Dunc, that is absolutely outrageous!! I live in a VERY much colder climate than you, and my house has the insulation of an outhouse, and I've NEVER paid that much for heat. Neither has my neighbor, and he's got a rather large house.
I mean, it's -12C out right now (10F) and there's no way in hell I'd be paying that much for heating.
Last winter it was pretty cold up here (average of about -10F for 5 months) and we were on all electric heating and the most we paid was $560 for a month!!
Do you live in town or out in the sticks like me? If you're out in the country, I might suggest locating a Woodmaster or Central Boiler sales rep in your area. For 4 or 5 months of your current heating costs you could have an
AFS-1100 or AFS-900 installed and fueled for the winter!! The 1100 would also cover heating your garage or the hot water heater as it has two outputs instead of the single on the 900.
The advantage of these is that you take out the gas burner assembly in your current furnace and put a hot water heat exchanger (radiator) in its place. Then your current furnace runs like normal. The biggest obstacle is running the pex tubing (the water lines) from the burner outside to your furnace inside. Once you overcome that, it's easy to hook it up. You can also have them install radiant in-floor heating and leave your existing furnace alone. Or you can run hot water base board heaters as well. There's MANY possibilities and ways you can use an outdoor boiler.
Seriously, check your local laws about outdoor boiler heaters and see if you can install one. I put a 4400 series wood burner outside my place and my heating costs have gone down to $40-$80 a month for cut and split firewood. Next year it'll go down to nothing as I'll be cutting and splitting my own wood out of my back yard. I didn't know well enough in advance for this year if I was going to get the boiler or not, so I didn't have any firewood cut. Learned my lesson there, though.
Of course, this is all dependant on whether you're renting or own your house. If you're renting, I think you're kinda screwed.
