The Canadian Taxpayers Federation’s 24th Annual Gas Tax Honesty Report shows that Canadian drivers in 2022 paid an average of 55 cents per litre in gasoline taxes (based on a retail price of $1.76 per litre; exact tax rates vary by province, of course). Combining that information with Statistics Canada data estimating total gasoline consumption of 42.5 billion litres in 2022 means that Canadian drivers collectively pay over $23 billion in road use taxes annually to all levels of government.
Meanwhile, EV drivers continue to pay nothing. Besides the grievous disparity of this situation, Trudeau’s EV mandate would gradually remove gasoline and diesel-fuelled vehicles from the road. Then who will pay to maintain the roads for all those EVs to travel on? Clearly, EVs will need to be taxed in some way, and some provinces are just starting to do so, like Saskatchewan’s $150 extra annual registration fee on EVs, introduced in late 2021. But such baby steps will need to get a lot larger if gasoline-powered vehicles really do start vanishing from daily traffic. But having to start paying their share to maintain roads will make EVs even less attractive to car buyers.
https://c2cjournal.ca/2024/06/the-pawns-push-back-against-the-trudeau-governments-electric-vehicle-diktats/
That version of history explains everything.
It explains the housing crisis. It explains the energy restrictions. It explains the immigration pressure. It explains the economic stagnation. It explains why a sitting Deputy Prime Minister stood in front of graduates at an American university and asked, out loud, whether capitalist democracy still works.
None of what is happening to Canada is an accident.
The Present Is the Evidence
To understand how Canada arrived at this moment, you first have to look honestly at what is happening right now.
Across Canadian media and social media, a coordinated narrative has been building around what is being called the problem of empty bedrooms. On the surface it sounds like a housing conversation. Look closer and it is something else entirely. The pressure being applied, particularly on elderly Canadians and grandparents who have lived in their homes for decades, is to downsize. To give up their multi-bedroom homes. To turn their large homes into apartment blocks. ...
