Editor:
The recent new limit on gasoline purchases for non-essential vehicles is a laughable policy; it also shows how little our elected officials know anything about human behaviour and tools available at their disposal if they truly need to make an impact.
Instead of deploying a temporary 1500% increase on PST or TransLink's tax or transit tax, our Public Safety Minister went with an honour system. Such will not change anything other than driving more drivers to panic and thinking they need to top up now.
In fact, on my morning walk on Saturday, I saw several cars and drivers driving their dogs to parks. If gas price is now $6 or $10 per litre, I am sure they will triple think about their actions and opt-in for other, hopefully more environmentally friendly means to those parks.
Such increases will be good for both the environment and our already crumbled government budgets.
It's a simple demand and supply that we all learned in first economy course at university. The policy makers should definitely think about these policies again and really leverage some simple tools to change human behaviours.
Tim Chu, Burnaby
