Taking a stand
Canso Garage owner bucks regulation rules
CANSO - Buns Kavanagh is well aware that he's breaking the law.
But the Canso Garage owner says he has no other choice and is prepared to go to prison if necessary.
Since the provincial government introduced regulated gas prices on July 1, Kavanagh has faced a very serious dilemma: does he abide by the law and lose money on every litre of gas sold or does he break the law to stay afloat and risk facing the wrath of the lawmakers?
Amazingly, breaking the law made more sense.
Kavanagh told The Journal on Tuesday night that the maximum approved price for a litre of gas set on July 1 - 118.3 cents - would only have given him a 2.5-cent profit margin.
If he had followed the rules, Kavanagh says that low profit margin and the overhead costs of running the garage would have put him out of business, leaving Canso with no local gas supply.
Instead, he opted to set a price of 119.9 cents a litre. That puts him in violation of the law.
"I don't have enough margin to pay my workers and keep the station running," Kavanagh, who is the president of the Guysborough County and Antigonish County Retail Gasoline Dealers' Association of Nova Scotia, said.
"People think we're making a fortune out of it. We're not. I talked with my wife a week-and-a-half ago. We discussed shutting down for a few days to drive the message across to the people. But I couldn't afford to do it.
"But I also can't afford to sell it at the price they want me to sell it at."
When asked whether his price had attracted criticism from customers and local residents, Kavanagh replied, "I guess it has."
"But all I'm trying to do is keep the gas flowing in a rural community," he said. "If this station was to close people would have to go 30 miles to Guysborough to get diesel or supreme."
He added that if more local residents purchased their gas in Canso instead of Antigonish, it'd be easier for him to abide by the rules.
As of last night Kavanagh hadn't been ordered to drop his price. He also said he "didn't really think it through" when regulation came into effect.
"The margin was 2.5 cents a litre; we would have been giving our gas away on the busiest weekend of the year," he said.
