Gas Prices by Province in Canada, Explained

A litre of regular gasoline averaged 206.7 cents in Vancouver and 160.3 cents in Edmonton in August 2026, according to Statistics Canada. Provincial fuel taxes, which run from 0 to 27 cents a litre in October 2026, and sales tax rates of 5 to 15 percent explain most of the spread between provinces. Not all of it: once every tax is stripped out, West Coast fuel still cost about 23 to 31 cents a litre more before tax than fuel on the Prairies or in Ontario in August 2026.

Three things changed the Canadian tax stack in the last eighteen months, and most explainers that rank for this question predate all of them. The federal consumer carbon charge went to zero on April 1, 2025. The federal excise tax on gasoline, normally a flat 10 cents, was suspended on April 20, 2026 and the suspension has been extended to January 31, 2027. And two provinces have paused their own fuel taxes this autumn: Alberta under its oil-price formula and Prince Edward Island by decision. This page puts the current rates in one table, then uses Statistics Canada's city prices to separate the part of each provincial gap that is tax from the part that is the fuel itself. For the general anatomy of a pump price, the four slices of crude, refining, distribution and tax, see the gasoline price breakdown; this guide is about what changes when you cross a provincial line.

Every provincial and territorial fuel tax in one table

The table below lists the per-litre gasoline tax each jurisdiction levies, the regulated clean fuels adjuster that the four Atlantic provinces add to the price, and the sales tax charged on top. Rates are from Natural Resources Canada's fuel consumption levies table, whose rates were last updated September 2, 2026, cross-checked against the British Columbia, Alberta and Ontario finance pages and the Canada Revenue Agency's GST/HST rate table (all checked October 22, 2026). Figures are cents per litre.

Read across the fuel tax column and the range is wide: Yukon and Nunavut sit near 6 cents, Quebec at 19.2 cents, and Metro Vancouver at 27 cents, the highest in the country. Read down the sales tax column and a second, separate geography appears. Every province west of Ontario, and all three territories, charge only the 5 percent GST on fuel. Ontario charges 13 percent HST, the Atlantic provinces 14 or 15 percent, and Quebec 14.975 percent once its 9.975 percent QST is added to the GST. Provinces that look moderate on the first column can still end up expensive at the pump because of the second.

One correction to the federal table is worth carrying forward. The Natural Resources Canada page still lists Nova Scotia's HST at 15 percent. The Canada Revenue Agency states that the Nova Scotia rate fell to 14 percent on April 1, 2025, and that is the figure used everywhere on this page.

The federal layer: an excise tax that is currently zero

Ottawa's own fuel tax is simple in normal times. The federal excise tax is 10 cents a litre on gasoline and 4 cents on diesel, the same in every province, and it does not move with prices. On April 14, 2026 the Department of Finance announced it would set both to zero from April 20 to Labour Day, September 7, 2026, citing fuel price pressures from global oil disruptions related to the Middle East conflict. On September 2, 2026 it extended the suspension. The announced schedule:

Finance Canada puts the total relief for 2026-27 at an estimated $5.3 billion, about $2.9 billion of it from the extension. The government also reported that pump prices fell 11 cents a litre on the first day of the suspension, which is more than the 10 cent tax. That is not a contradiction. It is the first lesson of Canadian fuel taxation: sales tax is charged on top of the excise tax, so removing 10 cents of excise also removes the HST that was charged on those 10 cents. In Ontario that is 1.3 cents, in Nova Scotia 1.4 cents, in New Brunswick, Newfoundland and Labrador and Prince Edward Island 1.5 cents, and in GST-only provinces half a cent.

For anyone comparing prices across time, the suspension is a trap. A litre in October 2026 carries no federal excise tax; a litre in March 2026 did. Any year-over-year comparison of pump prices through early 2027 mixes a tax change into the market change, and so does any comparison with a US state, where the federal tax kept running. The extension was announced alongside legislative proposals, so the dates beyond September 7, 2026 should be read as the government's announced schedule.

What happened to carbon pricing at the pump

Until March 31, 2025, the federal fuel charge added 17.61 cents a litre to gasoline in the ten jurisdictions where Ottawa's system applied: Newfoundland and Labrador, Prince Edward Island, Nova Scotia, New Brunswick, Ontario, Manitoba, Saskatchewan, Alberta, Nunavut and Yukon. Regulations set every fuel charge rate to zero from April 1, 2025. British Columbia, which ran its own carbon tax at the same 17.61 cent gasoline rate, eliminated it on the same date, so the province's motor fuel tax is now the only provincial levy on its pumps.

That leaves Quebec as the only province with carbon pricing that still reaches gasoline, and it does so differently. Quebec runs a cap-and-trade system that began in 2013, linked with California's market in January 2014, and brought fuel distributors under the cap in 2015, according to the International Carbon Action Partnership's profile of the system, which puts its coverage at about 80 percent of provincial emissions. Distributors must hold allowances for the emissions their fuel produces when burned, and the cost of those allowances is folded into the price they charge. There is no published per-litre line for it, and it moves with the allowance market rather than by statute. This guide does not estimate it. What matters for the comparisons below is where it sits: inside the pre-tax price, not in the tax column.

The practical result: a 2024 explainer that lists a carbon charge for Ontario or Alberta is now wrong by about 18 cents a litre plus the sales tax on it, and a comparison between Quebec and its neighbours has to account for a cost that the others no longer carry.

Sales tax is a multiplier, not an add-on

Natural Resources Canada states it plainly: GST and HST are charged on the crude oil cost, the refining and marketing costs and margins, the federal excise tax and the provincial road taxes. In other words, the percentage applies to everything above it, including the other taxes. Two consequences follow.

First, a province's fuel tax costs its drivers more than its face value. Ontario's 9 cent tax costs 10.17 cents at the pump once 13 percent HST is charged on it; Nova Scotia's 15.50 cents costs 17.67 cents with 14 percent HST; Saskatchewan's 15 cents costs 15.75 cents with 5 percent GST. Second, the sales tax grows when the market price rises. At a 130 cent pre-tax price, the HST in New Brunswick is about 22 cents a litre; if crude pushes the pre-tax price to 150 cents, the same HST rate collects 25 cents. The flat per-litre taxes stay put while the percentage tax rides the market, which is why provinces with high HST see their pump prices swing harder than the Prairies when crude moves.

Quebec stacks two percentages. The 5 percent GST and the 9.975 percent QST together take 14.975 percent of the price before sales tax, the highest combined rate in the country apart from the 15 percent HST provinces, and Quebec pairs it with a provincial fuel tax exceeded only by the Vancouver and Victoria rates.

Stripping the taxes out of August 2026 prices

The most useful thing the official data allows is a subtraction. Statistics Canada publishes monthly average pump prices for eighteen cities in table 18-10-0001-01. In August 2026 the federal excise tax was already suspended everywhere, so for any city whose provincial rate did not change that month, the taxes are known exactly and the pre-tax price can be solved backwards: divide the pump price by one plus the sales tax rate, then subtract the provincial fuel tax. The table does this for the nine cities where the August tax rates are certain. Alberta and the four Atlantic provinces are left out because their August rates or adjusters could not be confirmed against an official source for that month.

Cents per litre. Pump prices: Statistics Canada table 18-10-0001-01, regular gasoline at self-service stations, August 2026, as archived by PetroEyes on October 14, 2026. Tax rates: provincial and federal sources listed at the foot of this page. The implied pre-tax price is the crude, refining, distribution and retail margin that remains after taxes; for Montreal it still contains the municipal tax and, for both Quebec cities, the cap-and-trade cost.

Three findings come out of this arithmetic, and none of them is visible in the raw pump prices.

Toronto and Montreal pay almost the same for the fuel. The 14.6 cent gap between the two cities' pump prices is, to within a tenth of a cent, the difference in their tax stacks. Strip the taxes and both land near 141.6 to 141.7 cents. Quebec drivers pay more because of Quebec's fuel tax and QST, not because the product costs more to deliver, at least in August 2026. Since the Montreal figure still contains its municipal tax and the cap-and-trade cost, the underlying supply cost there is, if anything, a little lower than Toronto's.

The West Coast premium is mostly not tax. Vancouver's pump price is 36.4 cents above Toronto's, but its total tax is only 8.2 cents higher. The rest, about 28 cents, is in the pre-tax price. Victoria shows the same pattern with a lower tax. The Canada Energy Regulator's 2017 market snapshot found that British Columbia had the highest refinery margins of the ten provinces, and the August 2026 subtraction says that premium is still there and is now the larger part of the coastal gap.

Low tax does not mean low price on the Prairies. Regina and Winnipeg carry the lightest tax shares in the table, 12 to 14 percent of the pump price, yet their implied pre-tax prices, 144.5 and 146.5 cents, are a few cents above Ontario's. Their advantage at the pump comes from charging 5 percent GST instead of 13 percent HST, not from cheaper fuel.

The full city list for August 2026

For reference, here is every city in the Statistics Canada table for the same month, ranked from cheapest to most expensive. The cities omitted from the subtraction above are included here; their position should be read with the tax table, since Alberta's and the Atlantic provinces' rates differ from the October figures in ways explained in the next two sections.

The 46.4 cent spread between Edmonton and Vancouver is the headline number, but the change column tells a second story. Every city fell between May and August 2026, by 9.4 cents in Halifax up to 21.2 cents in Ottawa-Gatineau, as the spring price spike eased. Interactive maps of the same series, alongside US and Asian city prices, are on the city fuel price comparison page.

Alberta: a fuel tax wired to the WTI price

Alberta's 13 cent provincial fuel tax is the only one in Canada that switches itself off when oil is expensive. Under the Fuel Tax Relief Program the rate is reset each quarter, on January 1, April 1, July 1 and October 1, from the average West Texas Intermediate price over the most recent 20 trading days:

The rate cannot rise by more than 9 cents in a single quarter when oil falls. Alberta's tax and levy rate table shows gasoline at $0.000 a litre effective October 1, 2026, so the formula has the tax fully suspended for the fourth quarter. The design has an odd effect on interprovincial comparisons: when crude rises, Alberta's pump price rises by less than its neighbours', because a tax cut absorbs part of the move. In a crude rally, the Alberta discount widens; in a slump, it narrows as the tax comes back. Anyone reading Alberta's position in the city ranking needs to know which quarter the price comes from. The province's own oil, and the discount at which it sells, is covered in the WCS-WTI differential guide; that discount applies to crude, and Alberta refineries do not pass it to drivers in any mechanical way.

Atlantic Canada: prices a regulator signs off on

East of Quebec, the pump price is not purely a market outcome. All four Atlantic provinces regulate gasoline prices through a utility board or commission, according to the Canada Energy Regulator's 2017 review of the systems. Prince Edward Island has done so since 1988, the other three since the early to mid-2000s. Prince Edward Island and Nova Scotia set both a minimum and a maximum price; New Brunswick and Newfoundland and Labrador set only a maximum. The posted limits therefore move on the regulator's schedule rather than station by station.

Three features of the Atlantic tax stack push prices up. The HST, at 14 percent in Nova Scotia and 15 percent elsewhere, is the highest sales tax on fuel in the country. Each province adds a clean fuels adjuster to the regulated price, from 3.74 cents in Nova Scotia and Newfoundland and Labrador to 8.0 cents in New Brunswick, and the HST is charged on that too. And Newfoundland and Labrador faces geography that no tax table captures: the CER points to a small, widely dispersed population that makes it costly to move gasoline and run stations. In 2017 the CER found the province had the highest taxes, marketing margins and overall price of the ten provinces.

Prince Edward Island is the current exception on the tax line. The province suspended its provincial tax on gasoline and diesel from September 26, 2026 to January 31, 2027, so its statutory 8.47 cent rate is not being collected this autumn. That makes Charlottetown's August price, 188.5 cents, a poor guide to its October price.

Worked example: one pre-tax litre, ten tax regimes

To isolate taxes completely, give every province the same illustrative pre-tax price, 130.0 cents a litre, and apply October 2026 rates. The 130 cent figure is an assumption for the example, not a measured price; the October 2026 rates are the official ones from the table above. The calculation for each province is: pre-tax price, plus provincial fuel tax, plus any clean fuels adjuster, plus federal excise, then multiply by one plus the sales tax rate. The right-hand columns show the same calculation with the federal excise back at its full 10 cents, as scheduled from April 1, 2027.

With identical fuel, the spread from Alberta (136.5 cents) to Quebec (171.5 cents) is 35 cents a litre, all of it tax. Ontario, with one of the lowest fuel taxes in the table, lands in the middle at 157.1 cents because of its 13 percent HST. New Brunswick and Nova Scotia, with moderate fuel taxes, end up within a cent or two of Quebec once the adjuster and HST are added. The excise column shows the return of the federal tax adding 10.5 cents in GST provinces and 11.3 to 11.5 cents in HST and QST provinces.

For a household budget the per-litre gap scales simply. At an illustrative 1,500 litres a year, roughly a mid-size car driven about 20,000 kilometres at 7.5 litres per 100 km, the 35 cent Alberta-to-Quebec tax gap is about $525 a year, and the return of the federal excise adds about $160 to $170 a year in any province. The arithmetic for other mileages and fuel economies is a generic fuel-cost calculation, which CalculatorVillage handles; the point here is the size of the tax term in it.

Where the simple explanation breaks

City-level taxes. Three municipalities apply their own gasoline taxes: Vancouver and Victoria, through the transit components built into the British Columbia rates above, and Montreal, through a regional tax that Natural Resources Canada lists but does not quantify.

Cross-border metro areas. Statistics Canada publishes a single Ottawa-Gatineau price, which blends Ontario and Quebec stations with different tax stacks. That is why it was left out of the tax subtraction: no single tax rate applies to it.

Statutory rate versus collected rate. This autumn, three of the rates in any standard tax table are not being collected: the federal excise tax, Alberta's fuel tax and Prince Edward Island's fuel tax. A comparison that uses statutory rates overstates the current tax in those places by 10 cents a litre or more, and by about 23 cents in Alberta.

The North. Whitehorse and Yellowknife prices sit high despite low territorial fuel taxes, 6.2 to 10.7 cents. The CER attributes northern prices to higher marketing margins linked to remoteness. Tax tables explain little there.

Diesel follows different rules. Federal excise on diesel is 4 cents, not 10, and several provinces tax diesel differently from gasoline (New Brunswick 15.45 cents, Prince Edward Island 14.15 cents). None of the gasoline arithmetic on this page transfers directly to diesel; the diesel price explainer covers that market.

Mistakes to avoid when comparing provinces

• Comparing across the April 2025 and April 2026 changes. A 2024 price in Ontario included about 17.6 cents of fuel charge and 10 cents of excise, plus HST on both. A 2026 price includes neither. Year-over-year changes in that window are mostly policy.
• Adding tax rates without compounding. A province's fuel tax plus HST is not the fuel tax plus 13 percent of the old price; the HST is charged on the fuel tax too.
• Reading crude prices into the pump without the exchange rate. Crude and wholesale gasoline trade in US dollars. A weaker Canadian dollar raises the pre-tax price in every province at once, and it can mask or exaggerate a move in crude.
• Treating Alberta's cheap crude as cheap gasoline. Western Canadian Select sells at a discount to WTI, but the August 2026 numbers show Prairie pre-tax gasoline priced in line with Ontario's. Refined fuel is priced against regional wholesale markets, not against the local crude discount.
• Using a monthly average as a station price. Statistics Canada's series is built for the Consumer Price Index. It is the right tool for comparing cities and months, the wrong one for judging whether a single station is expensive.

How this compares with US state gaps

The Canadian pattern differs from the American one in one structural way. In the United States, the federal tax and state gasoline taxes are mostly set in cents per gallon. In Canada, percentage sales taxes of 5 to 15 percent apply to fuel in every province, and they compound on top of the per-litre taxes. That makes Canadian provincial gaps more sensitive to the crude price: when crude rises, HST provinces pull further away from GST provinces even if no tax rate changes. Canada's place as a crude producer, exporter and refiner is profiled on the Canada country page, and the four slices of any pump price, crude, refining, distribution and tax, are laid out with US data in the gasoline price breakdown.

Questions readers ask about provincial gas prices

This guide is part of the PetroEyes household fuel costs library, which also covers state-by-state US gasoline taxes and the seasonal switch to summer-grade fuel.

The next number to watch is February 1, 2027, when the federal excise tax is scheduled to come back at half rate: the rockets and feathers analysis explains how quickly retail prices tend to pass a cost change through, which is the question that date will test.

Data and sources (all checked October 22, 2026 unless stated): Natural Resources Canada, Fuel consumption levies in Canada (provincial and territorial rates updated September 2, 2026; clean fuels adjusters; Alberta and Prince Edward Island suspensions); Natural Resources Canada, Why gasoline prices vary across Canada (GST/HST base; municipal taxes); Department of Finance, April 14, 2026 and September 2, 2026 (excise suspension and extension); Department of Finance, March 2025 and CRA fuel charge rates (fuel charge removal; 17.61 cent rate); CRA GST/HST rates (Nova Scotia 14 percent from April 1, 2025); British Columbia motor fuel tax rates; Alberta fuel tax overview and rate table; Ontario gasoline tax; Canada Energy Regulator market snapshots on regional price differences and Atlantic price regulation (both 2017); International Carbon Action Partnership, Quebec cap-and-trade profile; Statistics Canada table 18-10-0001-01 (city prices, May and August 2026, archived by PetroEyes October 14, 2026; the Statistics Canada site was unavailable on the October 22 recheck). Implied pre-tax prices and the worked example are PetroEyes calculations from those inputs.