Another way of looking at ethics

When we talk about a politician’s ethics, it is usually to comment on conflicts of interest and respect for other standards.

All this is right and good. But there is another important ethical responsibility: being honest with voters. Let’s call this degree zero.

Elected officials sometimes succeed in reaching a higher level: addressing our intelligence by daring a complex thought, which shows that two seemingly contradictory things can be true at the same time.

This is what Pierre Fitzgibbon did on Thursday. Just before you step back and pretend it was all a joke…

Motorists can attest to this: the price at the pump is difficult to understand. It rises quickly to follow the market, but falls more slowly when the price of crude oil falls… And the profit margin of retailers seems to vary depending on the region. Even in the National Capital, where there is no shortage of customers, the price is inexplicably higher.

This phenomenon was documented in an expert report^⁠1. In response, the Minister of Energy tabled a bill on gasoline. It will require service stations to inform the Régie de l’énergie when they change the price. And it will abolish the floor price. The goal: to strengthen transparency and competition.

The reception of this law falls into the broad category of “why not”. Energy analysts are skeptical about the effectiveness of the future law. But we lose nothing by trying. Especially since the legislative modification will be simple and quick.

In this sense, the minister agrees with motorists who find that gasoline is too expensive.

But at the very end of the press briefing on Thursday, he said something else. A colleague asked him if he wanted, like federal Conservative leader Pierre Poilievre, to reduce gas taxes this summer in order to give vacationers a break.

Mr. Fitzgibbon was putting away his papers, already in a hurry to be elsewhere. “Reduce fuel taxes? I think we should mount them! “, he said as he left the room.

The minister has a habit of making fun of questions he doesn’t like. He enjoys spreading thrills of controversy in the media.

His response was half serious, half provocative. Yes, he thinks that if taxes were to be changed, it would have to be upwards. But no, his government has no intention of doing so.

One day, an anthropologist with transversal skills in psychoanalysis will have to be interested in our relationship to essence. No other property has such status. The price at the pump is displayed in giant format outside. The slightest increase generates anger. And yet, the number of vehicles is increasing faster than the population, and the models are getting bigger and bigger.

If gasoline costs too much, we send the opposite message to those who sell it. And the oil industry is more interested in our behaviors than our emotions.

It is true that citizens with modest incomes suffer from price increases. Some people have no choice but to drive to work. Especially regional residents and large families. But if we have to help them, the rebate at the pump is a poorly targeted measure. Because gasoline expenses are correlated with income. The richer you are, the more often you fill up. Especially if you drive a luxury SUV.

Ironically, it is in the name of defending the less wealthy that Quebec refuses a bonus-malus system – at zero cost – which would increase the price of energy-intensive models, in order to reduce in return that of less greedy models.

Motorists pay less in taxes than they cost the state (direct costs with road maintenance and construction, and indirect costs with pollution and congestion). And this deficit is getting worse, because the gas tax has not been indexed, and because the fund that pays for road work is increasingly in deficit.

Don’t take this the wrong way. This is not a personal attack, a value judgment or an activist stance. This is a simple factual statement.

Everyone is then free to propose their solutions. But what is certain is that someone has to pay. The question is whether the bill should be shared by all taxpayers or whether some should do more. In short, whether we need to move from a polluter-subsidized model to that of the polluter-pays.

This is the big picture that Mr. Fitzgibbon must have had in mind when he formulated his response.

This is also what he was thinking of when he said last year that in the long term, Quebec should halve its number of vehicles.

This week, two other seemingly contradictory truths must have occurred to the minister. Some motorists pay too much (at gas stations) and not enough (to the state) at the same time. And if we impose a tax on gas stores, they will pass it on to consumers.

But even if the minister used the conditional when talking about a tax increase, it will ultimately take place, in another form. With Quebec’s carbon market, the tax will increase over time, just like elsewhere in the country with the similar federal system.

And in the long term, this tax at the pump will gradually disappear, because the sale of new gasoline models will be banned from 2035.

Mr. Fitzgibbon has violated an unwritten rule, which is not to wish for a measure contrary to what his party proposes. But when it came to frankness and the ability to tell unpleasant truths, his ethical performance was clearly above average. Just like his pleasure in seeing the indignant reactions.

1. Read Professor Robert Clark’s Gasoline Retail Market Study