Gas thieves leading Alberta to more over-regulation

By Medicine Hat News Opinon on October 13, 2017.

There has been another tragic death after a gas station owner tried to stop someone from leaving without paying for gas but more government regulation is not the solution.

The recent death of a Thorsby, Alta., man is very distressing and absolutely awful for his family. That goes without saying.

Two years ago Maryam Rashidi was killed in Calgary after trying to stop Joshua Mitchell from driving off without paying $113 for gas. This year Mitchell was found guilty of manslaughter.

Gas station attendants have been advised not to attempt to stop a vehicle in these situations. The Thorsby man must have, for some reason, felt he needed to nonetheless take action. That is not unlike some convenience store clerks who have been told not to attempt to fight off thieves. Some decide to do so anyway for a variety of reasons, some with better outcomes than others.

Political parties have climbed on the bandwagon this week, asking the government to move swiftly to require only pay-at-the-pump options for all gas stations. If this comes into effect there would be a cost involved for gas station owners and the people who will be most inconvenienced and penalized are ordinary people who wish to fill their gas tank (you don’t know how much that will be) and pay for it in cash in the store. This option allows them to avoid additional bank fees. There must be thousands of transactions such as this every day in the province without any incident at all — law-abiding citizens paying cash.

The criminals, on the other hand, will find another way to get what they want. It may be a stolen bank card, stolen cash or sale of stolen property. They will find a way.

As tragic as this situation is we have two individuals who have died in the last two years because of criminals stealing and then killing the attendant trying to stop them. Because of this we have politicians on their soapboxes calling for province-wide changes that will affect everyone. Surely there are more things affecting more Albertans in a two-year period on which we should be focusing our attention. This does not in any way minimize the loss these families have experienced; it is just that we can’t enact a law to prevent everything that is bad from happening.

The idea that we now call gas theft “gas-and-dash” events diminishes what it really is. It is “theft” and nothing less than that.

As a society we have a tendency to want to enact a law to stop any future tragedy. The intent may be well meaning but it simply makes us an over regulated society.

To use a trivial example: A kid on a school playground gets hit in the head by a baseball and has to be rushed to hospital. Our instinct is to look for a way to ensure this never happens again. We decide to ban all balls on the playground except in organized sport with kids wearing protective gear that is certified and sold with a hefty price tag. The fact is children have sustained injuries throughout the ages as they play. Very few are serious, compared to the number of children having fun, even without protective gear.

If we don’t look at things sensibly we will just become a society with so many rules dictating every aspect of our lives whether really needed or not.

(Gillian Slade is a News reporter. To comment on this and other editorials, go to https://www.medicinehatnews.com/opinions or call her at 403-528-8635.)

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