Date of publication: Mar 25, 2022 • 23 minutes ago • 3 minutes of reading • 96 Comments Michael Santos fills his car in Vancouver on Friday. Photo by RICHARD LAM / PNG
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Prime Minister John Horgan’s offer of $ 110 in discounts to ICBC contract holders as a “lump sum payment” to help consumers with high gas prices is not going to go far, according to drivers filling Vancouver on Friday.
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“It’s a void. “It’s not about (high gas prices) in the long run,” said Michael Santos, a Vancouver sales and business development spokesman at Esso Gas Station in Burrard and Davie, where regular gas was 195.9 cents a liter. With Vancouver gas prices hovering around $ 2 a liter, the $ 110 discount will pay for about three weeks of driving for Santos, who now thinks twice about making sales visits. “If it’s expensive to go there, it does not make the search very profitable,” Santos said. $ 110 represents about a gas tank for Langley Tracy Croutch. “I know it’s a gesture, but it does not really help,” said Croutch, who would simply prefer lower prices. Horgan, however, said the lump sum payment was “a significant contribution in a very difficult time for drivers, as they look at the price on the pump and know there is relief on the road”, announcing the payment along with Public Safety Secretary Mike Farnworth .
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Rising gas prices are partly the result of Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine, Horgan said, and instability hurts consumers around the world, not just BC ICBC’s robust financial results that allow the company to offer the measure. relief. Government critics, however, described the discount as a political move that does not offer the relief that consumers need, nor does it inspire the basic problem of inaccessibility. “They’re just trying to get away with what they obviously have bad poll numbers and they’re trying to find a way to change the selector,” Kamloops-North Thompson MLA Peter Milobar said during an appearance on expert Mike Smyth’s show. at CKNW. The discount will cost ICBC $ 395 million and will be paid as $ 110 rebates to individual counterparties and $ 165 to commercial vehicle contract holders. It will go to customers who had basic insurance policies with Crown corporation in February.
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A discount, however, is something ICBC could have offered independently of the crisis and could have been more generous, said policy analyst and retired civil servant Rick McCandless. “They associate it with trying to help the gas pump, and that’s okay, but the main purpose is to get the extra money back (to the ICBC contract holders),” McCandless said. McCandless estimated that ICBC had funds of up to $ 450 million, which exceeded its statutory reserve fund requirements, which could have been paid in reimbursements of $ 125 to $ 150. This is based on an analysis of the publicly available financial information of the company published by McCandless after the publication of the last budget of the province. McCandles said gas prices were driven by more factors than the invasion of Ukraine, but a resolution of the war would begin to ease prices and “remove pressure from governments to do the right thing for taxpayers.”
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“Meanwhile, because of the risks of a (possible) recession, the government needs to take some steps to offer relief,” he said. Milobar, however, who is also the financial critic of BC Liberal, said the discounts do not target people who need help the most and give it to those who need it the least. “The fact that a single parent who works two jobs and drives a Honda Civic receives the same one-off discount as a Tesla owner is ridiculous,” Milobar said in a statement. The leader of the BC Green Party, Sonia Furstenau, said it was short-sighted to target discounts only for drivers when “the affordability crisis, exacerbated by rising gas prices, is affecting all British Colombians”. “Whenever there is an opportunity for transformational change, the BC NDP doubles the status quo,” he said in a series of tweets posted Friday. Furstenau said the government would be better off if it got the $ 395 million and “leaned on permanent solutions to transportation problems in this province.” He added that a better way to deal with the crisis would be to consider using the $ 2 billion generated by coal tax to provide more generous and consistent discounts to “encourage the removal of oil and gas.” [email protected] twitter.com/derrickpenner – with a file from the Canadian Press
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