With gasoline prices rocketing beyond $1.09 this past week, Canadians are rightfully seeing red.

But the real question is: who's to blame for the high fuel prices Is it the oil companies, the gas station owners, or even OPEC

In most cases there is enough blame to spread around, but we at the Canadian Taxpayers Federation (CTF) have always maintained the brunt of drivers "pump rage" should be focused on a the people who work for us; our federal cabinet.

That is not to say that oil companies, OPEC and others are completely blameless when it comes to rising fuel prices, but, there is very little Canadian motorists do to force OPEC to lower oil prices.

There is however quite a bit Canadian motorists can do to stop the gouging being done by our own government at the pumps.

And gouge us they do. In addition to our own province's nine cent a litre excise tax on gasoline, the federal government adds their own ten cent per litre excise tax- and then they calculate the GST. They actually have the audacity to tax their own tax!

The last move the federal government made on gas taxes was in 1995, when they increased their excise tax by one-and-a-half cents per litre as a "deficit elimination measure." It harkens back to the temporary "Dominion Income War Tax" introduced in 1917 to help fund Canada's war effort. Even though the feds tamed the deficit eight years ago, motorists are still paying a tax to eliminate our long-gone deficit (and being charged GST on it as well).

For nearly a decade the CTF has been annually holding our Gas Tax Honesty Day to push governments to treat fuel taxes as a user fee. Either put every single cent collected from motorists through gas taxes back into roads, bridges and highways or cut the tax. In essence: "use it or lose it."

Unfortunately provincial and federal politicians are not offering much more than rhetoric and inconsistent, mixed messages to motorists.

In August 2005, then-Opposition leader Stephen Harper blasted the Liberal government for refusing to reduce gas taxes as prices soared. He proposed a convoluted plan to cap the GST when the price at the pumps reached 85 cents per litre and stop taxing taxes. Mr. Harper now says that plan is off the table. But then again, Foreign Affairs Minister Peter MacKay tells us that cutting gas taxes are still up for debate.

Since 2000, our own Alberta Liberals have annually proposed an administrative nightmare of a plan to reduce provincial gas taxes through a sliding scale based on the price of a barrel of oil. Their leader, Kevin Taft apparently forgot about their commitment to cut gas taxes when he stated a month ago that "the one tax cut we want to see for Albertans is eliminating health-care premiums." His memory was jogged recently when his Energy critic trotted the plan back out of hibernation.

Albertans need more than contrived plans and quickly forgotten promises.

There is not much motorists can do about the world price of oil, but there's plenty that we can do about taxes. Motorists should be focusing their "pump rage" at our federal government. They're the ones who are taxing their own tax, taxing us for a long-gone deficit, and only putting ten per cent of what they collect back into roads.

It's time for Prime Minister Harper to recall what Opposition Leader Harper once said.