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Fuel excise tax

Aviation gasoline prices include $0.11 federal excise tax on top of sales and gas taxes.

Photo courtesy Garth Wallace

Chairman’s report
by Ken McNeill, Past COPA Chairman

Transportation in Canada - 1998

Transport Canada’s annual report "Transportation in Canada - 1998" has been issued. These annual reports cover all forms of Canadian transportation, not just aviation, but they are a valuable source of financial information not easily found in one place. Federal government accounting is foreign to most of us, and revenues and expenses may not be attributed to the same Department budgets.

The reports give us an opportunity to see gross numbers and, this year, an indication of how the federal government is faring after hiving off its financial obligations to the air navigation system and federal airports. We continue to hear proclamations from Transport like "we only recover one quarter of our costs for aviation, therefore we simply have to increase our user charges and other fees". As noted below, the Report produces numbers purporting to support that claim; but, as it also shows, not all revenues from transportation are attributed there. In fact, the largest source of transportation revenues – fuel taxes – is not used to offset any transportation costs; instead, it is allocated to general revenues.

One can never be sure that what you see in federal accounting is what they mean. For example, Gross Expenditures on Transportation in the report includes transportation costs for other federal departments, such as Fisheries and Oceans, Public Works, Government Services Canada, Parks Canada, the National Capital Commission, Agriculture Canada, Finance Canada, and the Department of Indian Affairs and Northern Development. Surely these costs would be more properly attributed to each department so we can know the true costs of running them.

For purposes of this report, I will exclude the expenditures of $864 million which is part of the transportation budgets of the other federal departments noted above, and deal only with Transport Canada costs and revenues.

Total gross (operating and capital) expenditures by Transport Canada on transportation:
                                                              Avg. 91/92 to 95/96                  98/99
Operating and employee benefits                      $1.8 billion                   $0.5 billion
Capital expenditures                                            0.5                                0.1
Grants and contributions                                      0.8                                0.8
Total                                                                 $3.1                              $1.4

This represents a "costs" decrease of 50% in seven years.

Revenues credited to federal transportation budgets (millions).
                                                                Avg. 91/92 to 95/96                 98/99
Airline ticket tax                                                  $557                                 -
Airport fees and leases                                         363                              $266
Air Navigation System fee                                      45                                   -
Sub total                                                             965                                266
"Other" fees (marine, etc.)                                      67                                 70
Total                                                                 $1,032                            $336

So, the federal government’s accounting forecast for 1998/99 looks like this:

Total (credited) revenues from transportation                                        $0.34 billion
Total (gross) expenditures for transportation                                          1.42 billion
Net revenue (loss) to federal govt.                                                     $(1.08) billion

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