Bravo, you saved $4 on New Year’s Eve

In Alberta and Ontario there were lineups as drivers queued for one last fill-up before 2017. The reason? New climate change legislation on Jan. 1, would jack up fuel prices by about five cents per litre, Tristin Hopper writes.

Former Conservative MP Jason Kenney is now leading a bid to unite the right in Alberta, and one of his first acts was to buy the “Unifier,” a Dodge Ram 1500 with which to spread his free market gospel to Wild Rose Country. On New Year’s Eve, he shot a video of himself gassing up his Dodge Ram 1500 as he denounced the “ideological, socialist” actions that precipitated the coming Alberta carbon tax. The truck carries a fuel capacity of about 98 litres, so if Kenney rolled in running on fumes, at 4.5 cents a litre he dodged just enough tax to buy a New Year’s Eve Molson Canadian at the Legion (if it’s on special).

The Honda Civic is consistently one of Canada’s best-selling cars, so there’s little doubt that at least one of these was spending Dec. 31 in Ontario lining up for some sweet, sweet 2016 fuel to top up its 47 litre fuel tank. Ontario isn’t implementing a carbon tax; it’s putting in a cap-and-trade system estimated to raise fuel prices by about 4.3 cents. If a Civic filled up from empty, the maximum savings of $2 represented the equivalent of two litres of Ontario gasoline. Given the fuel economy of the 2017 Civic, this means that if the Civic driver drove more than 20 kilometres round trip in order to fetch some New Year’s Eve fuel, they would have already cancelled out their pre-Jan. 1 advantage.

Alberta finance critic Derek Fildebrandt similarly spent part of New Year’s Eve defiantly filling up his truck, as well as some jerry cans. Fildebrant drives a 2016 Ford F-150 with Eco-Boost. So, with fuel tank and jerry cans, the most gas he could have purchased was about 120 litres (and each can only have saved about 45 cents). Reached by the National Post, Fildebrandt said he is well aware of the dubious personal economics of a Dec. 31 gas run, but he said it was a symbolic gesture rather than a legitimate attempt at thrift. “Point was to get the gas I’d use otherwise while depriving the carbon tax fund of every symbolic dollar I could,” he wrote in a message. “I didn’t actually care about saving the money, just keeping it out of the hands of (Alberta premier Rachel) Notley.”

The Prime Minister spent New Year’s Eve in The Bahamas, so it’s pretty safe to assume that he wasn’t in line at a Nepean Esso to gas up the car before midnight. But, his vintage 1960 MercedesBenz SL is renowned for its large, 100-litre fuel tank, so Ontario cap-and-trade is estimated to hit it about $4.30 per fill-up.

If fitted with the appropriate time travel add-ons, the DMC-12 does not need to worry about temporal concerns such as “deadlines." However, for any DeLoreans in Ontario without such abilities (and with the car’s standard 50-litre fuel tank), the estimated price rise per fillup on Jan. 1 was $2.15.

Somewhere in Ontario, there is indeed a registered, street legal Reliant Robin. In the 21st century, cars are usually made more fuel efficient with the addition of batteries and an electric motor. But in the dark days of the 1970s the best bet at making a fuel-efficient car was to simply remove one of its wheels. This cute (though tippy) gas sipper gets by with a 27-litre tank, so at best a New Year’s Eve fill-up would have saved a Reliant driver the cost of a doughnut.