THUNDER BAY, ON  ----  July 5, 2009   -----   This article began as an all out rant on the cost of fuel in the Northwest and the Thunder Bay Area. It seems everywhere you go in the city the price of gasoline is about 109.7 cents a litre. To be sure we paid more last year when oil was trading at about $140 a barrel so you would think that all things being equal when oil is now about $67 a barrel we should be paying half of what we did last year.

I know our fuel is refined in Sarnia, the same place where all of Southern Ontario gets their fuel. It is shipped up here on vessels like the Algosar, which is the cheapest way to move any bulk cargo. So why are we paying nearly 110 cents a litre and Hamilton is paying about 93 cents? For that matter fuel is 5 cents a litre cheaper in Nipigon, and has been for over a week. Well it must be that our distributors need that extra six bucks for a 40 litre tank more than we do. Or perhaps the guy who fixes prices has gone on vacation.

While I was working up my rant I thought about the sweetness of consumer revenge when we could finally buy a plug in electric car for urban living. Just think, no fuel at all. This has been the promise of the Chevy Volt. Chevrolet will not be introducing the Volt next year at least in any volume, but Nissan plans to sell electric cars in the US in 2010. The Nuvu concept car is not the car the US will see but its size and features of the 2+1 car are similar. The Nissan car I am told will retail between $42,000 and $48,000 dollars. It seems that high performance batteries that give this car a practical ability are horrendously expensive. My guess is Chevy has invented a car that they cannot build for under $30,000 and the market is expecting something much more cheaper than that!
 
Electric bikes or e-bikes are beginning to spark some consumer interest. One like this very red Velotec bike was just stolen from the dealer in Victoriaville Mall. E-bikes like this one use the good old fashioned lead acid batteries and can propel a 280-pound passenger up to the legal 28-k/h limit. The range of the e-bike makes them useful for neighbourhood commuting but it takes a brave rider to venture onto the city’s four lane streets. The best thing about e-bikes is they do not require a license, insurance or gasoline so you can smile when you pass your favourite fill-up place. By the way if someone should offer you a sweetheart deal on a red Velotec e-bike just like the one in the photo, with no paper work or charger don’t buy it, call the cops.

Another vehicle that possesses the attributes of an electric car, the e-bike and it is free for the taking is the shopping cart. Shopping carts car carry a full load of groceries, do not contribute to global warming, they are gasoline free. Best of all, the operator does not need to make payments or pay insurance. I am referring to shopping carts that populate many of the bus stops near the large shopping centres. This is a machine that GM could build right now, though I doubt they would sell many.

Shopping carts can be seen across town and they are the vehicle of choice by many who can no longer afford the price at the pumps or for that matter the privilege of driving at all. I am not sure how much the big stores pay for shopping carts each year but they would need to sell a lot of groceries to cover the cost of a shopping cart. Unlike e-bikes you do not have to be careful where you leave your shopping cart. It is as though they are communal property and you can simply grab another at the local Wal-Mart when you need them.

City drivers need to be aware of shopping carts on the road. This one on Algoma Street could easily be caught by the wind and start roving on its own.

So if you are grumbling about the cost of filling your Hummer, it is fair to say the present price of gas will look cheap by this time next year, and the privilege of driving at all will mean that you are much better off than the operator of this shopping cart. These people are your nieghbours, our seniors, and unemployed.

The price of fuel sparks conversation on par with the weather. Some people I know are contemplating moving from the country to the city so they can walk to work, or at least reduce the amount they drive considerably. In Thunder Bay we have a reasonable public transit system, and there are neighbourhoods that are reasonably self contained so that a healthy form of transportation such as bicycling or walking is an option for some people to reduce their costs.

Sadly conservation of oil, and other fossil fuels in the developed world will not have any effect in reducing the amount of carbon burned for fuel. So it looks like global warming will happen. The reason for this is the non-developed world will use up whatever reserves remain until they too are pushing shopping carts.

While the price we pay at the pumps is not fair, many things in life are that way too. There is no justification for a lot of things, and future generations will be asking why we burned every drop of gasoline and every lump of coal. We will likely spend much of our resources on this rather than build nuclear energy plants that can give us an energy base to run our industry, fuel our cars (hydrogen or electric), and to heat and operate our homes. We will do all of these things to avoid having to push shopping carts in our senior years.

George Smitherman’s recent parking of Ontario’s planned Nuclear expansion is playing politics with our future as well as the federal conservatives. Conservatives understand oil, not nuclear, and if they have their way AECL will be sold for scrap regardless of the jobs it creates in this province and regardless of the bright future it can promise for Canada and the world. Just as the TTC streetcar contract was the sole and most important part of Toronto’s infrastructure plan, streetcars like nuclear is something that conservatives do not understand. The future of AECL and nuclear power is very important to this province, its future, and our ability to remove ourselves from the list of have not provinces. If cooler heads cannot prevail there will be a lot more shopping carts on the roads of our cities than Hummers. Since we know better where is the justification for our behaviour?

The price of gasoline for July 4th-6th will be:

Toronto/GTA/London Ottawa Montreal Calgary Kamloops/Kelowna Regina Vancouver Winnipeg Kitchener-Waterloo Thunder Bay

95.4 Cents/Litre 90.9 Cents/Litre 101.8 Cents/Litre 91.0 Cents/Litre 99.1 Cents/Litre 95.7 Cents/Litre 104.6 Cents/Litre 94.9 Cents/Litre 93.3 Cents/Litre 109.7 Cents/Litre

UP .3 Cent/Litre UP .3 Cent/Litre UP .2 Cent/Litre DOWN .4 Cent/Litre DOWN .3 Cent/Litre DOWN .3 Cent/Litre DOWN .3 Cent/Litre DOWN .3 Cent/Litre UP .3 Cent/Litre No Change

Gas Prices taken from the web site of Dan McTeague, MP for Pickering-Scarborough East

http://www.mcteague.ca/WebPages/gas_price_today.htm