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As gas prices continue to climb to new historic levels , and with no end in sight of additional price increases, we thought it would be interesting to look back at what Canadians and Sault Ste. Marie residents have paid for fuel in other years and decades.
Federal and provincial governments have regulated, taxed and controlled the development of Canada’s oil industry for much of its history. The oil industry in Canada has been subject to government regulation for nearly its entire existence.
The federal government introduced price controls one month before the Oil Embargo of October 1973. In response to American support of Israel in the 1973 Yom Kippur War, the Organization of Arab Petroleum Exporting Countries banned oil sales to the United States and its allies. This caused both a rapid price increase and a global oil shortage.
The government of Pierre Elliot Trudeau responded to the oil crisis of 1973–74 in several ways , one measure was price controls. The federal government set limits on the price that consumers could be charged for oil.
We start with the year of 1973
As the oil crisis began, the average price in Canada was $.039 a gallon. Canada didn’t change to metric until 1975. Translated in litres that would be 9 cents a litre!
Lets jump to 1984 , Canada was metric and gallons changes to litres. The average price of one litre was a mere .39 cents! It would take another 6 year before prices reached 50 cents a litre. In 1985, average income reached $15,903 per year.
In 1995 , motorists in the Sault saw another price increase to $.55 a litre. A barrel of crude oil was fetching roughly $18 USD.
Prices really started to escalate in the late 1990’s and early 2000’s .
Local gas prices jumped almost 20 cents a litre between 1995 and 1999. To put that in perspective, prices have increase 20 cents a litre in the last week here in Sault Ste. Marie.
By 2000 prices were pegged in the 70 to 80 cent range. We didn’t hit a dollar a litre until about 2008. For the most part, we haven’t fallen below a dollar since then – with the exception of a few minor hiccups in the oil and gas industry and as covid-19 pandemic swept over the world in 2020.
In 2009, one of those hiccups in the industry was the financial crisis stemming from 2008. Prices actually dropped below a dollar again.
Since then, prices at the pumps have gone up and down but well over a dollar a litre.
Covid-19 arrived in early 2020 and government lockdowns forced gas retailers to dramatically drop prices. In Sault Ste. Marie prices fell to a low of just 77 cents a litre and prices remained under a dollar for almost a year.
Prices started a steady increase starting in the spring of 2021 .
That brings us to today where the average price in town is sitting at $189.9 a litre.
U.S. President Joe Biden announced he was banning Russian oil to the states. Adding more pressure to supply chain. Gas and oil analyst predict the price will exceed $2.00 a litre in Canada within the next few weeks.
This article is a condensed version of the long history we have had with the price of fuel, there has been many ups and downs in the market over the last 50 years that we couldn’t include all the price adjustments since 1973 – there has been hundreds of fluctuations and excuses for the prices we pay. This article contains some of the keystone moments along the way.
source
https://saultonline.com/tag/canada/.
