Gas prices in the Vancouver area are about the highest in all of North America. The fact that there is about 51 cents in taxes per liter, thanks to the various Liberals and further left NDP, is a large part of it. The other part is the dearth of pipeline and refineries in BC, and thus, supply. This is also a result of the left, mostly enviros and the NDP, who have managed to obstruct this sort of progress in BC. So yes, it’s pretty much all their fault.
No matter, the NDP government goes ahead and blames private enterprise, capitalism, oil companies, their “greed” for profits, etc — all those things the far-left and progressives hate — for the high prices. They launch yet another government inquiry to virtue-signal, stall, and obfuscate, prohibiting investigators from looking at government policies or taxes in their inquiry. They threaten to regulate prices like they’re Venezuela. And hilarity ensues amongst the normals because the left’s whole supply limitation and gas tax scheme is premised on the progressive economics and “environmental justice” notion that prices would thus be so high that nobody could afford gas, thus saving the planet (wink). So it’s all a lie. But they don’t care.
When this past weekend one gas station dramatically cut gas prices to attract business, the progressive-luvin’ Vancouver Sun goes full NDP on them with this headline:
“Gas station ‘shenanigans’ reason for wild price differences in Vancouver.”
They picked-up on one little off-the-cuff remark by a gas price expert, and ran with it:
“I refer to it as gas bar shenanigans,” McTeague said. “That means gas bars are willing to stay ahead of the game by selling gasoline at the same as cost or less in the hope they will be able to retain their high volumes to get their discounts as well as induce people to use the retail side of it. There must be great margins on beef jerky.”
Reporter: The guy said it was all shenanigans, didn’t say anything about freedom and free markets and competition and capitalism and all that right-wing crap.
Editor: Therefore it is shenanigans! Make that the headline!
Since when is it considered to be “shenanigans” to cut prices for honest and pretty normal business purposes? Have you ever gone to Walmart and heard “Attention Walmart shoppers, shenanigans in aisle three on Kleenex tissues”?
First we hear it’s the evils of capitalism that is driving prices so high. Then it’s “shenanigans” because a station lowered them.
The BC government conducting yet another useless review of gas prices by the BC Utilities Commission, but whose orders exclude its investigators from making any references to how any government policies or taxes might be affecting the price, is literally “shenanigans” — or much worse. So are threats to have the government set the prices — a practice better known as “socialist shenanigans.”
PTBC was founded by Mr. Johannesen in 2000.
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