for the math impaired.
Courtesy of NealeNews comes this story about governmental travel allowances from the National Post.
...MPs and public servants have been quietly awarded a 10% hike in their travel allowances in response to soaring gas prices, while the government refuses to cut federal fuel taxes to help the driving public.
The increase, to 50.6 cents a kilometre from 46 cents for MPs, with a similar range for public servants, would result in an allowance of $400 for a return trip by car from Ottawa to Toronto, excluding costs for meals and lodging.
Travel allowances are to cover the cost of traveling in your automobile, including gas, insurance, depreciation, repairs, etc. Let's take the example of my 1997 Honda Accord. A typical fill-up is 50 L and I can go around 600 km on this. At 80 cents/Litre this works out to $40 to fill the tank and a cost of travel (gas only) of $0.066/km (6.6 cents). Before the increase, 40 cents went to non-gas related costs.
According to our government accountants the cost of gas (remember, every thing else is constant) has increased by 4.6 cents/km or for my Accord the total gas cost is now 11.2 cents/km. If you work backwards that means the cost of gas is:
11.2 cents/km * 600 km = $67.20
$67.20/50 L = $1.34/L
Are there any MPs or civil servant still paying $1.34/L for gas? Gas is down to ~$1.00/L in Kitchener-Waterloo and I assume it is close to that pretty much everywhere else. It is nice to see that the government has no problem giving themselves and their employees a raise to more than offset the rising cost of gas all the while gouging regular Canadians.
