I am not sure where you got your degree in economics for it’s all about supply and demand. Federal, state or provincial taxes do play their roll but it’s doesn’t stop any one from driving to work every day.
If it was all based on regulation and government then please explain why gas, oil prices increase during the summer driving months and typically drop in the winter. Explain why natural gas prices sky rocket during the high demand cold winter months and then drop in the warm summer months. Why during the first few months of the pandemic no one was traveling including air travel and the gas prices dropped to almost 25-30 year low?
Of course geopolitics play a large part for it threatens a market that is typically volatile at any time. Hell, if there is some natural disaster prices jump. A war involving Russia of course prices will jump specially since they are a large market in the EU.
We haven’t even got into the geographical aspect of oil costs. Canada is a small market, we roughly have the same population as California but are the second largest country in the world. Do you here in Alberta we just warp over fuel to pumps in Manitoba? There are costs to and yes you are correct, Canada has higher than average North American taxes. There are costs to universal healthcare. Try arguing taking that away from the majority of Canadians.