Inflation has increased, according to Statistics Canada, and gas prices are at least partly to blame. Here's why gas could be costing Canadians more over the next few months.
Gas prices are expected to reach an annual high this summer across Canada and into fall, with more than one factor causing the increase, experts say.
Gas prices are expected to reach an annual high this summer across Canada and into fall, with more than one factor causing the increase, experts say.
The July Consumer Price Index (CPI) report from Statistics Canada “mainly” blamed an increase in inflation on gasoline.
Michael Manjuris, professor and chair of Global Management Studies at Toronto Metropolitan University, told CTVNews.ca in an interview poor weather and a lack of supply are to blame.
One factor behind higher gas prices, Manjuris said, is a recent decision from the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC), which controls crude oil supply to most of the world.
Manjuris says some weather factors, like extreme heat, will not be an issue in the next few months, however, gas prices will remain elevated.
The heightened prices have been climbing for the past six months, Pedro Antunes, chief economist at the Conference Board of Canada told CTV News Channel Tuesday.
It’s things like this that make me wish public transportation was more prevalent in Alberta. I’m sure the cost would rise a bit but its way less than taking care of a car and filling it for $2/L every week.
Over 60 years the cost of taxes to build and maintain a transit system plus fares is an order of magnitude lower than building highway networks, ownership of personal vehicles, insurance, fuel, and rebuilding the road network after 30 years.
The idea that transit is more expensive was a mind trick by the fossil fuel and automotive industries. We’re penny wise and dollar foolish.
A big problem is now fixing our land use, zoning, and density to be serviceable by transit. Most developments since the rise of suburbia have been extremely car centric and low density which can be hurdles in creating effevtive transit networks.
People are also going to have to accept that building transit will require taking some priority away from cars in some areas (reduced parking, reduced lanes, lower speeds) and this is generally viewed as bad because people already hate being in their cars in existing traffic.
A big problem is now fixing our land use, zoning, and density to be serviceable by transit.
Of course, a well designed city has no need for transit. Everything is available in walking distance.
Yeah, yeah, I know, your friend lives an hour’s drive clear the other side of the city and you don’t have the personality to make new friends in your neighbourhood. That’s fine, but that kind of activity alone would not bring enough ridership to support a transit system. Transit only works when a lot of people are all trying to get around, which wouldn’t happen as 99% of life would take place within walking distance. A lot of people trying to get around is the outcome of poor land use, zoning, and density.
Fair that transit is a pretty nice bandaid if you don’t want to fix the actual problems, though.
I don’t think this is what he’s talking about. It’s not about a city where everything is in walking distance, is a city where 90% of the people live in suburbia, where nothing is in walking distance, but everybody is so far apart that no bus can service anything at any decent level of convenience, let alone cost.
Public transit doesn’t work when the population density of your city outside of downtown is more comparable to Yellowknife than Toronto.
Yes, that’s right, he’s saying our city planning is poorly done. And he’s correct. A city should allow you to live out your entire life within walking distance and our cities do not. After all, that’s the whole reason why would you want to live close to other people. If you wanted to have to have to get into a vehicle every time you do something, why not live out in the forest in the middle of nowhere?
Suburbia is rural living for those too poor to live in an actual rural area, but he’s saying that cities should abandon the rural lifestyle entirely and embrace being cities – but misses that actual cities don’t need transit because actual cities are, despite recognizing the need for densification, dense enough to not need them.
Having tractors to pull people around is a reasonable bandaid to deal with the cuts of cities wishing its inhabitants were farmers, but why would you want a city like that in the first place? If we are going to actively fix the problems of our poorly designed cities, as the other commenter suggested we should, then why not fix it right?
I think you have a rather extremist view of walkability. Most people would rather partake in various businesses throughout town, meet up with friends and family, and maybe even travel between cities for work/leisure than stay within their small bubble of their own neighbourhood. Yes the average person should be able to walk to the majority of their needs but I just don’t see a functional city without transit.
Is everyone supposed to live walking distance to their hospital/medical centers? Are people expected to abandon their families when they move across town/to a different city? Are people with disabilities that make walking/active transport difficult just expected to not go anywhere? I think transit fills a very important role in cities, I highly doubt cities can eliminate people’s need/desire to travel, they can influence how they travel.
Is everyone supposed to live walking distance to their hospital/medical centers?
If the answer is no, why take up valuable urban real estate for hospitals in the first place? Why not stick them on country back roads? Transit can get the people there. If you have transit, it is not clear what you need cities for.
Thing is, Canada used to have transit lines between every little nook and cranny when the vast majority of the population lived in rural areas. Exactly what is being asked for. We eventually ripped it up because Canadians indicated that they didn’t want to live rurally, they wanted to live in urban centres where they can walk everywhere, negating the need for those transit systems.
But now they want to go back. What’s brought on this desire to live rurally again?
Are people expected to abandon their families when they move across town/to a different city?
Sure, I guess. I expect you will find that they do. Jetting off to lunch with your friend who moved to Tokyo will never be practical, save some fundamental shift in how we understand space-time.
Are people with disabilities that make walking/active transport difficult just expected to not go anywhere?
Why can’t they use the tools that they already use to get around? If they don’t even have that, transit isn’t going to help. Transit will never stop in their bedroom.
There are ways to do this, but it requires adopting patterns that drivers tend to object to.
For example, you could block or reduce car traffic on arterial highways, replacing them with regular buses or trains. As someone living in a suburb, you can still get into the city, but you have to leave your car at the park & ride. There are no (private) cars in the city anymore. This looks a lot of the motivation for driving at all: the traffic will be brutal, and you still have to take transit from the periphery to your destination.
Your shitty suburb is still a shitty suburb, but the lion’s share of car use is now gone.
Next you start designating areas of these towns car-free and requiring drivers (including residents!) to leave their cars at the periphery. Transit, cabs, bikes, e-mobility, delivery trucks, etc. are all permitted, but no private cars. Routes in and out of this zone should also prioritise transit.
As density improves, you scale out the car-free zones and close /repurpose the Walmarts.
Combine the above with high carbon taxes that you in turn use to subsidise transit/e-bikes and rebate poorer people, and you have a reasonable system for a transition.
If you’re the kind of person who needs a car, you can always walk/transit out of the car-free zone and leave town, or even live on the outskirts. The key is that this should be appropriately priced and your car stops where the people start.
We used to have that. Look up the history of PetroCan.
Created as a crown Corp by a liberal government with the intention of keepingahandleon prices, and then privatized by a conservative government (because that’s what rhy do to crown corps).
I remember seeing an article stating that the oil companies here in the US won’t lower prices because they fear losing investors. That is their reasoning for the high prices.
What is sad is the cost per barrel is the same as it was back in the 80’s and 90’s where we were paying $1.89 per gallon.
Talk about fleecing the consumer. The only people surviving at these prices are the producers and investors.
The article pretty much spells it out - OPEC controls the price of oil globally through their massive hand in the supply side of the industry.
Even if you get your wish and have O&G completely deregulate here in Canada, the reality is that they aren’t going to make a dent in global oil prices regardless of output. If we produce a ton of oil, OPEC simply shuts their taps further until the prices equalize to a point that benefits the members of the cartel.
Other than a reduction in taxes on gasoline at the pump, Canada has very little effective means of changing the cost of oil globally.
Unless you’re suggesting we turn into Venezuela #2 and we turn all oil companies and wells into government property, build a crap ton of refining capacity on the tax payer’s penny and sell the resulting oil products at cost / at a loss. But frankly, that outcome is even worse as now we’d have 50 cents/L gas, but all our other taxes would go through the roof.
And to clarify. Canada is a net exporter of oil. But most of that oil goes west and to port. About 10% of the oil we import is from the middle east. The majority of the oil we import is from the US. And we mainly import oil because it’s cheaper to import it than it is to move that much oil east.
At this point it really doesn’t make sense to build infrastructure to to move oil east, and really since oil is one big market, us selling and then buying doesn’t really matter…
I recall reading an article a few years ago speculating that big oil barons are starting to see the green revolution coming and, paired with reducing global oil supplies, they were going to slow production, increase prices and take a much profits as much as possible as oil is pushed second place to electrcity. I wonder if OPEC reducing supply has anything to do with these alleged goals.
You’re dead on. They’re artificially lowering production to keep prices high. We can’t get off this dinosaur juice soon enough.
It is thought that Saudi Arabia, which is currently chairing Opec+, needs to have the price of Brent crude rising to $80 (£65) a barrel or more to cover its government spending and import bill.
It’s not just that, but the Saudis are trying to pivot hard towards new industries. They see their entire government collapsing if they can’t find a new source of revenue before oil demand collapses and their savings disappear.
Saudi Arabia basically bribed their civilians to stay in power by subsidizing gas, electricity, and water to the point that all three are basically free in the country, while their migrant workers are basically slave labour. The moment any of this changes, there’s going to be a coup, and they see the clock ticking with oil demands having peaked in much of the world already.
RealLifeLore has recently released a video talking about their situation, though not so much on the oil.
this is exactly what is happening. Even in the US. The big ones are buying up all the little ones and stopping their drilling programs entirely. They want to slow the output, reduce competition to kill the service industry… Then years from now when our production begins to plummet and prices skyrocket politicians will act real surprised.
It’s not the drilling that’s the issue, it’s the refining. The prices of crude isn’t so high on the market itself, but the post-refined products themselves. American refineries are at capacity and have been for at least a decade now, yet they aren’t doing anything to increase production.
And as for Canada, we don’t have much when it comes to refining capacity in the first place.
no drilling is the issue lol. Shale wells deplete crazy fast. The decline rate is 70% in the first 3 years. We are reaching peak production. If you reduce the number of operators through buyouts it’s only going to make it impossible to crank out new production quickly.
You are not logged in. However you can subscribe from another Fediverse account, for example Lemmy or Mastodon. To do this, paste the following into the search field of your instance: !canada@lemmy.ca
This is the best summary I could come up with:
Gas prices are expected to reach an annual high this summer across Canada and into fall, with more than one factor causing the increase, experts say.
The July Consumer Price Index (CPI) report from Statistics Canada “mainly” blamed an increase in inflation on gasoline.
Michael Manjuris, professor and chair of Global Management Studies at Toronto Metropolitan University, told CTVNews.ca in an interview poor weather and a lack of supply are to blame.
One factor behind higher gas prices, Manjuris said, is a recent decision from the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC), which controls crude oil supply to most of the world.
Manjuris says some weather factors, like extreme heat, will not be an issue in the next few months, however, gas prices will remain elevated.
The heightened prices have been climbing for the past six months, Pedro Antunes, chief economist at the Conference Board of Canada told CTV News Channel Tuesday.
I’m a bot and I’m open source!
It’s things like this that make me wish public transportation was more prevalent in Alberta. I’m sure the cost would rise a bit but its way less than taking care of a car and filling it for $2/L every week.
Over 60 years the cost of taxes to build and maintain a transit system plus fares is an order of magnitude lower than building highway networks, ownership of personal vehicles, insurance, fuel, and rebuilding the road network after 30 years.
The idea that transit is more expensive was a mind trick by the fossil fuel and automotive industries. We’re penny wise and dollar foolish.
A big problem is now fixing our land use, zoning, and density to be serviceable by transit. Most developments since the rise of suburbia have been extremely car centric and low density which can be hurdles in creating effevtive transit networks.
People are also going to have to accept that building transit will require taking some priority away from cars in some areas (reduced parking, reduced lanes, lower speeds) and this is generally viewed as bad because people already hate being in their cars in existing traffic.
Of course, a well designed city has no need for transit. Everything is available in walking distance.
Yeah, yeah, I know, your friend lives an hour’s drive clear the other side of the city and you don’t have the personality to make new friends in your neighbourhood. That’s fine, but that kind of activity alone would not bring enough ridership to support a transit system. Transit only works when a lot of people are all trying to get around, which wouldn’t happen as 99% of life would take place within walking distance. A lot of people trying to get around is the outcome of poor land use, zoning, and density.
Fair that transit is a pretty nice bandaid if you don’t want to fix the actual problems, though.
I don’t think this is what he’s talking about. It’s not about a city where everything is in walking distance, is a city where 90% of the people live in suburbia, where nothing is in walking distance, but everybody is so far apart that no bus can service anything at any decent level of convenience, let alone cost.
Public transit doesn’t work when the population density of your city outside of downtown is more comparable to Yellowknife than Toronto.
Yes, that’s right, he’s saying our city planning is poorly done. And he’s correct. A city should allow you to live out your entire life within walking distance and our cities do not. After all, that’s the whole reason why would you want to live close to other people. If you wanted to have to have to get into a vehicle every time you do something, why not live out in the forest in the middle of nowhere?
Suburbia is rural living for those too poor to live in an actual rural area, but he’s saying that cities should abandon the rural lifestyle entirely and embrace being cities – but misses that actual cities don’t need transit because actual cities are, despite recognizing the need for densification, dense enough to not need them.
Having tractors to pull people around is a reasonable bandaid to deal with the cuts of cities wishing its inhabitants were farmers, but why would you want a city like that in the first place? If we are going to actively fix the problems of our poorly designed cities, as the other commenter suggested we should, then why not fix it right?
I think you have a rather extremist view of walkability. Most people would rather partake in various businesses throughout town, meet up with friends and family, and maybe even travel between cities for work/leisure than stay within their small bubble of their own neighbourhood. Yes the average person should be able to walk to the majority of their needs but I just don’t see a functional city without transit.
Is everyone supposed to live walking distance to their hospital/medical centers? Are people expected to abandon their families when they move across town/to a different city? Are people with disabilities that make walking/active transport difficult just expected to not go anywhere? I think transit fills a very important role in cities, I highly doubt cities can eliminate people’s need/desire to travel, they can influence how they travel.
If the answer is no, why take up valuable urban real estate for hospitals in the first place? Why not stick them on country back roads? Transit can get the people there. If you have transit, it is not clear what you need cities for.
Thing is, Canada used to have transit lines between every little nook and cranny when the vast majority of the population lived in rural areas. Exactly what is being asked for. We eventually ripped it up because Canadians indicated that they didn’t want to live rurally, they wanted to live in urban centres where they can walk everywhere, negating the need for those transit systems.
But now they want to go back. What’s brought on this desire to live rurally again?
Sure, I guess. I expect you will find that they do. Jetting off to lunch with your friend who moved to Tokyo will never be practical, save some fundamental shift in how we understand space-time.
Why can’t they use the tools that they already use to get around? If they don’t even have that, transit isn’t going to help. Transit will never stop in their bedroom.
That’s okay. Make driving a little more painful will discourage it, as long as other options also become available and less painful.
There are ways to do this, but it requires adopting patterns that drivers tend to object to.
For example, you could block or reduce car traffic on arterial highways, replacing them with regular buses or trains. As someone living in a suburb, you can still get into the city, but you have to leave your car at the park & ride. There are no (private) cars in the city anymore. This looks a lot of the motivation for driving at all: the traffic will be brutal, and you still have to take transit from the periphery to your destination.
Your shitty suburb is still a shitty suburb, but the lion’s share of car use is now gone.
Next you start designating areas of these towns car-free and requiring drivers (including residents!) to leave their cars at the periphery. Transit, cabs, bikes, e-mobility, delivery trucks, etc. are all permitted, but no private cars. Routes in and out of this zone should also prioritise transit.
As density improves, you scale out the car-free zones and close /repurpose the Walmarts.
Combine the above with high carbon taxes that you in turn use to subsidise transit/e-bikes and rebate poorer people, and you have a reasonable system for a transition.
If you’re the kind of person who needs a car, you can always walk/transit out of the car-free zone and leave town, or even live on the outskirts. The key is that this should be appropriately priced and your car stops where the people start.
Or, and hear me out, we go to the oil company owners and remove them. Eh? Slashing prices!
We used to have that. Look up the history of PetroCan.
Created as a crown Corp by a liberal government with the intention of keepingahandleon prices, and then privatized by a conservative government (because that’s what rhy do to crown corps).
No I mean SLASH the PRICES by REMOVING the PROBLEM
🔪🔪🔪🔪🔪🔪🔪🔪🔪🔪
If it is any consolation, said party never won again after that and eventually threw in the towel when winning even 12 seats proved to be a struggle.
I remember seeing an article stating that the oil companies here in the US won’t lower prices because they fear losing investors. That is their reasoning for the high prices.
What is sad is the cost per barrel is the same as it was back in the 80’s and 90’s where we were paying $1.89 per gallon.
Talk about fleecing the consumer. The only people surviving at these prices are the producers and investors.
Gas prices will not fall until the oil sector in Canada has the freedom to operate and expand without the government trying to destroy the industry.
And inflation needs to get under control.
It is insane that Canada is rich in oil and decides to import so much oil from the middle east.
removed by mod
Learn to control your emotions
The article pretty much spells it out - OPEC controls the price of oil globally through their massive hand in the supply side of the industry. Even if you get your wish and have O&G completely deregulate here in Canada, the reality is that they aren’t going to make a dent in global oil prices regardless of output. If we produce a ton of oil, OPEC simply shuts their taps further until the prices equalize to a point that benefits the members of the cartel.
Other than a reduction in taxes on gasoline at the pump, Canada has very little effective means of changing the cost of oil globally.
Unless you’re suggesting we turn into Venezuela #2 and we turn all oil companies and wells into government property, build a crap ton of refining capacity on the tax payer’s penny and sell the resulting oil products at cost / at a loss. But frankly, that outcome is even worse as now we’d have 50 cents/L gas, but all our other taxes would go through the roof.
They bought you a pipeline.
And Canadian oil leaves Canada. Increasing output may help global prices and petro-province revenue, but it won’t do a thing for local prices.
And climate change is real.
And to clarify. Canada is a net exporter of oil. But most of that oil goes west and to port. About 10% of the oil we import is from the middle east. The majority of the oil we import is from the US. And we mainly import oil because it’s cheaper to import it than it is to move that much oil east.
At this point it really doesn’t make sense to build infrastructure to to move oil east, and really since oil is one big market, us selling and then buying doesn’t really matter…
I recall reading an article a few years ago speculating that big oil barons are starting to see the green revolution coming and, paired with reducing global oil supplies, they were going to slow production, increase prices and take a much profits as much as possible as oil is pushed second place to electrcity. I wonder if OPEC reducing supply has anything to do with these alleged goals.
You’re dead on. They’re artificially lowering production to keep prices high. We can’t get off this dinosaur juice soon enough.
It is thought that Saudi Arabia, which is currently chairing Opec+, needs to have the price of Brent crude rising to $80 (£65) a barrel or more to cover its government spending and import bill.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-61188579
It’s not just that, but the Saudis are trying to pivot hard towards new industries. They see their entire government collapsing if they can’t find a new source of revenue before oil demand collapses and their savings disappear.
Saudi Arabia basically bribed their civilians to stay in power by subsidizing gas, electricity, and water to the point that all three are basically free in the country, while their migrant workers are basically slave labour. The moment any of this changes, there’s going to be a coup, and they see the clock ticking with oil demands having peaked in much of the world already.
RealLifeLore has recently released a video talking about their situation, though not so much on the oil.
this is exactly what is happening. Even in the US. The big ones are buying up all the little ones and stopping their drilling programs entirely. They want to slow the output, reduce competition to kill the service industry… Then years from now when our production begins to plummet and prices skyrocket politicians will act real surprised.
Can’t wait for this to come about actually.
It’s not the drilling that’s the issue, it’s the refining. The prices of crude isn’t so high on the market itself, but the post-refined products themselves. American refineries are at capacity and have been for at least a decade now, yet they aren’t doing anything to increase production.
And as for Canada, we don’t have much when it comes to refining capacity in the first place.
no drilling is the issue lol. Shale wells deplete crazy fast. The decline rate is 70% in the first 3 years. We are reaching peak production. If you reduce the number of operators through buyouts it’s only going to make it impossible to crank out new production quickly.
I’m so glad my most recent car purchase was a prius C. I have been saving $30 everytime I fill up since I bought it.