Rivers: Robbing Peter to pay Paul is not a serious solution.    It’s just more cheap Poilievre populism. 

By Ray Rivers

April 4th, 2026

BURLINGTON, ON

The war in Iran has created a petroleum energy crisis – prices soaring because there is a global shortage.  So Tory leader Poilievre has called for the government to remove all federal gas taxes in Canada.  But the federal gas tax, known the Canada Community-Building Fund (CCBF), provides permanent, long-term funding to Canadian municipalities for local infrastructure and public transit.

Mr Poilievre needs to focus his attention, if he really wants to help Canadians.

Cutting that tax would mean that municipalities would need to increase property taxes and/or increase the cost of public transit.  That would just shift the tax burden from the motorist to the transit commuter and/or home owner.   Robbing Peter to pay Paul is not a serious solution.    It’s just cheap populism.

And if the federal government drops the GST on gasoline at the pump, as he also recommends, that would just increase the federal deficit which Poilievre keeps complaining is already too high.  Besides, reducing the cost of gasoline would simply lead to greater demand – simple economics 101 – and the problem today is too little supply driving up the global price of the fossil fuel.

Those driving electric vehicles (EV) or even gas/electric hybrids are somewhat better off.   Canadians lag Europeans and Asians when it comes to EV ownership and the Conservative Party’s anti-renewable and anti-EV policies are where Mr Poilievre needs to focus his attention, if he really wants to help Canadians.  But Conservatives hate EV’s.

Alberta applies a $200 annual tax to your EV.  Doug Ford is upset because Stellantis is planning to assemble their Chinese (LEAP) autos in their empty Jeep Brampton facility, as they will be also doing in Spain.  Ford, who even removed charging stations from GO stations, is complaining that many of the components will have to be imported from China but his real objection is likely that the new vehicles will be electric.

Efficiency, speed, quiet and comfort of this alternative to air travel, the motor car and the traditional diesel locomotive.

Mr. Poilievre has also taken aim at the proposed Alto high speed rail to connect Toronto to Quebec.  Japan has had an electrically powered ‘bullet train’ operating efficiently, safely and economically since 1964.  France’s TGV operating since 1981 runs at speeds over 260 kms/hr.  Canadian tourists to these places marvel at the efficiency, speed, quiet and comfort of this alternative to air travel, the motor car and the traditional diesel locomotive.

So after decades of chatter and no political action Canada’s ALTO high speed rail is planned to run at over 300 kms per hour, shortening commuting time between Ottawa and Toronto, for example, to less than two hours.  That offers a real alternative for those tired of airport waiting lines.  And if the train is electric, as it is planned to be, that conserves all kinds of petroleum.

Many people don’t appreciate just how big an undertaking the TMX is.

And it may be the electric propulsion forcing Mr Poilievre to oppose the high speed link… and promising to cancel Alto in the event he ever gets elected.  An estimated preliminary price tag of $60 to $90 billion is a lot of money, but it’ll be built by Canadians with Canadian steel and homegrown technology.  By comparison, the TMX oil pipeline cost $40 billion and it only transports bitumen.

Canada owes its very existence to the advent of rail travel.   Former Tory PM Sir John A MacDonald brought Canada into existence thanks to his vision of a railway from coast to coast.   It was, after all,  a condition of B.C. joining the Dominion of Canada.  But clearly this Tory leader lacks that kind of vision.  He is no Sir John A.

Ray Rivers, a Gazette Contributing Editor, writes regularly applying his more than 25 years as a federal bureaucrat to his thinking.  Rivers was once a candidate for provincial office in Burlington.  He was the founder of the Burlington citizen committee on sustainability at a time when climate warming was a hotly debated subject.   Ray has a post graduate degree in economics that he earned at the University of Ottawa.  Tweet @rayzrivers

Background links:

Gas Tax –      Rail Travel –     Fuel Tax Holiday –      High Speed Rail –