Ashley Pocrnich
12666 72 Avenue
Surrey BC V3W 2M8
The Government of British Columbia, Ministry of Transportation and Infrastructure
Information Access Operations
PO Box 9569
Stn Prov Govt
Victoria BC V8W 9K1
To whom it may concern,
Exercising my right under the Freedom of Information Act, I formally request that you provide me with the following information:
• The breakdown of money from the Federal Gas Tax Fund allotted to the municipalities of the City of Surrey and the Township of Langley from January of 2018 to December of 2018, and
• a list of provincially organized projects using money from the Gas Tax Fund from January of 2018 to December of 2018, if it exists.
If possible, please provide me with the information in electronic form, such as a PDF sent to the email address ashley.pocrnich@email.kpu.ca or burned onto a CD and sent to my address.
If you have any concerns about this request please contact me at (604)-889-8102 or by the email address listed above.
Please notify me when the materials are ready to be released.
Sincerely,
Ashley Pocrnich
Explanation for request:
A couple of months ago I passed my driving test to become an N driver and have since been discovering how expensive it is to drive in British Columbia. When doing research for this project, just generally looking around, I discovered that the government of Canada has a Federal Gas Tax Fund. This is where most of the money from the gas tax is squirreled away until it is annually shared out between the provinces and territories. Most if not all of the people I know that drive have expressed to me their frustration at the rising gas prices in our area, and once I realized that money was being kept in a very specific pool for the purpose of being eventually invested back into the communities I thought it was something that a lot of these people would be interested in knowing.
I remembered hearing from somewhere a long time ago that gas prices were being raised to motivate more people to purchase electric cars so we can begin to move away from the industry as a whole, and in doing research for this assignment I came across many examples where money from the Gas Tax Fund in past years had been put towards green projects and active environmentally friendly endeavors.
It was unclear everywhere I could find whether the money was always given directly to the communities or if the provincial government ran some or all of the projects themselves so I attempted to cover both possibilities in my FOI request. I was led to believe that this process is specifically taken care of by the Ministry or Transportation and Infrastructure but I believe that the address provided is for Freedom of Information Requests for the entire provincial government. It is extremely interesting to me to see how our government is working against climate change and where the money we pay in taxes goes, so this was a convenient middle ground. It certainly makes me feel at least a little bit better about the chunk of my paycheck that I say goodbye to every week to keep using my car.
(There is a manager of Information Access for the ministry of Transportation and Infrastructure listed, Mr Ken Bejcek, but it says to only contact him directly for inquiries on how to submit FOI requests and it only lists his phone number and email address. I thought it would be more accurate to address the Information Access Operations team for the government of British Columbia because from what I understood they would be the ones to receive my request.)
Relevant news articles/ information:
CBC story "B.C. premier shrugs off calls to ease gas taxes"
The Columbia Valley Pioneer story "Metro Vancouver continues to pay highest gas tax at 51 cents/litre"
BC Gov News story "B.C. communities benefit from gas tax funding"
Infrastructure Canada Federal Gas Tax Fund Allocation Table
