^^^ Yup. In Alberta, the carbon tax didn't raise the price. Everyone panicked, as they always do thanks to reporting in certain media (The Sun) that the carbon tax was going to cost people hundreds, perhaps thousands, of dollars per month when in reality it's a couple hundred a year. Our family is on the higher end of carbon tax outlay as we're above the threshold for rebates and we drive a lot of kms - and i figure we're at $500-600/yr.
Gas prices have remained the same as pre tax. It's just now that about 4c/L more goes to government.
Though to be fair, given the horrendous volatility of gas prices, no one's really sure what the net outcome of the tax in terms of consumer impact is. It's not unusual for the price to jump 20c/L when there's no changes to the tax.
What continues is the affect Costco has on gas retailing. Often those 20-25c spikes are ignored by Costco - they use a pricing formula of so many cents above wholesale and rarely participate in the lock-step pricing surge that all other brands follow. Gas outside of Costco selling regions in Alberta is typically 10-30c/L higher. They've completely added a new dimension to gas retailing as they're not participating in the oligopoly/monopoly of price fixing. It's funny to see someone actually introduce at least some competition to a market that essentially operated as a monopoly for a long time.
