OTTAWA — NDP Leader Andrea Horwath says she’s willing to refine her promise to stop gas price “gouging” at the pumps — particularly before long weekends — with a cap on how much the cost per litre can be raised.“That’s certainly something we’ll look at,” she told reporters Sunday when asked how her plan to set prices on Sundays or Mondays would prevent gas stations from raising prices early and penalizing motorists all week.Horwath, who met with an overflow crowd of about 200 supporters at a community centre across from the stadium where the CFL’s Ottawa Redblacks play football, said motorists are tired of feeling fleeced.“We won’t allow the industry to, on a whim and for the purposes of sucking more profits at an opportune time, to do so at the expense of everyday people who have no other choice but to get into a car and fill up the tank,” she said.If she’s elected premier June 7, Horwath said an NDP government would mandate the arms-length Ontario Energy Board, which now regulates natural gas and electricity prices, to handle the gasoline and diesel fuel regulation.Ontario would not be the first province to do so. Quebec and the Atlantic Provinces regulate transportation fuel prices.But a study commissioned by the Ontario Energy Board last fall warned that such measures do not necessarily work in favour of motorists, in part by preventing price wars. “Our analysis showed that markets with greater frequency of price changes generally had lower retail margins — and generally lower prices for consumers as a result,” said the study by Kent Group Ltd. of London, Ont.“Regulation can affect fuel prices by altering the competitive dynamics of a market and its prices in a way that may not necessarily benefit consumers,” the study added.“In some provinces, regulations have resulted in prices that were higher (although less volatile) than they wou ...
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