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The collective blood pressure of Ontario taxpayers surged over the weekend as gas prices hit record levels across the province.

In large part, hardworking taxpayers can blame the federal government for soaring costs.

For the first time ever, gas prices in Ontario crossed the $1.50 per litre threshold.

A family that took their minivan and sedan to fill up for the workweek faced a $200 bill.

As the pandemic enters its third year, many families cannot afford such high gas prices. Far too many Ontarians have lost their jobs, seen their hours cut, or were forced to close the doors of their family business.

While governments don’t control the price of oil, they have much more control over gas prices than they let on.

The hard truth politicians don’t want taxpayers to know is that taxes make up a third of the price at the pumps.

When gas prices hit $1.50 per litre in Ontario last week, the actual price of gas, before taxes, was $1.02 per litre.

That’s right: 48 cents gets added to the price of every litre of gas because of taxes in Ontario.

To make matters worse, politicians in Canada are driving gas prices even higher.

While politicians in countries like India and South Korea are cutting gasoline taxes to help struggling taxpayers, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau plans to hike taxes for the third time in this pandemic on April 1, increasing the carbon tax from $40 per tonne to $50 per tonne.

That carbon tax increase will mean another 2.2 cents per litre of taxes for drivers at the pumps, bringing the total tax burden for Ontario drivers to 50 cents.

And that’s just the beginning. Trudeau plans to hike the carbon tax all the way to $170 per tonne by 2030.

Today, the carbon tax costs drivers 8.8 cents per litre of gasoline. By 2030, it will be costing drivers 37 cents.

The Trudeau government is also bringing in new fuel regulations that are essentially a second carbon tax. That will drive the cost of gas up by a further 11 cents.

If the federal carbon tax were to be fully in place today, drivers would feel their blood pressure spike even higher, with the cost per litre hitting $1.90.

Thanks to the Trudeau plan, by 2030 gas prices will be at least 27 per cent higher than they are today.

That means the same family filling up their sedan and minivan for the workweek will be facing a bill of over $250. Lower- and middle-income families can’t afford to be spending over $1,000 a month to fill up their cars just to drive to work, drop their kids off at school, and get to hockey practice.

And, of course, gas receipts aren’t the only place families are seeing higher prices. With high gas and carbon taxes driving up the cost of shipping, nearly everything is getting more expensive, including weekly bills at the grocery store.

As Ontarians desperately look for relief at the pumps, Premier Doug Ford has a political opening.

Ontarians have been waiting for four years for Ford to deliver on his promise to cut gas taxes by 5.7 cents per litre, which could save Ontario families $400 per year.

With hardworking taxpayers facing the prospect of eight more years of Trudeau carbon tax hikes, Ontarians desperately need tax relief at the pumps.

Ford has called the carbon tax “the single worst tax on the backs of Canadians that’s ever existed.”

Ford isn’t wrong. But before he can bill himself as a taxpayer crusader, Ford needs to deliver on his own promise to lower Ontarians’ gas prices.

Jay Goldberg is the Ontario Director at the Canadian Taxpayers Federation

The views, opinions and positions expressed by columnists and contributors are the author’s alone. They do not inherently or expressly reflect the views, opinions and/or positions of our publication.

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The countdown is on to get a gas tax cut in the province of Ontario.

Late last year, Ontario Premier Doug Ford said he would keep his promise to cut the provincial gas excise tax by 5.7 cents per litre, nearly four years after he first made the commitment to Ontario voters.

After years of stalling, the Ford government says Ontarians will finally get relief at the pumps by the end of March.

During the 2018 provincial election campaign, Ford ran as a candidate who would stand up for taxpayers.

Ford told Ontario voters in 2018 that gas prices were too high, and that the government needed to do something about it.

“Every day, I hear from people who are fed up,” said Ford. “Fed up with being gouged at the pump.”

Ford said he recognized that high gas prices meant millions of Ontarians were having a difficult time with “no end or relief in sight.”

Ford promised to reduce gas prices by 10 cents per litre in his party’s election platform.

To achieve that goal, Ford pledged to scrap former premier Kathleen Wynne’s cap-and-trade carbon tax, which would take 4.3 cents per litre off the price of gasoline, along with a 5.7 cent per litre cut in provincial gas excise taxes, for a total tax cut of 10 cents per litre.

Unfortunately, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and the federal Liberal government imposed the carbon tax backstop on Ontario and robbed Ontarians of 4.3 cents per litre of relief at the pumps.

But by cutting the gas excise tax, Ford has a real chance of delivering meaningful savings to everyday Ontario families without interference from Ottawa.

Over time, saving 5.7 cents a litre will mean significant savings.

A family filling up a minivan and a sedan once a week stands to save over $390 a year through the premier’s government’s proposed tax cut.

At a time when millions of Ontarians are having a tough time just getting by, nearly $400 of savings could cover a couple of weeks of groceries for a family of four.

Cutting gas taxes is a good idea when one looks a breakdown of gas prices. Last month, drivers paid an average of 52.5 cents per litre in taxes when filling up their gas tanks, according to the government of Ontario’s own data.

That translates into $39.90 in taxes when a single mom fills up her minivan to drive her kids to school, buy groceries, and get herself to work.

That’s far too much of her hard-earned money going into government coffers.

What’s more, tax rates on gasoline will go even higher this April with the federal government’s planned carbon tax hike.

As Ontarians face soaring costs of living and higher prices on everything from food to gas to clothing, taxpayers need relief now more than ever before.

Ford can be the man who delivers if he keeps his promise.

It’s time for the premier to finally become the taxpayer champion that he once claimed to be.

After nearly four years of stalling, Ford needs to deliver on this election commitment.

He should do so immediately.

The clock is ticking.

Jay Goldberg is the Ontario Director at the Canadian Taxpayers Federation

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Every year, I’ve taken to these virtual pages to offer my take on the year that was — via a “hot or not” column — and offer my foolproof, very accurate predictions for the year ahead.

Last year, I was uncharacteristically wrong when I said there wouldn’t be an election in 2021 — although I did have the caveat that there certainly wouldn’t be one in the spring, as was then speculated, but the autumn might be more 50/50. Turns out there was an election in September. And it returned virtually the same result as 2019.

What do I think will happen in 2021?

Well, first and foremost, I am holding out hope that the omnicron variant will mark the end of the pandemic. I’m obviously not a doctor or epidemiologist, but I hope that a variant that is more transmissible but hopefully less virulent is how the virus punches itself out.

The federal government seems to be a stable minority. They need to take the cost of living rise more seriously, but they also cannot mistake the inflationary pressure as being the result of government spending, when it is caused by pandemic demand and supply chain disruption. Now is not the time to pull back on plans to invest in infrastructure and climate resiliency, as well as needed social infrastructure like child care.

The big political flashpoint will be the Ontario provincial election. Gun to my head today, I expect Doug Ford to win. His opposition is divided, lacking a message other than “not Ford” and, despite his flaws, the Premier has a certain je ne sais quoi appeal to many voters. He’s running on fixing traffic and building housing, messages that will appeal to the suburbs as the NDP fights to hold off the Liberals in Toronto. I’ve said before, but the best assets Ford has are a divided opposition, with two opponents who seem unable to… excite the public, to put it diplomatically.

The municipal elections will see continuity for the most part with a dash of change. I expect both Toronto Mayor John Tory and my friend Mississauga Mayor Bonnie Crombie to run for re-election and win handily, again. Both have done good jobs, and a third term would cement their legacies. That leaves the open mayoral seat in Ottawa as the one to watch. I expect a dark horse candidate from the business community or even another level of government to emerge, denying the mayoralty to the councillors and ex-mayor already jockeying to succeed Jim Watson.

In Ottawa, look for Mark Miller and Anita Anand to quietly be the “get stuff done” cabinet ministers who move the ball down the field on two tricky files, Indigenous reconciliation and national defence. Both are competent, unflashy ministers who put in the elbow grease and build relationships with their sectors.

In terms of zeitgeist, I perceive a pent-up demand to get results on infrastructure — particularly housing, transit and those critical community amenities like trails, parks, community centres, urban renewal. COVID-19 has kept us close to home, and we’ve seen the flaws in our neighbourhoods, even as we have grown used to not having to commute every day. Put those things together, and there is a real desire to fix perennial infrastructure problems. Plus, there’s been a migration of young people from the city to the suburbs and exurbs, and that comes with a new demand for quality service in our medium-sized towns.

Recovery and progress: if there are two thematic desires I have for the New Year, those are them.

Happy New Year to you and yours.

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If your wallet is feeling lighter, it’s not just because of the rising cost of living and inflation.

Ontario’s political parties have teamed-up to take $14 million out of taxpayers’ pockets this year, and they’re just getting started.

Back in 2014, former premier Kathleen Wynne introduced the per-vote subsidy. Under Wynne’s plan, political parties would get a set amount of money from taxpayers every three months, to be spent on whatever the parties want, including lawn signs and attack ads.

Thanks to Wynne’s program, Ontario’s political parties have taken nearly $100 million out of taxpayers’ wallets in the past seven years.

But Wynne isn’t the only politician who deserves some coal in the stocking.

When he was running to replace Wynne three years ago, Ontario Premier Doug Ford promised to scrap Wynne’s political welfare handouts.

Promise made, promise broken.

Ford has been in office for more than three and a half years, and Ontario’s political welfare program is alive and well.

In fact, political welfare is thriving like never before.

In February, Attorney General Doug Downey announced the Ford government planned to keep Wynne’s political welfare system in place. He also announced that the amount of money Ontario’s political parties receive under the program would increase to historic new highs.

That means not only did the Ford government fail to repeal political welfare, as promised, but it’s also made it even more costly.

When Downey announced this policy reversal, he blamed the pandemic, claiming that the economic climate meant Ontario’s political parties couldn’t fundraise as much as they would have liked to.

All three of the opposition parties at Queen’s Park have chosen to go along with the Ford government’s plan to suck money out of taxpayers.

Ford’s team also quietly introduced a new gravy train for Ontario’s political parties ahead of the 2022 election. The four parties are set to receive $10 million in taxpayer loans for them to spend during the 2022 campaign.

Taxpayers will literally be loaning money to political parties for the privilege of being forced to watch the kind of TV attack ads that make us want to throw our televisions out the window.

But new evidence posted on Elections Ontario’s website shows that the Ford government’s decision to blame the pandemic for breaking its election promise is just hot air. The government’s own legislation keeps the system in place until at least the end of 2024.

If the government wants to blame the pandemic, it certainly can’t use that excuse to justify a three-year extension of the program.

The fact that Ontario’s political parties are crying poor is also a load of hogwash. Last year, in the thick of the pandemic, Ford’s Progressive Conservatives raised $3.4 million. The Liberals and the NDP raised millions as well.

Do those numbers suggest that political parties really need our help?

There are literally thousands of things hard-earned taxpayer dollars could be better spent on.

The average Ontarian is set to pay $1,850 in provincial sales taxes this year. With the $14 million going into Ontario’s political parties’ pockets, over 7,500 Ontarians could have had a sales tax holiday for the entire year.

Does that sound like our politicians have their priorities straight?

Ontario’s politicians are using the pandemic as a weak excuse to justify raiding the treasury.

Taxpayers can’t let them get away with it.

Ontario’s politicians need to be held accountable.

Ford was right when he said that taxpayers shouldn’t have to see their hard-earned tax dollars pad the pockets of political parties.

Before the next election, taxpayers want to see the old Doug Ford make a return to Queen’s Park and finally take political parties’ hands out of the taxpayer cookie jar.

Jay Goldberg is the Ontario Director at the Canadian Taxpayers Federation

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Some say the biggest question about Canadian politics in the 2022 new year is whether PM Trudeau will still be PM when the year is over.

Others — especially among Ontario residents — might point to the impact of the June 2, 2022 Ontario provincial election on Canadian federal politics.

Setting aside the unique position of the Bloc Québécois federally, Ontario and Canada have broadly similar political party systems.

In both cases there are Conservatives, Liberals, New Democrats, and Greens. And the Greens, while sometimes contributing effectively to the broader public debate, are only slightly represented in popularly elected parliaments.

P.J. Fournier’s latest 338Canada poll aggregations for Ontario (“Last update: November 24, 2021”) and Canada (“Last update: December 12, 2021”) suggest key similarities and differences between the provincial and federal party systems north of the Great Lakes.

Very broadly, at this moment in the early 2020s New Democrats are more strongly represented in the Legislative Assembly of Ontario than they are in the Canadian House of Commons.

And the fate of Andrea Horwath’s Ontario New Democrats on June 2 could be one channel of provincial election impact on Canadian federal politics in 2022.

In greater detail, in Ontario, 338Canada suggests, an election held late last month would give the Ford Conservatives 35% of the province-wide vote and 55 seats in a 124-seat Legislative Assembly — for a perhaps short-lived Conservative minority government.

Meanwhile, the Del Duca Liberals would take 41 seats with 30% of the vote. The Horwath New Democrats would win 27 seats with 26%. And with 5% province-wide Mike Schreiner’s Greens would again take his one seat in Guelph.

The Trudeau Liberals won their own (second) minority government in the recent real-world Canadian federal election on September 20, 2021.

But 338Canada suggests that in a federal election held in the middle of December 2021 Liberals would do slightly better — and even win the barest of majority governments, with 170 seats in a 338-seat House (and 34% of the cross-Canada popular vote).

Meanwhile, the Erin O’Toole Conservatives would take 111 seats with 31% of the vote. Jagmeet Singh’s NDP would win 27 seats with 19% ; the BQ would take another 27 seats, all in Quebec of course; and the Greens would win 3 seats with 6% of the cross-Canada vote.

Broadly (again), in Ontario at the moment polls are suggesting close to equal popular support for Liberals (30%) and New Democrats (26%). And this suggests Conservatives can win at least minority governments with 35% of the popular vote.

Federally, Liberals (34%) have considerably more support than New Democrats (19%). And this suggests Liberals can win at least minority governments with 34% of the popular vote.

There have been several strong federal Liberal minority governments in Canadian political history, led by the likes of Mackenzie King, Lester Pearson, and Pierre Trudeau. And Stephen Harper ran two long-lived federal Conservative minority governments in the more recent past.

In Ontario William Davis managed two stable Conservative minority governments long ago in the 1970s. But these seem more like potential models for the Trudeau Liberals in Ottawa today, than anything seriously relevant for the Ford Conservatives.

In one way or another Liberal minority governments in Ottawa have typically depended most on some ultimate support from New Democrats (and before them the old Progressives of the 1920s and 1930s), to remain in office for any length of time.

Yet, as matters stand in any case, which of Liberals, New Democrats, or Greens in 2022 would support a Ford Conservative minority government in Ontario for any time at all?

And what impact could struggles over this issue in a province with almost 40% of Canada’s population have on Canadian federal politics — and the Liberal minority government in Ottawa?

Finally, if the Ford Conservatives do win at least a minority government this coming June 2, largely just because votes for the opposition Liberals and New Democrats are almost equally divided, could that nonetheless strengthen the Conservative cause in Ottawa?

Or will another longstanding political tradition prevail? Often enough Ontario voters have liked to hedge their bets (and even boost their freedom, a little?) by voting for one party federally and another provincially.

Could this ultimately mean that any kind of return of Ford Conservatives at Queen’s Park in 2022 will at least be good for the Trudeau Liberals, now greeting the new year on the banks of the Ottawa River?

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“What fresh hell,” the PM said, channeling us all as we stare down the threat of this omicron variant interrupting another holiday season.

“What fresh hell,” say I, as I prepare to write my annual year-end “hot or not” and prediction columns.

Here’s the first: my little annual tradition (defined, from my collegiate days, as “anything two men of college recall happening more than twice”) of who’s up, who’s down, and who really bothered me this year.

Justin Trudeau: Hot

The PM’s act might be wearing thin on a significant segment of the population, but his gamble to call an unnecessary election paid off, giving him his third straight win, and second straight almost-a-majority-but-not-quite mandate. He seems a bit disengaged, but his handling of COVID-19 has been a solid “good enough”, and whether he tries to keep governing for the long term or is into legacy mode, no one can deny he might be a bit greyer, but it’s still working for him.

Erin O’Toole: Not

He lost, when his job was to win. He also seems blithely unaware that he lost. I heard him speak, introducing former PM Brian Mulroney at the Churchill Society. It was unfair — the Tory grandee outclassed him in a way that was almost, inadvertently, mean.

Chrystia Freeland: Not

Count me as one Liberal not sold on her as heir apparent. She is losing the opening round of her tussle with Conservative rabble rouser Pierre Polievre. He might be over the top, and generally wrong on the economics, but he has a message about the cost of living most normal people can relate to, and even cheer on. Freeland, meanwhile, seems kind of annoyed that she has to explain why she is right, and others are wrong. Lecturing isn’t leading.

Pierre Polievre: Hot

See above.

Doug Ford: Hot

Love him or hate him or really hate him, the vast majority of Ontarians think he’s done OK this past year. It’s been far from perfect, but his heart is seemingly in the right place, and he gets things right, even if it’s on the third try. He also has a real message about housing affordability and traffic congestion. If he could fix his government’s seeming disdain for kids’ education and future, he’d be cruising to reelection. As it stands, he likely will win reelection next June, thanks in no small part to the utter lack of any spark in his two main opposition parties (see below).

Andrea Horwath & Steven Del Duca: Not

The two opposition leaders in Ontario are either invisible and being outflanked by the Tories on labour rights and housing affordability, or unexciting and without a seat. Rather than taking the fight to the Tories, the NDP and Liberal leaders seem to be shadow boxing each other for who comes in second, fighting over a downtown progressive vote at the expense of the suburbs, and trailing a Premier they despise in all key leadership metrics, from caring to competence. It’s not good. Neither oppo leader seems to have a message other than reacting to what Ford does. If they split the vote, as seems likely today, Ford will run up the middle. His opponents may be the best assets he has.

Rachel Notley: Hot

Meanwhile, in Alberta, the former Premier shows all opposition leaders how it’s done. She’s kicking Jason Kenney’s butt, and has a clear contrast message, clear leadership qualities and seems ready to govern if given the chance. Her only problem? The election isn’t tomorrow.

The Curse of Politics: Hot

The best political podcast in Canada — David Herle, Jenni Byrne, Scott Reid and a lot of swearing, Marvel comics references and old war stories — continues to delight, inform and make jogging or car drives more enjoyable. If you’re not listening, you should be.

John Tory: Hot

Calm, competent, kind, shows up to everything, cheerleads the city — the guy has grown on me, and the majority of his voters. If he runs for a third term, he’d win, and cement a legacy as Toronto’s longest-serving mayor. If he doesn’t, there’s no real heir apparent to step into the big shoes he’d leave. I hope he runs again.

Anita Anand: Hot

She’s the cabinet MVP, and the woman who got us all vaxxed, and she’s already righting the ship at DND.

Agree, disagree? Let me know…after the holidays.

Tag: Doug Ford

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