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Originally Posted by Thunderball
Of course, fuel in the US tends to cost about 20 cents/litre less than in Canada. There's actually a case for that to be true there.
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Fuel taxes in North America should be on par with what they are in Europe and Japan. If you read the article I linked, you'll notice that the author claims that higher gas taxes will lead to less demand for fuel which will in turn lower the price of oil on the global market. Of course, he was talking specifically about the United States, and our fuel usage is a drop in the bucket compared to their's, but our per capita usage isn't significantly lower. In fact, Canada is the second-highest consumer of energy per person amongst the Western democracies.
http://www.nationmaster.com/graph/en...age-per-person
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In Canada, its a different story, and with a certain province of 13 million teetering on the brink of an economic meltdown, surely its a good idea to try to help by increasing competitiveness and lowering costs? Or maybe we should add some more fuel taxes, and carbon taxes and really help the world at the cost of our economy and citizens...
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An increased fuel tax would only be economically viable if it was offset with reduced income and corporate taxes (which is precisely what is stated in the linked article). Dion's proposal does exactly that, but whether you can trust him to actually follow through with that promise is, of course, a personal decision.