Consumers must revolt to stop gas price gouging
The totally unjustifiable price gouging we are now seeing for gas should have people very worried.
It is obvious the oil companies have lost any trace of social responsibility and fear of government intervention to control their greed. Unfortunately I think that we Canadians are largely to blame for this type of consumer abuse. Our peaceful and apathetic nature makes us an easy target for the oil companies.
If I remember correctly, it was only a few months ago when the French government tried to impose a gas tax of only a few cents a litre and there were mass demonstrations which forced the government to re-think this action. There have been other examples in Europe wehre commercial truckers have refused to work to protest fuel price increases. Maybe we should take a lesson from these actions and realize as consumers we do have some power to control price gouging.
What really irritates me with the oil companies is that we are alwasy given the same old tired supply/demand argument. If there was any supply shortage it is quite obvious we would see some gas stations running dry or we would have gas rationing imposed. The fact that we never see these things happening should make it clear that there is no supply problem.
Actually, when you think about it logically, if there was a reason for gas rationing it wouldn’t cost any more for the oil companies to bring finished product to market, so why raise the prices?
Our so-called Competition Bureau is a federal agency that is supposed to control consumer abuse, but apparently the oil companies seem to be exempt from any action by the department. Unless we start making some demands on our governments to intervene, this type of consumer abuse will continue.
K. Beaumont
Duncan
