Gasoline price cuts not coming until fall, Ford government says

Thestar.com
August 16, 2018
Rob Ferguson

Ontario motorists won’t see the first chunk of Premier Doug Ford’s promised 10 cent a litre cut in the price of gasoline until the fall, Government House Leader Todd Smith says.

The price break at the pumps will have to wait until the new Progressive Conservative government’s proposed bill scrapping former premier Kathleen Wynne’s cap-and-trade program is passed.

In his campaign, Premier Doug Ford vowed to cut gasoline taxes by giving motorists a break of 10 cents a litre.

“We’re very, very committed to getting the cap-and-trade act voted on in the legislature in the fall and that will begin the process of reducing the price of gasoline immediately by 4.3 cents a litre,” Smith told a news conference recapping the legislature’s summer session. Stay tuned.”

The other 5.7 cents of the price cut, which Ford promised during the June 7 election campaign as a reduction in the excise tax, will come later --likely following a provincial budget.

The pledge would mean $1.2 billion in lost revenue for the provincial treasury under Ford, who has vowed to cut $6 billion in government spending and trim income taxes by $2.3 billion.

Critics, including Green Party Leader Mike Schreiner, have taken Ford’s government to task for axing the cap-and-trade plan --which sets caps on greenhouse gas emissions and allowed companies in certain industries below the limits to sell their unused limits --without having a replacement plan to fight climate change.

Smith said Environment Minister Rod Phillips is working on one but could not say when it will be ready.

“Doug Ford’s anti-environment crusade, including his reckless decision to drag Ontario backwards by scrapping cap and trade without any sort of replacement has, and will continue to, hurt Ontario families and businesses,” said New Democrat MPP Sara Singh (Brampton-Centre).

“Ontario families deserve a plan to leave our children and grandchildren with a province at least as clean and beautiful as the province we inherited from our parents.”