Canadian Personal Finance Blog

Archive for January 27th, 2007

The Ontario government puts it’s hands in my pocket yet again. Every two years I must have my cars tested to make sure that they run in a clean fashion. Wonderful, fantastic, pass the granola I love clean air (what is the font for sarcasm). My van which is barely 5 years old has been tested TWICE already (at a cost of $80 total), how a new van’s emissions can get that far out of whack, I don’t know, but I have dutifully had to test it.

My Honda has been tested 3 times now since I bought it 3 years ago. The first set of tests took a few tries to pass, the second test it passed no problem, and today it failed. I am again going to have to go to my mechanic to get him to do whatever magic he needs to do to get my car to pass.

So what is my beef with this whole system? Well, the fact that I must subsidize the clean air is one thing (if it is so darn important to the government, maybe they should either give me a tax break on the test, or pay for it themselves and then FINE anyone who fails it). Making people pay to find out their car is working fine seems a little wrong to me. If we need clean air (which I agree we should have), then lets make this universal and easily obtainable for everyone. Who is this test penalizing? Folks who lease or get new cars every 4 years? Nope, their cars will pass no problem, this is penalizing folks who keep their cars a long time, because they can’t afford (or in my case are too cheap) to buy new ones. Seems to be yet another tax on the working poor, but then again, that is only my opinion. Do I want to see smoke belching “beaters” out there? No, but there has got to be a better system possible.