With a provincial election now less than two weeks away, it’s time for Ontario politicians of all political stripes to stop pandering to car owners and expect them to cover more of the cost of their preferred form of mobility, the Globe and Mail argues in a recent editorial.
“For a nation whose drivers are being gouged at the pump—as parties of the left, right, and centre assure us they are—Canadians sure love burning fuel,” the Globe states. “Four of the five bestselling automobiles in Canada last year were gas-guzzling pickups. Sales of luxury SUVs surged in 2017, too, while sales of fuel-efficient subcompact cars plummeted.”
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Car ownership has its costs in traffic congestion, air pollution, climate change, and urban sprawl, and “most drivers of Silverados and Land Rovers are not going off-road or hauling lumber,” the paper notes. Yet “these Canadians are willing to pay more when they gas up in order to feel like the king of the road en route to their kids’ soccer practices.”
Yet the Globe contends that party leaders Doug Ford, Andrea Horwath, and to a lesser extent Kathleen Wynne “have treated the province’s drivers as a kind of abused minority”, with the Conservatives offering to cut fuel taxes by more than 5¢ per litre and New Democrats coming out “four-square against road tolls”. Prior to the campaign, Wynne’s governing Liberal Party “did more than its share, most damagingly when it kiboshed Toronto Mayor John Tory’s attempt to toll some of the city’s highways.”
Responsible political leaders “should be making drivers pay more of those costs, not fewer of them,” the Globe concludes, particularly given the mix of vehicles Canadians are choosing to buy. “Drivers shouldn’t be shamed for using a means of transportation that public policy has encouraged for generations, but nor should they be coddled,” the editorial states. “Auto ownership has costs,” and right now, motorists aren’t fully paying them.
Transportation is responsible for the largest and fastest growing share of Ontario’s greenhouse gas emissions. These emissions have grown by 28% since 1990, and totalled 58 million tonnes (Mt) carbon dioxide equivalent (CO2 eq) in 2014 (34% of Ontario’s total GHG emissions).
Over 80% of these emissions come from on-road passenger (33.1 Mt) and freight vehicles (15.2 Mt) such as cars and trucks; the rest comes from off-road vehicles such as construction and logging vehicles (5.4 Mt), domestic aviation (2.2 Mt) and navigation (1.3 Mt), and rail (1.4 Mt).
Although federal standards are improving the fuel efficiency of passenger vehicles, their benefit has been more than offset by an increase in both the number of vehicles and the total distance travelled. As well, many consumers prefer less fuel-efficient vehicles such as SUV’s, pickups and medium to heavy-duty vans (65% of new vehicles sold in Canada in 2014) which release, on average, 45% more greenhouse gases per kilometre than cars.
(source: Environmental Commissioner of Ontario: “Facing Climate Change: Greenhouse Gas Progress Report 2016”)
As the 1963 oil crisis triggered the development of smaller more efficient cars due to the increase of gasoline prices at the pump, the only way to make people think before they buy gas-guzzling vehicles is to hike the price of gasoline, not the other way around. Governments can use that extra money to develop public transit and other more environmentally ways to travel.