Go to www.gasgouge.ca and find how you gouged by gas companies
The gasoline industry pockets millions of dollars a day by gouging consumers, according to the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives, which has launched a new website to help drivers figure out just how badly they are faring at the pumps.
The online “gasoline price gouge meter” allows users to compare the retail price of gas in various Canadian cities with what it should cost to fill up according to the CCPA’s calculations.
By visiting www.gasgouge.ca, drivers can type in what they paid for gas that day and with the click of the mouse they will be told what the price should have been and how much profit their over-paying generated for the gas industry. (The calculation takes into account normal profit margins.)
For example, if a driver in Ottawa paid $1.02 per litre on Thursday, he or she paid 14.3 cents too much, the website claims.
“With today’s crude oil price of $61.80 USD per barrel and the U.S. dollar at $1.11 CAD, the price of regular unleaded gasoline in Ottawa should be 87.7 cents per litre at normal profit margins,” the site explains. “At a price of $1.02 per litre, you are paying 14.3 cents per litre in pure excess profit. Across Canada, an extra margin of 14.3 cents per litre generates an additional profit of 14.3 million dollars per day.”
The online gas gouge meter can make the calculations for Canadians in 20 cities.
A paper on gas prices released Thursday by the CCPA says that on May 8, drivers in Canada were gouged anywhere from 14 to 27 cents, depending on the city, and those extra cents are straight profit for the industry.
The CCPA says drivers in Toronto for example were gouged by 15 cents, in Edmonton by 18 cents, in Vancouver drivers paid 27 cents too much and in Halifax they paid 19 extra cents.
“At the beginning of May, the excess profit amounts to $16 to $21 million per day, just for gasoline,” the report said.
The explanations offered by the industry for high prices at the pumps range from the plausible to the ridiculous, the CCPA states, and often the explanations are little more than “after-the-fact rationalizations for the price-gouging opportunities seized by the oil industry, or noise introduced into the discussion to distract attention from what is really going on.”
