Here is an article from the far-left Globe and Mail on the EV mandate
The real threat to Canada auto isn’t Trump. It’s our own government forcing EVs on us
The greatest threat to the Canadian auto industry, the roughly half-million jobs it supports, the $38-billion in exports it generates annually, and the billions in foreign direct investment it accounts for, is not U.S. President Donald Trump. His threat of automotive tariffs is expected to disappear when Canadian-U.S. trade negotiations conclude.
The existential threat to Canada’s auto industry is our electric-vehicle mandate that mimics California’s.
What is now obvious to legacy U.S. automakers, if not others such as Honda Motor Co., is that the California-driven zero-emission vehicle (ZEV) mandate from 2022, prohibiting the sale of internal combustion engine vehicles (ICEV) by 2035, will bankrupt them.
General Motors Co., which has invested heavily in ZEVs, is admitting slow progress and saying aloud that the 2035 ZEV mandate will compromise its business and cost jobs, a fate it is working to avoid through its all-out lobbying to stop it. GM has allies among Republicans and Democrats in the U.S. House of Representatives, which recently and decisively voted 246-164 to support a resolution to revoke the California mandate.
GM also counts amongst its allies a majority of U.S. senators who voted Wednesday evening to kill the ZEV mandate that California and 11 other states wanted to impose in 2035. The last step is up to Mr. Trump, who is expected to sign the legislation into law soon.
The 2035 ZEV mandate is a policy that Justin Trudeau‘s Liberals adopted, and that the party doubled down on under Mark Carney, pledging in its election platform to go further and “work with industry, labour and other stakeholders to develop a regulated sales requirement that at least 50 per cent of all new light duty vehicle sales be zero emissions vehicles in 2030.” This would include most autos Canadians rely on for their daily commutes, such as cars, minivans, SUVs and pickup trucks.
When historians reflect on this pledge, they will see it as “aspirational.” The Prime Minister just hasn‘t told Canadians yet.
The California mandate is “out of touch with reality,” according to New York State Democrat and House Representative Laura Gillen. The reality is that the U.S. automotive industry employs about 4.5 million people and accounts for almost 3 per cent of the country’s non-farm jobs. The mandate threatens those jobs.
What has brought the folly of California’s (and Canada’s) 2035 ZEV mandate to the political surface is that the cost of ZEVs produced by most automakers is far higher than for ICEVs and will remain so well beyond 2035. Ford Motor Co.put a number on that divergence when it revealed that it had lost US$132,000 on each electric vehicle it sold over the first three months of 2024.
ZEVs currently cost U.S. and most other automakers too much to produce and ask many consumers for more than they can or are willing to pay. Canada has not escaped this outcome. It could import cheap Chinese-built ZEVs, but that would bring an end to our auto industry.
Canada’s promised 2035 federal ZEV mandate (followed by both Quebec and British Columbia) and its phase-in have been meticulously assessed by University of Guelph economist Ross McKitrick, who specializes in environmental and applied macroeconomics.
To succeed, Canada’s 2035 ZEV mandate needs technological advancements that produce price parity, or near price parity, between ZEVs and ICEVs across all product lines. This parity would eliminate the mandate’s unmanageable economic costs imposed on automakers and consumers. Without price parity or something close to it, the 2035 ZEV mandate becomes a Canadian auto industry killer.
Suppose parity is delayed for another 15 years or more (say 2050) because of the lag in technology development, sourcing and refining critical minerals and supply chain enhancements. In that potential scenario, Prof. McKitrick’s economic models indicate that Canada’s 2035 ZEV mandate “will have sufficiently large negative consequences that it will effectively destroy the Canadian auto industry and will cause widespread economic losses elsewhere.”
And the cost for reducing ICEV emissions under the 2035 ZEV mandate? Prof. McKitrick’s research indicates that “the costs per tonne of emissions abated are at least 10 times the Canadian carbon tax rates.”
In the late stages of the federal election campaign, Mr. Carney, when speaking of the future of Canada’s auto industry, declared that “this is Canada – we decide what happens here.”
On Canada’s 2035 ZEV mandate, we best hope American lawmakers have decided what happens here by killing the California emissions mandate, leaving Mr. Carney to acknowledge reality and end our mandate too. Our auto industry depends on it.
Gifted article:
theglobeandmail.com |
