OTTAWA — Canada’s electric vehicle mandate is under fire from Washington — and if it falls, one of the biggest losers could be Elon Musk.
That’s because the mandate, a climate change policy from the Justin Trudeau era, requires carmakers to hit 20 percent EV sales by 2026, or else buy credits from companies that have exceeded the goal. In Canada, that means they have to buy credits from Tesla, because it only sells EVs.
The Eco-Fanatics must be so torn.
Two recent events exemplify the fundamental irrationality that is Canada’s electric vehicle (EV) policy.
First, the Carney government re-committed to Justin Trudeau’s EV transition mandate that by 2035 all (that’s 100%) of new car sales in Canada consist of “zero-emission vehicles” including battery EVs, plug-in hybrid EVs and fuel-cell powered vehicles (which are virtually non-existent in today’s market). This policy has been a foolish idea since inception. The mass of car-buyers in Canada showed little desire to buy them in 2022, when the government announced the plan, and they still don’t want them.
As psychedelic rock blared, Thomas Schäfer hopped onto a Huntington Beach, Calif., stage flanked by surfboards two years ago to announce the rebirth of an automotive icon, the Volkswagen bus.
The German auto giant was bringing back the bus as an electric vehicle, albeit one with a boxy design and two-tone paint job reminiscent of the original. The reboot was more than two decades in the making, and the company said the vehicle would soon be available in the U.S.
“Finally, finally,” said Schäfer, a top VW executive, as the bus they called the ID.Buzz rolled across the stage to wolf whistles from the crowd.
The reception since has been considerably less enthusiastic.
Of all the coercive environmental policies implemented by the Trudeau government, the electric vehicle mandate was among the worst, but Prime Minister Mark Carney has been mum on whether Ottawa still intends to force Canadians to ride around in souped-up Power Wheels.
EVs are almost comically unsuited to a vast, cold country like Canada.
Justin Trudeau’s legacy is alive and well in Mark Carney’s iteration of Canada’s Liberal Party. While the former PM’s deeply unpopular carbon tax may have been scrapped, his spirit of phony solutions to the ‘climate-change crisis’ prevails.
Across the border, US president Donald Trump has nixed any attempts at electric-vehicle (EV) mandates, saying, ‘electric cars are fine, but not everyone should be forced to own one’. By contrast, the Canadian Liberal Party has maintained its plan to ensure 20 per cent of new passenger vehicles sold in 2026 are either battery-powered or plug-in hybrid models. It intends to increase that number to 60 per cent by 2030, and to 100 per cent by 2035.
Environment group warns against repealing federal EV mandate
An environmental think tank is warning the federal government against repealing its electric vehicle mandate, instead suggesting that politicians should be helping to put more EVs on the road.
In a statement published Friday, Clean Energy Canada gave three recommendations to the federal government to help deliver affordable EVs to Canadians for less than $40,000.
The group, based out of Simon Fraser University in British Columbia, said Ottawa should retool its EV mandate by revisiting its near-term targets to help the auto sector “weather this temporary storm” of slumping EV sales.
It’s not always the unexpected that gets governments in trouble — often enough it’s their own bad judgement, poor timing or general clumsiness that gets in the way. But the unanticipated does happen a lot.
Parties and politicians put time and effort into concocting a set of policies aimed at winning votes by proposing remedies to problems identified as occupying top rungs of current voter concern. If they’re lucky they get elected, presumably intending to put those policies into effect at the earliest opportunity. Then the world shifts and pulls the rug from under them.
With U.S. tariffs on steel, aluminum and light-duty vehicles continuing to batter the Canadian automobile industry, the CEOs of Canada’s big three automakers are asking for a break.
They met with Prime Minister Mark Carney this week to lobby for the elimination of the Liberal government’s zero-emission vehicle (ZEV) mandate. Maintaining it, they say, will cripple their companies and put thousands of jobs at risk.
Criminal gangs are targeting electric car chargers, stripping copper from the cables and leaving drivers unable to refuel.
InstaVolt, one of Britain’s biggest charging networks, said over 700 stations had been targeted in a wave that it has linked to organised crime. Incidents have risen from 140 a year ago.
The company has been forced to develop an anti-theft electric charger in an attempt to combat the crime wave. Bosses have said the spate of outages has dented consumer confidence in charging stations, affecting electric car uptake.
The Canadian government has made electric vehicles (EV) a priority over the last few years, with sizable funding for battery factories, a rebate program to improve affordability, and a mandate to phase out the purchase of new gas-powered vehicles by 2035.
But with the U.S. government signing resolutions blocking a similar EV mandate in California and some 17 other states, coupled with continued issues related to affordability, Ottawa’s plan could be facing increasing obstacles.
Auto sector chief executives urged Prime Minister Mark Carney Wednesday during a meeting on the Canada-U.S. trade war to repeal federal regulations that require one in five vehicles sold starting in 2026 to be zero-emission models.
The CEOs of Ford Motor Company of Canada, General Motors of Canada Co. and Stellantis Canada met with Mr. Carney in Ottawa as the Canadian and U.S. governments try to reach a trade deal by July 21 that might end Washington’s tariffs on Canadian-made automobiles, among other levies.
Reuters reported early this week that Chinese automakers have been inflating their sales by shipping new cars overseas disguised as used vehicles. The practice, seemingly with the tacit approval of the government — or, at least, the “encouragement” of local governments — sees zero-mile cars head directly from the assembly line to foreign markets allowing automakers, in Reuters’ words, to “to show growth and to dispose of cars that would be difficult to sell domestically.”
Mark Carney’s Liberal government recently stated it will continue the proposed ban on the sale of all gas-powered cars in Canada by 2035.
Unfortunately, although Ottawa has attempted to justify its ban on gas-powered vehicles by labelling EVs as a cornerstone of any socially responsible and environmentally friendly society, it is readily apparent the myriad socio-political and environmental benefits the Carney government purports to chase are not at all a necessary consequence of EVs in any capacity.
“It’s lunacy. Straight-up lunacy.”
The words come from Devin Dreeshen, the Alberta government’s point man on transportation.
He has nothing against electric vehicles, EVs for short. You want one, buy one.
He just doesn’t think the government in Ottawa should be ramming the purchase of them down people’s throats.
Some workers at the NextStar Energy electric vehicle battery plant in Windsor, Ont., have been abruptly laid off, according to the contractor for which they worked.
Eric Farron, vice president of operations at Sylvan Canada, said Friday that nearly 200 of the company’s workers at the facility — 145 millwrights and ironworkers, 45 electricians, and three pipe fitters — were affected.
Farron said the firm was told to “immediately demobilize” on Thursday night, and that the workers still had a significant amount of work left to complete.
