{"id":946258,"date":"2026-10-25T23:34:23","date_gmt":"2026-10-25T23:34:23","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/946258\/"},"modified":"2026-10-25T23:34:23","modified_gmt":"2026-10-25T23:34:23","slug":"affordability-debate-heats-up-over-oil-rebate-eligibility","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/946258\/","title":{"rendered":"Affordability Debate Heats Up Over Oil Rebate Eligibility"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>\t\t\t\t&#13;<\/p>\n<p>\t\t\t\t<img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/10\/nl-house-of-aseembly-confederation-building-government-nl-hoa-2.jpg\" class=\"header-image\" alt=\"Affordability Debate Heats Up Over Oil Rebate Eligibility\"\/><\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-caption-text\">(VOCM News)<\/p>\n<p>A former mayor of St. John\u2019s, who has also been involved in the consumerism movement regarding fuel prices over the years, believes the provincial government made a grave mis-step on Thursday when it chose to limit eligibility for a subsidy for those who heat their homes with oil. <\/p>\n<p>The province doubled the oil supplement to $1,000 from $500 but left the total household income threshold at $150,000. The electricity rebate of 15 per cent applies to all, regardless of income. <\/p>\n<p>Affordability will likely be one of the main issues in the House of Assembly fall sitting, which begins tomorrow. <\/p>\n<p>Doc O\u2019Keefe says food, medicine, and heat should all be considered essential and, therefore, tax free. Food and medicine are not taxed but heating fuel, including electricity and oil, is. <\/p>\n<p>\u201cThose in Confederation Building must know that they\u2019re cutting out 40,000-50,000 homes that heat by oil. Who would allow that to happen, then say \u201dI\u2019m doing this for all of us\u2019.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>He says a lot of people will not qualify.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"&#13; (VOCM News) A former mayor of St. John\u2019s, who has also been involved in the consumerism movement&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":946259,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[49,48,269876,44,185074,269873,269875,269877,269874,269870,269871,269872],"class_list":["post-946258","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-canada","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-listen-to-vocm","tag-news","tag-news-radio","tag-news-radio-st-johns","tag-st-johns-fm-radio","tag-st-johns-local-radio","tag-st-johns-radio-station","tag-vocm","tag-vocm-590","tag-vocm-radio"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/946258","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=946258"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/946258\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/946259"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=946258"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=946258"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=946258"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}