Wanderings – Trickle-down consequences

Have you seen the price of gas lately? It is one of the most-talked about things. Just overnight Monday to Tuesday, the price of gas jumped 20 cents to $1.82 where I live. Frankly, it is obscene. Yet this is the reality we live in right now, and what we will be paying for years after.

There are so many trickle-down consequences to the oil price spikes. The price of oil affects so many facets of our lives: transportation costs are built into everything we buy – food, clothing, basic necessities, and all the extras we like. But it is so much more than that that we do not often think of.

For example, I would not want to be a municipal politician right now, nor would I want to be running for office in our upcoming municipal elections this fall. The price of oil affects municipal politics greatly. One of the biggest responsibilities is roads. Roads need maintenance and repair. Spring is when municipalities sign their contracts for resurfacing projects during the construction season. After a few years of inflation-related price hikes, construction tenders have come in at or below budget for many municipal paving or resurfacing projects this year. But and this is important, almost all have what is called an AC factor. Asphalt cement is a variable that can cause many budgets to go awry. And what is asphalt made with?

For current and future municipal politicians, next year’s budget season is going to be filled with a lot of red ink and tax increases if the oil prices remain absurdly high. Think municipal property taxes have gone up in your community, just wait.

Food prices are another thing that have been nuts for five years and just keeps getting nuttier. Fresh produce, expensive. Meat, expensive. Even junk food, the not-healthy-option-that-is-cheaper-than-healthy-options-which-is-why-we-have-an-obesity-epidemic, expensive.

I struggle to understand how stores within the same chain can blame transportation costs when an item is cheaper on either side of the community I live in, and the same truck passes through all three villages. Maybe the grocery store charges a Phil tax for the number of Phils in the village. There are less absurd reasons out there.

Ontario Premier Doug Ford did provide a little tax relief by reducing provincial fuel taxes by 6.5 cents per litre for gasoline and 5.3 cents per litre for diesel. That move was temporary, but made permanent in 2025. Ontario still charges nine cents per litre in provincial taxes. The federal excise tax is 10 cents per litre, and then there is a 13 per cent HST charged on fuel.

Governments, provincial and federal, could help by simply lowering or removing certain taxes from fuel. For example, removing the HST in Ontario on gasoline would lower the price from $1.82 per litre to $1.61. Cut the federal and provincial fuel taxes, and now we’re at $1.42 per litre. And that tax cut does not just help us at the gas pump, it helps everyone with the transportation costs. That should, in theory, mean food is a bit cheaper, as well as retail goods. It is not everything, but it is something.

We have to trust oil companies to not eat the tax cut, just as oil companies passed on the removal of the federal carbon tax last year, right? Never mind.

I remain convinced that, just like the housing “crisis” and other affordability “crises”, politicians of all stripes and levels are not truly interested in addressing the root issues. They are only interested in enacting a fix that maximizes the optics without cutting their ability to spend on projects. That is why logical solutions like temporary and meaningful tax reductions will not happen. Can you feed your family, or fill your gas tank, on empty platitudes? Try it.

This latest oil crisis has to be making someone rich, but who would diabolically influence markets through insane government action to benefit their rich friends? Surely, no one would ever vote in such a person?

In the meantime, get your pencils out and start figuring out how to again do the same or less with less money and more expenses. We have to, because our leaders will not.

This column was originally published in the April 8, 2026 print edition of the Morrisburg Leader.