carol (02/02/83)
I currently live in Massachusetts, and my family lives in Michigan. Once or twice a year I drive through Canada to visit them. Up until the last time I visited them (around Christmas) the price of gas in Canada has been alot cheaper, especially with the exchange rate. While the cost of gas in the US has been pretty steady (and now declining), the price there has been consistantly rising. At the beginning of January, I paid 46 cents/litre which is about 1.80 per gallon. Even with an exchange rate of 20% that I received, that's still 1.44. So for those of you who think it's cheaper, don't believe it. Does anyone out there know why it's so much more expensive there? Carol Preston decvax!genradbolton!grkermit!carol
perelgut (02/03/83)
I guess I am going to be the first one here (University of Toronto) to get
to reply to that one. It is a hot topic up here in the Great White North. It
seems that our government got a bit carried away in the late '70s when oil
was made to appear scarce. Anyway, our big oil-producing province gained a
lot of political powers at that time and, in an effort to appease them, the
federal government offered them a fantastic deal.
In fact, one government offered them this deal and was brought down after
only 6/9 months. The replacing government got a majority and immediately
offered them an even bigger bribe. This has all led to a windfall of profits
for Alberta and incidentally higher tax profits for our federal gov't.
Canadian politics is currently going through a Marxist phase (Grouch Marx).
Our illustrious(?) leader went on a free vacation to the Far East and, in
defence, said that nobody would mind since everyone was off skiing and
vacationing anyway. The leader of the opposition was just torn apart by
his party since they were doing too well at the political poles. In
Ontari-ari-ari-ooooo the government has just passed legislation saying that
they can do whatever they want, charge the people the do it to for any
expenses incurred, and if you don't like it, you cannot sue them.
On the bright side, we don't spend any money on defence. (Well not
very much.) And welfare/Unemployment up here is free and easy. We
don't have much racism (who can tell colour or creed under all these
clothes :-))
--- Stephen Perelgut ---
P.S. Anyone in the U.S. have an opening for someone who:
Graduated from Engineering Sciences (Comp. option) '79
Worked two years at Bell-Northern Research, maintaining and
enhancing their main compiler.
Is finishing his M.Sc. in Computer Science (Device Management in OS's)
Is currently employed at the CSRG implementing the semantics pass of
a compiler for a new language.
Serious offers should consider that I am booked solid through the
summer, but am seriously considering leaving Ontario before
the current trends toward fascism take a really bad turn.dmmartindale (02/03/83)
My understanding of Canadian gasoline pricing goes something like this: Once upon a time (before OPEC started jacking up prices) the cost of fuel in Canada and the USA was pretty much the same. Fuel for the Western two-thirds or so of Canada came from Canadian sources, and fuel for the rest came from imported oil, since it was cheaper to import it than increase Western production and send it east. When OPEC started raising prices, taxes were juggled so that we paid more for Canadian-produced oil and this was used to subsidize the price of foreign oil, evening things out across the country. Since Canada is much closer to being self-sufficient in oil than the USA (we have one tenth the population) prices did not rise here as much as they did in the States. A few years ago, though, the government decided that complete self-sufficiency would be a good idea, and started a planned, continuous increase of oil prices to provide the profit that was supposedly necessary to open up new sources - Arctic oil and tar sands, for example. There is also a tax on all oil which goes to help finance the government's nationalized oil company, Petro-Canada. Now, if OPEC prices had continued to rise, this probably would have been a good plan even for the fairly short term. But they didn't - they dropped, and as long as we're committed to trying to become self-sufficient, we can't take advantage of this drop in world prices to let our own fuel prices drop. Thus it's a fair bit more expensive here than in the U.S., at least for the moment. Who knows what will be the case in 20 years? Note that I haven't been following all this too closely, so there may be errors in the above. Also, the figure I gave several days ago of Canadian prices being 50% higher than American ones is probably misleading because it ignored the exchange rates. If you are buying fuel in Canada but earn your money in the US, it's 20-25% more expensive for you. However, since salaries for similar jobs seem to be about the same in Canadian dollars in Canada as they are in US dollars in the US, I probably spend something like 50% more of my income on fuel than I would if I were working at the same job in the US and using the same amount of fuel. I'm glad I drive a 4-cylinder car. Dave Martindale
mmt (02/06/83)
To follow up Stephen Perelgut's wierdo political note: Those of us who live in Canada don't all believe that it is a Marxist country trending towards fascism. Sure, the federal government is somewhat reactionary conservative and the main opposition even more so, but that's what people seem to want. I guess most people are too complacent here. Maybe that's better than revolutionary, depending on your point of view. Martin Taylor
dave (02/08/83)
There's been a very interesting phenomenon in Toronto gas prices in recent weeks. Prices start at about 43 cents a litre everywhere. The expensive places might be 43.8, and the cheap ones 42.5 cents. Then a price war starts between two nearby stations (for locals: the latest one started at Yonge & Steeles, and the one before that at Bayview & Sheppard), and over the course of a couple of days, they lower their prices by a few cents a litre. Then the media pick up on it, motorists start flocking there, and the rest of the city starts lowering THEIR prices to match them. Soon gas stations across the city are down to about 32 or 33 cents, with the expensive ones at 35 or 37 cents. (For you U.S. residents, a 10-cents-a-litre drop is about 45 cents an imperial gallon, or roughly 35 U.S. cents a U.S. gallon.) So far, all we have is normal price competition, and capitalism in action. That's great. But it only lasts for a few days. All of a sudden, on the same day, EVERYONE in Toronto goes back up to 43 cents! It's kind of fun on the day it happens -- you get to scurry around town, looking to fill up at a station that hasn't put its price up yet. (Twice I've done that and been told that I beat the increase by less than half an hour. And on my Malibu, that's a $5.00+ saving.) Now, I would hate to accuse the oil companies of price-fixing, but how do you explain what's going on? Also, there are quite a few independent stations around, and they seem to follow the trend too. And, when stations are putting their prices up, why not go up to, say, 40 cents when everyone else is going to 43? Dave Sherman U of Toronto
dmmartindale (02/08/83)
The same sort of wild fluctuations have been happening in Kitchener/Waterloo too. They actually dropped below 30 cents/litre at some stations the last cycle. Unfortunately, I didn't fill up until today, and the best I found was 40.5.