When the Alberta Energy Rebate became available on Wednesday, I thought, “Oh, well, I may as well apply.” While I’m vehemently opposed to a one-time rebate cheque instead of lower pump prices for the next three months, a hundred bucks is a hundred bucks.
When I began the process, I was told I would need my driver’s licence and social insurance number (SIN), my wife’s SIN, our legal names, our dates of birth, address and income as reported by each of us on line 15000 of our 2025 T1 tax returns. Eventually I was called on to verify my driver’s licence number by entering the 17-digit audit code on the back.
Convoluted Process Compared to Simple Tax Collection
Funny, I don’t recall having to go to so much trouble to pay the high gas taxes all spring. I just pulled up to a pump, put the nozzle in my tank and the province siphoned off its exorbitant cut automatically. That’s one of the reasons lowered pump prices would have been so much better than a rebate cheque. Pull up to a pump, put the nozzle in your tank and the savings would have been instant and visible. No forms to fill out, no identity or income to verify. Just fill your tank and have more money in your pocket.
By contrast, the rebate cheques will take weeks to reach us. To add insult to idiocy, the government’s rebate website is (typical of government websites), glitchy. After getting sent round and round for nearly an hour — complying with multiple requests for the very same login, being sent back and forth to the verification screen at least four times and a handful of other bureaucratic hiccups — I gave up. Perhaps I’ll try again. Perhaps not.
Impact on Vulnerable Albertans
How many people will go through all that for $100? How many seniors with few computing skills or new Canadians or those too poor to afford a computer? If the government is not going to lower gas taxes until Oct. 1 (as it is required to do by provincial law) why not just send a cheque to everyone in Alberta who filed a 2025 income tax return? Period.
Again, I kept thinking as I was on this merry-go-round, “I never had to fill out a single form or enter even one verification code to pay the higher taxes all spring. Why should I jump through so many hoops just to get a small percentage of my overpayment back?”
Government Justification and Criticism
When it announced this abomination a couple of weeks ago, the province boasted that its rebates were superior to gas-price reductions because even people who don’t drive, who instead take a bus or bike to work, would also qualify. But the riders and pedallers didn’t pay the higher fuel taxes for months, either. The province justified sending them cheques by claiming the non-drivers paid higher fuel taxes indirectly through higher food prices, for instance, caused by higher transportation charges. But so did all the rest of us who were also paying the higher gas taxes directly. OK, but that just lands us back at the idea of sending a cheque to every taxpaying Albertans (including cyclists and transit riders) rather than subjecting millions of residents to this convoluted, error-ridden process.
