.S. is an important relationship — not the way things are going now. We do not want that relationship,” Breton said.

“But it is an important relationship, nonetheless.”

National Post

• Majority of Canadians now see U.S. as an enemy, and Trump is the reason: poll
• One in four Canadians aren’t confident that Canada will still be a country in 50 years

What ‘threat’ worries Canadians most and other key findings of State of the Nation poll

An ambitious new poll by British-based Ashcroft Polls surveyed 10,098 Canadian adults on a wide range of topics, from their thoughts on who is the country’s No. 1 enemy to their top kitchen table issue. Here are the key findings.

Threats to Canada

After a trade war with the Americans (47 per cent), the most serious threat to Canadians as a whole was the risk of a new economic and financial crisis (38 per cent) followed by immigration (32 per cent). Climate change was fourth overall, followed by loss of jobs to robotics, AI and machine learning.

Allies or adversaries?

The U.K, Australia and France were more likely to be seen as allies of Canada, while Russia, Iran and the U.S. were the most likely to be seen as an adversary or threat.

In 2022, 73 per cent of Canadians saw the U.S. as an ally. Today, only 25 per cent do.

The U.S. vs China: Who should Canada stand up to?

When asked if they had to choose, 72 per cent of Canadians as a whole said they’d prefer a government that stands up to the United States versus 28 per cent who said the government should seek accommodations with the U.S.

By comparison, 59 per cent of Canadians would prefer to seek cooperation with China rather than stand up to Beijing (41 per cent).

Trump will still be a threat even after he’s no longer in the White House

Most Canadians feel the same tensions with the U.S. will exist even after Donald Trump is no longer president by the time of the next federal election in 2029: 40 per cent said managing the Canada-U.S. relationship will be as important as it is now, with a further 42 per cent saying it will be even more important.

The party and their leader’s approval ratings

Canadians are more likely to have a net positive view of Mark Carney than of the Liberal party: 60 per cent had a positive view of Carney, compared to 55 per cent who had a positive view of the Liberals.

The reverse was true for Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre, who scored a lower positive score (43 per cent) than his party (49 per cent).

Who would you never vote for?

A slightly higher proportion of voters said they would never vote for the Conservatives (27 per cent) than said the same for the Liberals (24 per cent) or NDP (22 per cent).

What are the most important issues facing Canada today?

The cost of living was chosen by 60 per cent of respondents as the most important issue facing Canada today, followed by health care, the economy and jobs, housing and trade and tariffs with the U.S.

Source: Ashcroft Polls interviewed 10,098 Canadian adults online between July 31 and Aug. 17 A poll sample of this size has a margin of error or plus or minus one percentage point.

National Post

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The most striking moment in former Alberta deputy premier Thomas Lukaszuk’s speech to a Toronto business audience about the perils of Alberta separatism came when he mentioned Thursday’s breaking news that Prime Minister Mark Carney will fast-track a new Pacific Link pipeline from Alberta to the West Coast as a project of national interest.

It was striking because there was no applause, not even a murmur of assent or a rustle of emotional reaction for this pipeline that is being styled as a marquee nation-building project for a divided and imperilled nation, strategically announced 18 days before Alberta votes on whether to hold a sovereignty referendum.

If anyone was looking for a case against Alberta going it alone, this was it.

So the downtown Toronto audience’s silence was an illustration of a recurring theme, that some of Alberta’s beef with the rest of Canada, especially central Canada, is the attitude.

This came up first in the speech to the Economic Club of Canada by Lukaszuk, a staunch anti-separatist and a former cabinet minister in the Progressive Conservative governments of Ed Stelmach and Alison Redford. And it came up again in the following roundtable discussion led by former Ontario premier Dalton McGuinty.

“It’s time to admit that some of those grievances are real,” Lukaszuk said. Alberta contributes substantially to Canada as a whole and has legitimate concerns that equalization payments to the provinces give Albertans short shrift. “A certain amount of gratitude is not too much to ask.”

He said the separatist movement is boosted by unequal representation in the Senate, and by the tendency for national elections to be decided before polls even close in the West. Lukaszuk said he has had the deflating experience of hearing CBC declare a majority while he was still waiting in line to vote in Alberta.

“To us, it feels like our votes don’t matter,” he said. It is fodder for separatism, but it also encourages Albertans who are merely frustrated with their place in Canada to vote with the separatists just to send a message.

“It’s a message the rest of Canada needs to listen to,” he said. “Please don’t pat us on the head with the promise of a pipeline, thinking that’s enough.”

Albertan separatism is based on “unsubstantiated claims and magical thinking” and it is hampered by squabbling factions, Lukaszuk said. Polling in the last few days has shown separatist sentiment to be low and falling, and pegged the remain vote as high as 70 per cent.

But Lukaszuk is concerned this is a recipe for low voter turnout, with the remainers lacking the conviction and motivation of the leavers.

“Fervent separatists will crawl across broken glass to make their vote count,” he said. “This is a genie in a bottle that magically will not be put back in. It will take strong leadership to convince Albertans that Alberta belongs in Canada.”

In Alberta, he said this current high water point for the long-running separatist movement is dividing families, dragging away investment and causing Albertan businesses to consider relocating.

“It should be enough to make people throw up their hands in despair,” he said. “And yet something else has happened.”

He credited the trade war brought by U.S. President Donald Trump with “the rekindling of Canadian pride and healthy patriotism,” and he spoke of a “uniquely Canadian combination of pride, persistence and hope.”

Last year, Lukaszuk launched a petition called Alberta Forever Canada that got more than 400,000 signatures in 90 days in favour of Alberta remaining in Canada. This year he has campaigned across the province against separatism in a recreational vehicle styled as the Unity Bus.

After his keynote address, he took questions from McGuinty alongside Martha Hall Findlay, a former Liberal MP now with the University of Calgary’s School of Public Policy, and Andrew Leach, professor of economics and law at the University of Alberta.

Hall Findlay recently published a report for the government of Alberta on the potential costs of separation, which concluded it could cost as much as $170 billion over five years.

“Those were only the five year out numbers,” she said. Her analysis ran several models, including one that assumed separation went completely smoothly, which suggested over 20 years there was “potentially a little upside,” thanks to a more efficient civil service and other factors.

But with the assumption of a turbulent separation, for example with pushback from Ottawa, the downside is “really big,” she said, with a potential provincial debt of close to $400 billion.

She compared Albertan separatism to the British Brexit movement, in the sense that then Prime Minister David Cameron thought a failed vote would take the wind out of the Brexiteers’ sails, but the momentum got away from him, and it cost him his leadership.

She spoke of an ignorance among central Canadians for how things work in Alberta, and how much it contributes to the country, such as the Trans Mountain Pipeline expansion project that added fully half a point to national GDP when it opened in 2024. She described an “incredibly arrogant” framing of pipeline approvals as basically gifts from Ottawa, an attitude that would never be taken with infrastructure projects in Quebec, where separatism is also a perennial threat to national unity.

“Remember, we’re only 15 years removed from the federal government putting out loans to restart an asbestos mine in Quebec,” said Leach. “That mentality was very different when it came to Alberta’s business,” he said. It looked more like Ottawa thinking its job is to save Albertans from themselves, he said.

He urged the audience to consider what he has experienced in Edmonton, when an oil boom goes bust as in 2014, and how it must feel for an oil patch worker to hear the federal government say, “Oh but there might be solar panels manufactured in Medicine Hat, you’ll be fine.”

Lukaszuk said the separatist sentiment falls with Alberta’s economic successes and rises with its failures. He thinks it is driven predominantly by younger men in the oil and gas industry, overleveraged by debt, with limited transferable skills, who are noticing the economy is pivoting on them.

“Now they fear for their future, and the fear is real,” Lukaszuk said. He described this dynamic as “infectious” and catching on in Saskatchewan and British Columbia.

“If we don’t inoculate this now in Alberta, we will be dealing with it on a wider scope, maybe with different industries,” he said.

• Alberta anti-separatist brings hard message to central Canada: show a little gratitude
• Alberta’s separatists have a Mark Carney problem

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