Will cancelling the carbon tax bring down high gasoline prices in Metro Vancouver?​on March 28, 2025 at 1:00 pm

B.C. drivers are feeling the budget crunch as gasoline prices across Metro Vancouver have risen as high as $1.88 a litre in recent days, with some blaming the uptick on the pending removal of the consumer carbon tax on April 1.

Gary Beyer was just one of many sounding off on Facebook this week, suggesting that because gas companies know consumers often have no choice but to pay the cost, they have no incentive to pass the expected 17 cent a litre savings to customers.

The Victoria resident and owner of Tesseract 2.0 Computing said he expects companies will instead play a shell game where they artificially raise prices now and then lower them back to what they were after the carbon tax comes off.

“We’ve seen a lot of this before in different industries,” he said. “They are raising prices — we’re seeing it — and then they’ll tell us, ‘Hey, look, we lowered the prices by that 17 cents.’ Then, within another month, you’re going to see prices creep even higher.”

Gas analysts reject these claims, saying the belief that oil and gas companies don’t pass savings on to customers is not based in fact.

Patrick De Haan, head of petroleum analysis at GasBuddy, said the recent price increases in B.C. are due to factors separate of the carbon tax.

He said threatened tariffs on Canada and Venezuela, a breakdown at a refinery in Northern California and even supply chain challenges caused by recent U.S. bombings in Yemen have all had an impact on gas prices globally in recent days.

Additionally, the industry is in the midst of its annual shift from winter gasoline to summer gasoline, which always causes prices to rise temporarily.

“Consumers don’t understand fuel prices. They don’t understand much of the pricing behind gasoline,” said de Haan, explaining that there continues to be a lack of transparency from the industry on the complex nature of what determines the price at the pump.

“The easy approach is to just say, ‘Oh, I’m going to get screwed.’ It’s kind of an emotional response and frustration.”

De Haan anticipates that while consumers may not get a full 17-cent-a-litre decrease on April 1, as other factors that might raise prices slightly, they should expect a drop of at least 14 cents a litre.

Werner Antweiler, a UBC economics professor, agreed with de Haan, and said that there is no evidence of collusion between companies in an effort to increase prices.