OTTAWA — With tides turning south of the border and electric vehicle sales not meeting expectations, Canada’s big bet on EV manufacturing may have been all for naught.
Since 2020, the federal government entered into deals with 13 manufacturers that, according to a June report by the Parliamentary Budget Officer (PBO), now represent $52.5 billion in various government investments and subsidies across the EV supply chain.
Industry Minister François-Philippe Champagne didn’t hesitate when asked which policies he worries could be reversed by the next government.
He often recounts stories about his role in helping to attract around $100 billion in public and private investment for a dozen or so projects that could form the backbone of a domestic electric vehicle (EV) supply chain.
A looming disaster?
U.S. President Donald Trump hasn’t imposed any tariffs on Canada yet, but he’s already dealt a potentially devastating blow to Ontario Premier Doug Ford’s signature industrial policy.
Ford has heavily touted his plan to make the province a major player in the electric-vehicle industry, especially in the production of batteries. Ontario has promised billions of dollars in government support to make it happen. With the stroke of a pen this week, Trump undermined that plan, perhaps fatally.
Donald Trump has pulled America out of the 2015 Paris Climate Agreement for the second time. The new US president signed an executive order following his inauguration yesterday, reversing the decision of his predecessor, Joe Biden, to drag the US back into the agreement in 2021. Bizarrely, like some dodgy insurance scam, the rules of the climatocracy say it takes a year to withdraw from the deal, so not until next winter will America be free of its obligations to reduce its emissions.
One of the many, many painful hangovers from the Biden administration that blue states are going to have to work through – without the aid of ibuprofen and/or copious amounts of alcohol – is going to be what to do now when the Green grifting dollars they gobbled up so greedily vanish.
This can’t be good news for Trudeau’s battery plant investment …
Jeep Maker Stellantis Brings Back American Classics After CEO Exit
Jeep is reviving its Cherokee-sized SUV. Dodge is bringing back the gas-engine version of its Charger muscle car. And Ram is hitting pause on its all-electric pickup truck.
In the weeks since the departure of former CEO Carlos Tavares, executives at global automaker Stellantis have been moving swiftly to turn around the U.S. operations, employing a series of changes to jump-start sales again.
Mark Carney scoops more caucus endorsements, including Steven Guilbeault
OTTAWA — Environment Minister Steven Guilbeault is adding his name to the caucus endorsements who have thrown their support behind Mark Carney in the race to replace Prime Minister Justin Trudeau.
Speaking to reporters in Montebello, Que., Guilbeault said that he has known Carney for many years and they both worked together on issues relating to climate change and the green energy transition with Carney’s role as special advisor to the United Nations.
This is not the endorsement Carney thinks it is.
Federal environment minister Steven Guilbeault posted a video over the weekend in which he was skating on the Rideau Canal.
“One of the reasons we are fighting climate change,” he says, “is to protect iconic places” like the Ottawa landmark.
It’s a perfectly reasonable point: the skate season on the canal has been shrinking in recent years amid warming Ottawa winters. Two years ago it didn’t open for skating at all.
Only at the Star and CBC will you find blind enthusiasm for Trudeau’s climate scam policy.
The head of one of Canada’s largest energy advocacy groups is urging the federal government to follow US president Donald Trump’s lead and scrap EV mandates in this country.
Minutes after Trump announced the end of EV mandates south of the border, former Liberal MP and current president of Canadians for Affordable Energy (CAE), Dan McTeague, urged Liberal leadership candidates, including Mark Carney, to take decisive action by repealing the federal government’s mandate for all new vehicles sold in Canada to be electric by 2035.
OTTAWA — More calls are coming for the Trudeau Liberals to scrap their imperiled policy to mandate 100% EV car sales by 2035.
On Monday, Canadians for Affordable Energy joined the call made last week by Canada’s auto industry, noting the government’s decision earlier this month to cancel the Incentives for Zero-Emission Vehicles (iZEV) program, which offered federal subsides to those who purchased an all-electric vehicle.
President Trump announced the withdrawal of the U.S. from the Paris Climate Agreement on Monday shortly after his inauguration, echoing a similar decision in his first term that was later reversed by former President Biden.
The White House confirmed the withdrawal in a memo to Republican House members seen by The Hill, saying, “President Trump will withdraw from the Paris Climate Accord.”
WE WILL BRING PRICES DOWN.
WE WILL EXPORT AMERICAN ENERGY.
WE WILL END THE GREEN NEW SCAM.
WE WILL REVOKE THE EV MANDATE. pic.twitter.com/YfAHk1OsLY
— Trump War Room (@TrumpWarRoom) January 20, 2025
This can’t be good for Trudeau’s EV Battery scam.
America is free from the electric car nightmare. In Europe, it’s just beginning
With one flourish of a presidential pen, they will be free. Amid the blizzard of executive orders that President Trump has said he will sign in the next few hours, one of the most significant, for the economy at least, will be his decision to end the rules forcing American auto manufacturers to focus their energies on electric vehicles.
President Trump is determined to go back to something that until recently would have been considered completely normal: a free market in cars. Under President Biden, a tax credit – in effect a subsidy – of up to $7,500 was awarded for every EV sold. And environmental rules were blamed for effectively forcing auto makers to make a larger proportion of their new vehicles electric.
It seems as if Liberal leadership frontrunners Mark Carney and Chrystia Freeland both realize they won’t save their party in the next election unless they take Pierre Poilievre’s advice and “axe the tax.”
The highly unpopular carbon tax, that is.
Canada-led proposal to end international fossil fuel financing dies with incoming Trump administration
A deal on ending public financing for foreign fossil fuel projects — which Canada co-led on the world stage — has died in the face of key holdout countries and the incoming administration of U.S. president-elect Donald Trump.
Canada, along with the U.K and European Union, proposed in 2023 to end financing through export credit agencies — government agencies that support foreign trade — for oil and gas projects abroad and divert the money to clean energy instead.
The U.S. under President Joe Biden threw its support behind the deal only right after the presidential election in November of last year, setting off a mad dash to get an agreement before Trump’s inauguration. Ultimately, it wasn’t enough time.
The carbon tax is (nearly) dead. Now what?
It might seem like a distant memory now, but it’s worth remembering that every major federal party ran in 2021 on a platform that included a consumer carbon tax.
Nearly every single Liberal, NDP and Conservative MP who currently sits in the House of Commons — up to and including Pierre Poilievre, who now says Canada needs a “carbon tax election” so he can “axe the tax” — won their seat while carrying a commitment to apply a price on carbon.
More than 1,000 people are being evacuated after a blaze broke out in one of the largest battery storage facilities in the world on Thursday night prompting a full scale mobilization of firefighters across several counties in Northern California, according to local authorities.
Towering flames were visible from afar as a large black column of smoke rose from the Moss Landing power plant, with the fire showing no signs of easing in the early hours of Friday. It was first reported around 3pm local time.
The fire is located in the northern part of the sate some 300 miles (500 km) north of the wildfires in Los Angeles. The plant contains tens of thousands of lithium batteries, which can be extremely difficult to put out if they go up in flames.
The world‘s largest lithium battery facility at Vistra Power Plant in Moss Landing, CA continues to burn.
Officials have no timeline for extinguishing the toxic blaze, but for reference the last lithium battery fire in California burned for 11 days pic.twitter.com/Cwignva06F
— Kevin Dalton (@TheKevinDalton) January 17, 2025
