Northern airlines mum on impact of province's aviation fuel tax cut

The cost of fuelling up airplanes in northern Ontario went down with the turning of a new year, but there are doubts those savings will be passed down to consumers.

The Progressive Conservative government carried through with a promise to reverse a 4 cent per litre increase on aviation fuel purchased north of Parry Sound that the Liberals brought in five years ago.

CBC requested an interview about this with Northern Development Minister Greg Rickford, but he hasn't been made available for the past month. 

"As part of our plan to make life more affordable, we are proposing to reduce the aviation fuel tax rate in the North to 2.7 cents per litre from 6.7 cents per litre," reads a statement from the ministry. 

"As we fulfil another promise we made during last year's election, we will continue to put more money back in people's pockets every opportunity we get."

If aviation companies in northern Ontario are planning to lower their prices for passengers and cargo due to this tax cut, they aren't saying.

CBC contacted Air Canada, Bearskin Airlines, Air Creebec and North Star Air and received no response.

Thunder Air declined a request for comment.

Porter Airlines provided the following statement:

"Porter is supportive of any initiative that helps reduce the tax burden and we believe this is an important step by the provincial government. It helps offset other costs that are increasing and contributes to keeping fares lower," the statement reads.  

"This also makes operating in Northern Ontario more sustainable. It gives us greater confidence that recent investments we've made through opening maintenance bases in Thunder Bay and Sudbury, and a crew base in Thunder Bay are the right decisions."

CBC also contacted Northern Stores, which is the main retailer of food and other goods in Ontario's far north, to see if this change would lead to lower prices. There was no response.

Gilles Bisson, the New Democrat MPP for Timmins who is also a pilot, calls the tax change "symbolic." 

"This will just be another one of those things where we give money away and we have no mechanism to ensure there's a savings passed on to the consumer," he says.

Bisson says a better way to help northerners make ends meet would be to expand natural gas services in the region or find a way to lower electricity costs.

For the communities of the far north, Bisson says the province should provide a cost-of-living subsidy, since the cost of food and other goods in most of Ontario is already subsidized by the public dollars invested in the network of provincial highways.