After a cold, almost endless winter and a wet, chilly spring, it looks like something’s heating up just in time for summer – but we’re not talking about thermometers.
In case you haven’t noticed, the price of gasoline is soaring across the country, just in time for road trip season. As of yesterday (April 23), people in Montreal were paying $1.53 a litre for regular, after the price made a nine-cent jump overnight. Vancouver is paying close to that ($1.51 a litre), and many other Canadian cities are seeing prices around $1.40 a litre, or higher. The GTA is seeing a two-year price high at around the $1.40 mark, and New Brunswick and Nova Scotia are expected to see their prices hit record highs in coming days.
For now, the prairies seem to have stable fuel prices lower than the rest of Canada (in the $1.29-$1.31 per litre range)
Prices started to climb noticeably higher before the Easter weekend (a strange coincidence, no doubt), and many cities saw jumps of at least five cents per litre overnight in the last few days. Industry experts have all sorts of opinions for the increase, blaming it on everything from the sliding Canadian dollar to an increase in demand or the Ukrainian crisis. Thankfully for the oil companies, there’s never a shortage of unpleasant circumstances on the global stage that can be used as an excuse to hike prices.
