> ## Content Index > Fetch the complete content index at: https://www.northernmilemedia.com/llms.txt > Use this file to discover other available public pages before exploring further. # What Diesel Costs Across Canada, Province by Province - URL: https://www.northernmilemedia.com/what-diesel-costs-across-canada-province-by-province/ - Published: 2026-08-05T23:21:58.000Z - Updated: 2026-08-05T23:21:58.000Z - Author: Northern Mile Media Right now it's 228.3 cents a litre. That tells you almost nothing about what you'll actually pay, because nobody fills up at the national average. You fill up in a province. Alberta is 200.3\. Quebec is 253.6. That's 53.3 cents apart for fuel that came out of the same refining process to the same spec. Put 400 litres in the tank and you've paid $213 more in Quebec than you would have in Alberta. Same fuel. You just bought it at the wrong end of the lane. ## Every province, 5 August 2026 **Alberta** 200.3 ¢/L · 28.0 under national **Saskatchewan** 202.2 ¢/L · 26.1 under **Manitoba** 206.8 ¢/L · 21.5 under **Ontario** 218.6 ¢/L · 9.7 under **British Columbia** 233.2 ¢/L · 4.9 over **Nova Scotia** 239.1 ¢/L · 10.8 over **New Brunswick** 241.9 ¢/L · 13.6 over **Newfoundland and Labrador** 242.9 ¢/L · 14.6 over **Prince Edward Island** 244.1 ¢/L · 15.8 over **Quebec** 253.6 ¢/L · 25.3 over The West is cheap and the East isn't. Quebec sits at the top, Alberta at the bottom, and everything else lines up fairly predictably in between. ## Why the gap is there Three reasons, roughly in order of how much they cost you. **Tax.** Alberta charges no provincial fuel tax on diesel and no PST. Quebec charges both, plus a carbon levy, plus a regional transit levy if you're fuelling around Montreal. The two provinces are already tens of cents apart before anyone moves a litre. **Distance from the refinery.** Alberta sits next door to them. Atlantic Canada doesn't. Every kilometre of pipeline, rail or ship shows up on the pump price eventually. **Who else is selling.** Busy corridors with four truck stops competing price tighter than a stretch of highway where there's one option for the next 200 kilometres. It's why two towns in the same province can be a dime apart. None of that changes quickly. The spread isn't a blip that'll correct itself next month. It's how the Canadian fuel market is built. ## What it costs on a run Take a loaded tractor-trailer burning 35 litres per 100 kilometres. At 228.3 cents, you're spending roughly **$799 in fuel per 1,000 kilometres**. That's the number to have in front of you when a broker calls, not the price per litre. Fuel runs 25 to 35 percent of operating cost on most lanes, so quoting without it is guessing. Toronto to Montreal and back is about 1,100 kilometres. Call it $879 in diesel before you've paid yourself, the truck, the insurance or the plates. ## Where to fill You probably already know the rule: fill in the cheapest jurisdiction your route touches, before you cross into the expensive one. Running east out of Alberta, fill in Alberta. Ontario into Quebec, fill in Ontario. Heading for the border out of BC, the American side is often cheaper once you convert it. Our [cross-border comparison](https://dashboard.northernmilemedia.com/fuel-prices/?ref=northernmilemedia.com) shows the US price in Canadian cents per litre so you're comparing the same thing. Two things worth saying plainly, because a lot of fuel advice skips them. **IFTA takes some of it back.** You pay fuel tax on where you drive, not where you buy. Fill cheap in Alberta and run Quebec kilometres, and you'll square up with Quebec at filing time. What you actually keep is the gap in base price and retail margin. Real money, but less than the pump spread makes it look. **Range beats savings.** Fifteen cents cheaper is about $60 on a fill. Running the tank down to reach it and finding the lot full, the pumps down, or the ramp closed costs you a lot more than $60. ## How we work out the number The Northern Mile Diesel Index is an unweighted mean of provincial means across ten provinces, built from the Natural Resources Canada weekly diesel survey. Yukon and the Northwest Territories get collected and shown on the fuel page, but they stay out of the index. They carry a negligible share of national freight, and weighting them the same as Ontario skews both the average and the spread. That's a volume call, not a price one. Territorial diesel comes out of Edmonton and generally prices nearer Alberta than Atlantic Canada. The survey is weekly. The dashboard rebuilds every 30 minutes, so the diesel figure holds steady between surveys instead of drifting around. Full definition on the [methodology page](https://dashboard.northernmilemedia.com/methodology/nmdi/?ref=northernmilemedia.com), including what changed and when. ## Short version - 5 August 2026: national 228.3, Alberta cheapest at 200.3, Quebec dearest at 253.6 - The spread is 53.3 cents, or $213 on a 400 litre fill - Fuel costs about $799 per 1,000 km at 35 L/100km - Fill in the cheap jurisdiction before you cross into the expensive one - IFTA claws back the tax portion, so the real saving is smaller than it looks - [Live figures](https://dashboard.northernmilemedia.com/fuel-prices/?ref=northernmilemedia.com) update weekly, free, no signup --- *Northern Mile Media tracks diesel by province, border wait times, road incidents and cargo theft across Canada. The Northern Mile Brief goes out Wednesdays at 6am.*