The real price of gasoline in Canada, 1949 to 2025

This issue covers what a litre of regular gasoline cost in Canada each year from 1949 to 2025, taxes included, in 2025 dollars. It comes in three images: the chart, the Party Scoreboard (Liberal vs Conservative / PC) and the PM Scoreboard (the average price under each Prime Minister). The yearly change in the price is in the Party Scoreboard's rows and in the text.

On the charts, each year is shaded by the federal party in office for most of that year: red for Liberal, blue for Conservative and Progressive Conservative (PC). Diagonal stripes mark minority governments.

The pump price is harder to pin on one government than most measures. The price of crude oil is set on world markets, and in recent years it has been the largest part of the price at the pump. Ottawa, with the producing provinces, set Canada's crude price from 1973 to 1985, and federal taxes are part of the price, but provinces tax gasoline too. So this issue also tests the party comparisons, several ways each.

In brief. A litre of regular gasoline cost an estimated 8.3 cents in 1949 and 143.6 cents in 2025. After adjusting for inflation, that 1949 litre cost about 111.6 cents in 2025 dollars, so the real price rose by roughly a quarter from 1949 to 2025 (29% on our estimate, 23% on a version built on city prices). Its real low was an estimated 80.9 cents in 1973 and its high 185.4 in 2022. The real price fell 27% from 1949 to 1972, quietly, while crude oil was cheap and steady. After 1973, when OPEC gained much more influence over the world price, it rose in steps while Ottawa controlled crude prices, then swung widely once controls ended in 1985: most of the rise since 1973 came by 1985, and 2025 is 8% above 1985.

There are two ways to compare the parties, and they point in different directions. On the average price, Liberal years come out cheaper: 111.6 cents a litre (by coincidence, the same figure as the 1949 price) against 124.4 in Conservative and PC years; about half of that gap reflects when each party governed. On the yearly change, Conservative and PC years come out lower: the real price rose 1.6% a year on average in Liberal years and fell 1.2% a year in Conservative and PC years. Neither raw gap is larger than chance could easily produce, though the gap in the yearly change is harder to dismiss once each decade's average is allowed for. Crude oil prices account for much of the yearly change: after allowing for them, the gap shrinks to 1.5 percentage points (the difference between two percentages) or less, and on the years since 1986 the adjusted gap reverses. Shading and ranks show who was in office, not who caused the result.

The numbered markers give context, not credit or blame:

We marked 17 of the many events that Statistics Canada, the Bank of Canada, federal records, the US Energy Information Administration or US government historians tie to gasoline or crude prices, or to the supply behind them: thirteen world events and four federal measures. Nine fall in Liberal years and eight in Conservative and PC years, although Liberals held office in 51 of the 77 years; of the four federal measures, three fall in Liberal years and one in a PC year. No source we found ties an event before 1973 to a move in Canadian pump prices, which stayed calm in those years (see the section after next); the two earliest markers, 1960 and 1970, mark early shifts in who supplied and priced the world's oil. We considered seven more events and did not mark them, because we found no source that ties them to Canadian gasoline prices: the 1947 Leduc discovery (before the chart starts), the 1950 Korean War (Statistics Canada ties it to consumer prices in general, which explain the fall of 1951), the 1956 Suez crisis, the 1959 US oil import limits, the 1961 National Oil Policy, the 1967 Six-Day War and the 1971 Tehran agreement. Large yearly moves (9% or more either way) with no marker that year or the year before: 1951, 1982, 2005, 2017 and 2018, all in Liberal years; the text describes them.

The chart shows the average pump price of a litre of regular gasoline each year, taxes included, adjusted for inflation and shown in 2025 dollars. In 1973, a litre cost an estimated 11.6 cents. Prices in general rose almost sevenfold from 1973 to 2025, so in 2025 dollars that litre cost 80.9 cents.

Statistics Canada has measured a national average price of regular gasoline only since 2006: that part of the line is solid. For 1949 to 2005, the dashed line is an estimate. It carries Statistics Canada's gasoline price index, part of the Consumer Price Index, back from the 2006 price. That index measures how much gasoline prices changed each year, so every yearly change quoted in this issue is measured, not estimated; only the price level before 2006 rests on the estimate. Checked against the city prices Statistics Canada has published since 1979, the estimate may run up to about 5% low before 1990 and up to about 2% high from 1990 to 2005. Neither the estimate nor that check changes which party comes out ahead on either measure.

No official national retail price or index goes back further than 1949, when the gasoline index starts. That is why this issue starts in 1949, not 1925, and why Arthur Meighen, Mackenzie King and R.B. Bennett have no rows on the PM Scoreboard.

The chart has three stretches. Before 1973 the real price drifted down, quietly. From 1973 to 1985, while Ottawa controlled crude prices, it rose in steps. Since 1985 it has swung widely, around a higher level. The reasons below are the ones official sources and our own figures support. They are not a proof of cause, and for the early years we could not split the pump price into its parts.

1949 to 1972: a falling, calm price. The real price fell 27% in these years, from an estimated 111.6 cents to 81.6. It fell in 14 of the 23 yearly changes from 1950 to 1972 and rose in 9, and the average move, up or down, was 2.0%. Only 1951 (−9.4%) and 1960 (−5.5%) moved by 5% or more, and none by 10%. In the 53 years since, the average move has been 7.1%; 27 of those years moved by 5% or more and 13 by 10% or more.

The pump price itself did not fall; before inflation it rose. It rose by almost a third (an estimated 8.3 cents a litre in 1949 and 10.9 in 1972: +31%); for 1955 to 1970 Statistics Canada called the 19% rise in gasoline prices modest. Prices in general rose 80%, so the real price fell.

Crude oil is the cost we can follow. The US Energy Information Administration's longest official series, the price US producers received for crude, rose 33% from 1949 to 1972 (US$2.54 to US$3.39 a barrel). In Canadian dollars after inflation, that is a fall of 28%, about as much as the pump price's 27%. Canada's crude was priced off the world price then: the Alberta price was worked out from the cost of foreign oil delivered to Chicago, less shipping and other deductions (Alberta Law Review, 1976). The US pump price fell too, by 23% in real terms over the same years (US Energy Information Administration prices, adjusted with the US consumer price index), so the fall was not only Canadian.

When producers have spare capacity, they can meet rising demand without a jump in price. By 1967 a former Texas oil regulator warned that the United States had essentially no spare capacity left, and US crude output peaked in 1970 (US Energy Information Administration). We cannot show how much this mattered to Canadian pump prices.

What we could not show is how much of the fall came from refining, retail competition or taxes. We found no official split of the pump price before 2008, and no study that ties the early fall to one cause. We did find that provincial gasoline taxes were flat amounts per gallon, listed in the Canada Year Book 1974 from 10 cents in Alberta to 25 in Newfoundland. A flat amount buys less each year unless it is raised; we found no record of the rates before 1974, so we cannot say how much this mattered.

1973 to 1985: controlled prices catching up. OPEC, the producing countries' group, formed in 1960 after the major oil companies cut their posted prices for Middle East crude, the official prices the companies published (US State Department historians); Federal Reserve History says it later came to wield a much larger influence over world oil prices. By January 1974, after the embargo that began in October 1973, the price of oil had risen from US$2.90 a barrel to US$11.65, at a time when, the same source says, the US oil industry lacked excess production capacity.

Ottawa announced a price restraint policy for Canadian crude on September 4, 1973, and controls on crude prices lasted until 1985 (see "What sets the price"). The pump price rose in steps, not in one jump: from 1973 to 1985 it rose 64% in real terms, while the cost of imported crude, in Canadian dollars after inflation, rose 238%. Controlled crude prices catching up with the world price is the main reason we can show; taxes and refining may also have mattered. The average move in those years was 4.6%, against 2.0% before 1973, and only one year, 1981, moved by 10% or more.

Since 1985: the world price, directly. After crude prices were freed in 1985, the pump price moved with world crude (a correlation of 0.92 from 1986 to 2025, explained in the next section), and big moves became common: the average move was 7.9% a year, and 12 of the 40 years moved by 10% or more, against one in 1973 to 1985. Each world event shows up within a year: the 1986 crash, the Gulf crisis, the 2008 financial crisis, the 2014 collapse, the pandemic, Russia's invasion of Ukraine.

Is it trending up? From the 1973 low, yes: the real price was 77% higher in 2025 (80.9 to 143.6 cents). But most of that came by 1985, when the controlled price caught up with the world: +64%. From 1985 to 2025 the rise is 8% (133.0 to 143.6 cents), while the cost of imported crude, in Canadian dollars after inflation, was 5% lower (the US producers' price, 3% higher), and the price swung between 97.2 (1998) and 185.4 (2022). From 1986, the year of the crash, to 2025 the rise is 26% (113.6 to 143.6 cents), under 1% a year, which is small beside swings of 10% or more in 12 of those 40 years. The 1949 level of an estimated 111.6 cents was beaten in 1 of the 23 years before 1973 and in 35 of the 53 since.

In recent years crude oil has been the largest single part of the pump price. Natural Resources Canada put crude at 57% of the average price in 2008 and 44% in 2009, with taxes at 29% and 33%. Its 2023 figures put crude at about 42%, taxes about 31%, refining about 21% and marketing about 6%.

Since 1985, when crude prices were freed, the real pump price has moved closely with crude prices in Canadian dollars: from 1986 to 2025 their yearly changes moved closely together (a correlation of 0.92 with the cost of imported crude, where 1 would be perfect), and the pump price moved about 0.4% for each 1% move in crude. From 1973 to 1985 that link was broken, because Ottawa set the crude price:

Natural Resources Canada also says that from the 1970s to the early 1980s consumer prices for gasoline and other fuels were subject to government price controls. We could not find their dates or terms, so this issue cannot say how they applied to the pump price.

A federal excise tax on gasoline came in June 1975: 10 cents a gallon (about 2.2 cents a litre) on gasoline for personal use. It was cut to 7 cents a gallon (about 1.5 cents a litre) in 1978, raised in steps from 1.5 to 8.5 cents a litre between 1985 and 1990, and raised to 10 cents a litre in February 1995, where it stayed through 2025. From April 1, 2019, a federal fuel charge applied in provinces and territories without their own qualifying carbon price (at first New Brunswick, Ontario, Manitoba and Saskatchewan), starting at 4.42 cents a litre and reaching 17.61 cents in April 2024; it was set to zero from April 1, 2025. The manufacturers' sales tax applied to gasoline by the early 1960s, and the GST from 1991. Provincial taxes, which each province sets, took more of the pump price than federal taxes in 2008 and 2009: 17.2 and 17.0 cents a litre against 15.4 and 14.4, counting sales taxes.

Prices before 2006 in this section are estimates; the yearly changes are measured.

The real price was lowest in 1973, at 80.9 cents a litre. The sharpest fall of the years before it, 9.4% in 1951, came when the pump price stood still while prices in general rose 10.4%, with the inflation that followed the start of the Korean War. In 1973 the world oil shock began in the autumn, and the annual average dilutes it; the price freeze from September also held Canadian crude at about $4 a barrel until April 1974, and the pump price rose about 7% before inflation, a small fall after inflation (−0.9%).

From 1973 to 1985 the real price rose 64%, to 133.0 cents, as the controlled price was raised step by step behind world prices. The biggest jumps came in 1980, 1981 and 1982 (8.3%, 20.8% and 9.5% after inflation), after the second oil shock of 1979. In 1981 alone the pump price rose 36% before inflation, while the cost of imported crude was flat in real Canadian dollars that year: the jump was the controlled price catching up with the 1979 and 1980 world rise. Ottawa's schedule of crude price increases explains part of it: the 1980 budget set the wellhead price (the price producers receive for Canadian crude) to rise by $1 a barrel, about 0.6 cents a litre, every six months, while the pump price rose about 9 cents a litre in 1981. How much came from other federal charges and from provincial taxes, which most provinces changed to a share of the price between 1980 and 1982, we could not verify.

After controls ended, the 1986 collapse in world oil prices reached Canadian pumps: the real price fell 14.5% that year. It rose again with the Gulf crisis in 1990, after Iraq invaded Kuwait, and fell back in 1991. Through the 1990s crude stayed cheap, and the real price reached 97.2 cents in 1998, its lowest since 1980, as discord within the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) and a sharp fall in Asian demand after the region's financial crisis pushed crude down.

From 1999 to 2008 the real price rose 58%, from 104 to 164 cents, as world crude went from about US$17 to US$93 a barrel: Statistics Canada and Natural Resources Canada point to fast-growing demand from China and India, OPEC cuts, unrest in Venezuela and the Middle East, and the Gulf hurricanes of 2004 and 2005. The financial crisis brought the largest yearly fall in the series in 2009. Prices recovered, held at 167 to 171 cents from 2011 to 2014, then fell with a world glut of crude in 2015 and 2016. They rose again in 2017 and 2018, by 9.7% and 9.8% after inflation, as the cost of imported crude rose about a fifth in each year in real Canadian dollars; Statistics Canada put 2018's rise down to higher world crude prices and the exchange rate.

The real price peaked at 185.4 cents in 2022, when crude rose on supply worries after Russia invaded Ukraine and on higher demand as COVID-19 rules eased. It fell in each of the next three years, to 143.6 cents in 2025. Statistics Canada put 2025's fall mainly down to the removal of the consumer carbon price in April; it said lower crude prices also contributed that month. Before inflation, the price as charged at the pump was highest in 2022 too, at 170.7 cents a litre. Monthly figures show a sharp rise from March 2026; the federal excise tax on gasoline was suspended from April 20, 2026, first to September 7 and then, by an announcement of September 2, to January 31, 2027, with half the tax in February and March 2027. 2026 is counted once its full year is out.

The real price rose in 41 of the 76 years from 1950 to 2025 and fell in 35. In 13 of them it moved by 10% or more, either way.

The five largest rises:

The five largest falls:

The Party Scoreboard counts the years 1950 to 2025: 76 years, 50 Liberal and 26 Conservative and PC. Every row except the two "Since 1986" rows counts the same years, so the board starts with 1950, the first year with a yearly change. 2026 is not counted: it has no full-year figure yet.

The board's first row is the average price itself: 115.9 cents a litre (in 2025 dollars) across all years, 111.6 in Liberal years and 124.4 in Conservative and PC years (medians 108.0, 104.0 and 113.7). The median is the middle value when the years are lined up from lowest to highest; a few extreme years can pull an average a long way, and the median is less affected. About half of the gap in the average price reflects when each party governed: Liberal years include 17 of the 23 cheap-oil years from 1950 to 1972, and Conservative years include 2006 to 2015, when world crude was expensive. Two tests on the price row:

On the yearly change, the real price rose 0.7% a year on average across all years; the median was +0.1%. In Liberal years, the average was +1.6% and the median +0.2%. In Conservative and PC years, the average was −1.2% and the median −0.5%.

The board adds two more rows as a test. "Since 1986" counts only the years after the Western Accord freed crude prices, when the pump price has followed world markets: 22 Liberal years and 18 Conservative and PC years. The average price was 129.9 cents a litre in Liberal years and 135.7 in Conservative and PC years, and the yearly change +2.2% a year and −1.1%. Both orders hold.

The gap in the average yearly change is 2.8 percentage points a year (+1.6% against −1.2%). A percentage point is the difference between two percentages; we call them points from here on. We tested the gap several ways.

Timing. Measured against each decade's own average, the real price rose 1.1 points a year faster than its decade's average in Liberal years and 2.0 points slower in Conservative and PC years: a gap of 3.1 points. A gap that large came up in 11% of 100,000 shuffles of the party labels, but in only 1 of the 126 arrangements that keep each party's runs of years together: the actual one. So once timing is allowed for, this gap is harder to put down to chance, although with as many tests as this issue runs, one result this strong can still come up by chance.

Eras. From 1950 to 1972, before the oil shocks, the real price fell in both parties' years: 1.0% a year in Liberal years and 2.3% in Conservative and PC years. From 1973 to 1985, while crude prices were controlled, it rose 4.5% a year in Liberal years and 1.3% in the two PC years (1979 and 1985). Since 1986, +2.2% and −1.1%. In the 20 measured years from 2006 to 2025, 10 for each party, +1.3% and +0.4%, and on medians the order reverses (−5.0% and +1.6%).

Policy takes time. Crediting each year's change to the party in office the year before gives +1.8% for Liberal years and −1.5% for Conservative and PC years; with a two-year delay, +0.9% and +0.1%.

Crude oil prices. We compared each year's change with the change in crude oil prices in Canadian dollars, after inflation, using three official series: the price paid to US producers (the US Energy Information Administration's first purchase price, 1950 to 2025; a US price, which ran above world prices before 1973 and, under US price controls, below them until January 1981), the cost of imported crude to US refiners (the closest to a world price, 1969 to 2025) and the Bank of Canada's energy price index (oil, natural gas and coal, 1973 to 2025). On the longest series, crude rose 5.8% a year on average in Liberal years and fell 0.9% a year in Conservative and PC years. After allowing for crude, the gap in the pump price shrinks from 2.8 to 0.7 points on that series, and from 3.3 to 1.5 on imported crude (1969 to 2025). It reverses on the Bank of Canada's energy index (from 3.8 to −1.0 points, 1973 to 2025) and on imported crude since 1986 (from 3.3 to −0.6).

The United States. In the same years, the real price of regular gasoline in the United States also rose faster in Canada's Liberal years than in its Conservative and PC years (+1.1% against −0.9% a year). Canada's yearly change minus the US one gives +0.5% against −0.3% a year: a gap of 0.8 points, well within what chance could easily produce.

The estimate. Using Statistics Canada's city prices in place of the gasoline index for 1979 to 2005, a different measure that moves the price level and some yearly changes from 1980, gives 113.8 and 125.8 cents on the price row and +1.6% and −1.3% on the yearly change: the same order. It does swap one close pair on the PM Scoreboard (below).

Chance. The yearly change is noisy: in 13 of the 76 years the real price moved by 10% or more. To see how large a gap chance alone produces, we shuffled the party labels across the years 100,000 times. Half of the shuffles gave a gap of about 1.3 points or more, and one in ten a gap of about 3.2 points or more. Gaps at least as large as the board's 2.8 points came up in 16% of the shuffles, and in 16 of the 126 arrangements that keep each party's runs of years together (13%).

Volatility. The real price moved 5.7% a year on average, up or down, in Liberal years and 5.4% in Conservative and PC years: no real difference.

What is left: Liberal years had a lower average price and faster yearly rises, Conservative and PC years the reverse. Neither raw gap is larger than chance could easily produce, though the gap in the yearly change is harder to dismiss once each decade's average is allowed for. Crude prices, set outside Canada, account for much of the yearly change: after allowing for them, the gap is 0.7 points on the longest series and 1.5 on imported crude, and it reverses since 1986. The same pattern shows in US prices in the same years. That describes who was in office when prices moved. It does not show that either party caused it.

The PM Scoreboard sorts each term by the average real price while the Prime Minister was in office, in cents a litre at 2025 prices, from the lowest to the highest. Rank 1 is the lowest price, not the best result: lower prices help drivers and hurt oil producers. Prices before 2006 are estimates.

Most rows are a term: one unbroken stretch as Prime Minister, however many elections it spans. Each year counts in proportion to the days in office that year, so 1957 counts partly for Louis St-Laurent and partly for John Diefenbaker. The "Years counted" column adds up those shares. The board starts in 1949, the first price, so Louis St-Laurent's row counts 8.5 years. The 11 ranked rows are 10 terms plus 1 combined row. A combined row repeats terms already listed; it is not another government.

Pierre Trudeau's first term ranks first, at 86.3 cents a litre, then Lester B. Pearson (87.9) and John Diefenbaker (93.7). The highest are Stephen Harper (155.8), Justin Trudeau (149.7) and Paul Martin (134.6).

This ranking follows world oil prices only in part. The three lowest ranked terms all fall between 1957 and 1979: world crude was cheap until 1973, and from September 1973 Ottawa held Canadian crude below world prices, so little of the 1973-74 world price rise reached the pumps during Pierre Trudeau's first term. The three highest are the three ranked terms since 2003, when world crude was expensive. The board shows the level of prices a Prime Minister presided over, not the change during the term: Stephen Harper has the highest average price, but the price was already high when he took office in 2006, and measured month by month it was about the same when he left in 2015.

From 2006, each year is the average of Statistics Canada's 12 monthly national average prices of regular unleaded gasoline at self-service stations. Before 2006, each year is the average of the 12 monthly values of Statistics Canada's gasoline price index, scaled so that 2006 matches the measured price. From 2006 to 2025 the index and the measured price stay within 1% of that link.

The real price multiplies each year's price by Canadian prices in 2025 relative to that year, using Statistics Canada's Consumer Price Index (all items). The gasoline index covers all grades and service types. Checked against Statistics Canada's city prices, the estimate may run up to about 5% low before 1990 and up to about 2% high from 1990 to 2005. A version that uses the city prices in place of the index for 1979 to 2005 keeps both party results in the same order, but on the PM Scoreboard it swaps one close pair: Jean Chrétien (108.3 cents) moves ahead of Louis St-Laurent (110.6). Before 1979, pump prices were quoted per gallon; our figures are in litres throughout.

The month-by-month figures use the monthly gasoline index and the monthly Consumer Price Index. The section on why the price fell and swung counts the yearly real changes; its crude figures are the US producers' first purchase price (to 1972) and the cost of imported crude to US refiners (from 1973), converted to Canadian dollars at the yearly rates in our Canadian dollar issue and adjusted with Canada's Consumer Price Index; the US pump price is leaded regular gasoline (US Energy Information Administration Table 9.4), adjusted with the US consumer price index. Statistics Canada's 19% for 1955 to 1970 is from the Daily of June 23, 2017; on our estimate the same rise is 18%. Crude prices are from the US Energy Information Administration and the Bank of Canada; US gasoline prices are from the US Energy Information Administration, adjusted for US inflation with the US Bureau of Labor Statistics' consumer price index.

More on the method: How the charts work

Who we are: About Gov Scoreboard

Spot an error? Write to [email protected].

Adapted from Statistics Canada, Tables 18-10-0001-01, 18-10-0004-01, 18-10-0005-01 and 10-10-0132-01 (retrieved 2026-10-05), and for exchange rates 10-10-0009-01, 10-10-0126-01 and 33-10-0163-01 (retrieved 2026-10-04). This does not constitute an endorsement by Statistics Canada of this product.

Crude oil and US gasoline prices: US Energy Information Administration, Monthly Energy Review, Tables 9.1 and 9.4. US consumer prices: US Bureau of Labor Statistics, Consumer Price Index for All Urban Consumers, series CUUR0000SA0. Exchange rates before 1951: Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System, Banking and Monetary Statistics, 1914-1941 (1943), Table 173, and Banking and Monetary Statistics, 1941-1970 (1976), Table 15.24.

Dates in office: House of Commons, Procedure and Practice (4th ed., 2025), Appendix 6.

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