Gas prices reach record highs across Canada

Gas prices reached record highs across the country this week, prompting long line ups at many gas stations in the Maritimes.

Analysts are predicting more record setting prices by midnight on Thursday.

“These prices are going to do untold damage to the Canadian economy,” said Dan McTeague with Canadians for Affordable Energy.

In New Brunswick, regular self-serve jumped 4.4 cents a litre overnight Wednesday. The maximum price is now 163.3 cents.

Diesel also went up, this time by 5.2 cents. The maximum price is now 177.8 cents per litre.

High demand for oil, the war in Ukraine, and a supply shortage factor into the dramatic rise.

Some Maritime charities are feeling the crunch. Lynn McCarron with the United Way of Cape Breton says the price hike will have an impact on their services.

“Based on rising gas prices and rising expenses for food and all of those things we fund. It’s going to be a challenge for us to be able to give people and organizations what they need to be able to operate,” said McCarron.

Experts say gas prices will only continue to rise. CTV News spoke with people filling up at the pumps Thursday. Some said the government should step in and help alleviate some of the financial pain.

“The province does have some levers under the petroleum pricing act,” said Cape Breton University political science professor Tom Urbaniak.

“It can reduce the margins it has built in for wholesalers and retailers. It can also, the province, reduce temporarily the HST to ease some of the pain of spikes.”

The federal government says it will ask the competition bureau to keep an eye on prices.