A Wholly Inadequate Response to the Gas Price Hike

Background: Gas prices shot up today across the country by up to 13c/L. When questioned about this, Mr. Harper allowed that it did "appear" to be price gouging by the oil companies. His response was to point to his GST cut and pending diesel excise tax cut.

Reality check: When prices jump at gas stations owned by many different companies across the country, it not only "appears" to be gouging, it reeks of price fixing. The appropriate response was not Mr. Harper's "oh well" shrug, but to ask the Attorney General to investigate. Mr. Harper's response is inadequate and makes him "appear" to be in bed with the oil companies.

But wait! There's less! Tax cuts on fuel not only don't attack the problem of price fixing, they help to keep us addicted to that fuel. In the United States, everyone from Al Gore to Barack Obama to T. Boone Pickens, big-time Texas oilman, has an aggressive plan to make the US far more energy independent. Pickens is throwing hundreds of millions of dollars of his own money behind wind power plants; Obama has committed to $150B to build green energy and jobs; Gore says get all US electricity from carbon-free sources in ten years. All plans are considered doable, and may actually save money, especially as the price of oil is expected to continue to climb steadily over the coming years. What are we doing? Worse than nothing. While the world goes green, we're being left behind.

Mr. Harper would rather not talk about this simple fact: just because the government does not control a market, does not mean that market is free. If it "appears" that the oil companies are fixing prices, our government needs to do something about it. And beyond that, Canadians expect their government to show some leadership to move us beyond oil into clean and green energy, into the trillion dollar green economy that the rest of the world is embracing.

The plans:
Al Gore's 10-year plan to get 100% of US electricity from carbon-free sources: http://www.wecansolveit.org/content/pages/320/
T. Boone Pickens' Pickens Plan: http://www.pickensplan.com/
Barack Obama's 10-year energy independence plan: http://www.barackobama.com/pdf/factsheet_energy_sp...
Stephen Harper's "Made in Canada" plan: Still waiting...