THUNDER BAY – The lone regional representative in the provincial cabinet is calling on the Competition Bureau to probe gas price gouging in Northwestern Ontario.
Greg Rickford, the minister of energy, northern development and mines, has written to the Competition Bureau’s interim commissioner Matthew Boswell asking for a full review of gasoline and diesel retail pricing practices in the region.
Rickford, the MPP for Kenora-Rainy River, insisted gas prices have not dropped at the same level as rates in other parts of Ontario following the Progressive Conservative provincial government’s move to eliminate cap and trade.
“These anomalies in Northwestern Ontario retail fuel prices may be evidence of a lack of competitive behaviour,” Rickford wrote.
In a Friday interview with Dougall Media, Rickford said he is upset about the lack of change in prices throughout the course of the fall.
“This is probably the most pressing matter on the minds of people in Northwestern Ontario gas prices have always seemed or been high in Northwestern Ontario but I don’t think there’s been a window of time in my recollection where folks have been more angry about it,” Rickford said.
In the letter, Rickford said Thunder Bay’s average monthly wholesale gas price in October was 84.5 cents per litre, a drop from 91.8 cents per litre only two months earlier in August.
Yet gas prices remained relatively stable, lowering to $1.423 per litre in October from $1.454 per litre in August.
“In most retail fuel markets across Ontario, retail prices decreased to reflect the removal of cap-and-trade carbon tax costs from wholesale prices and my ministry did not observe any significant change in retail margins,” Rickford wrote.
“However, in certain markets such as Thunder Bay, Kenora, Fort Frances and Dryden in Northwestern Ontario, the savings passed along at the wholesale level do not appear to have been incorporated in retail prices shared with consumers.”
Rickford provided data from Kent Group Ltd., which showed the retail margin nearly doubling comparing prices on Aug. 7 and Oct. 30. On Aug. 7, gas was purchased at a wholesale price of 92.4 cents per litre, with a retail price of $1.454 per litre, amounting to a retail margin of 11.5 cents per litre. On Oct. 30, the wholesale price of gas was 80.1 cents per litre with an average retail price of $1.411 per litre, a retail margin of 20 cents per litre.
“The result was the average retail margin in Thunder Bay increased from 12.2 cents per litre in August to 16.5 cents per litre in October,” Rickford wrote. “A retail margin of 16.5 cents per litre in Thunder Bay is well above the retail margin in other major gasoline markets in Northern Ontario.”
Rickford pointed to retail margins ranging from 6.2 cents per litre in North Bay to 14 cents per litre in Timmins during the month of October.
The letter was copied to federal Economic Development Minister Navdeep Bains and officials from the Canadian Independent Petroleum Marketers Association, Canadian Fuels Association, Imperial Oil, Shell Canada, Suncor Energy, Husky Energy, Canadian Tire Corporation and Federated Co-operatives Limited.
