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Politics : Canadian Political Free-for-All -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: russet who wrote (36345)	9/8/2025 9:13:04 AM
From: Alastair McIntosh	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 37088

Ottawa should pull the plug on EV mandates (Another editorial from the far-left Globe and Mail) Until Friday morning, the Canadian auto industry was facing an unenviable choice, of either doubling sales of new electric vehicles over the next year or so or paying huge sums for failing to do so. Under the Electric Vehicle Availability Standard, at least 20 per cent of new vehicle sales must be electric, or plug-in hybrids, rising to 100 per cent by 2035. Manufacturers and importers who fail to meet that target must either buy credits from firms that have – read, Tesla – or pay into a government fund for EV infrastructure. The EV mandate was always a heavy-handed intervention, but the true weight has only become apparent in recent months, as the first year of targets approached. As of June, EVs accounted for barely more than a third of that target, just 7.9 per cent. Attempting to push that proportion to 20 per cent in the current model year would have meant an economically destructive combination of soaring vehicle prices, restricted consumer choice and financial carnage in the industry. On Friday, Prime Minister Mark Carney put off that doomsday for at least a year, suspending the electric-vehicle mandate for the current 2026 model year and announcing a 60-day review of the policy. There is but one logical outcome to that review: scrapping the mandate. The current policy is far too inflexible. Hybrid vehicles, for instance, aren’t counted toward the EV sales quota, even though they are significantly more fuel-efficient than conventional internal-combustion options. A subcompact car that burns gasoline is far more fuel efficient than an outsized diesel pickup truck. But as far as the EV mandate is concerned, the two are indistinguishable. Also ignored is the environmental effect from consumers who decide to stick with their gas-guzzling beater because a cleaner replacement vehicle is priced beyond reach. That conundrum is a feature, not a bug, of the EV mandate. Fundamentally, the policy is not focused on reducing greenhouse gas emissions. It is a backdoor subsidy for the EV industry, aimed at inflating the costs of fossil fuel-powered vehicles in order to push consumers into electric vehicles. Indeed, Ottawa boasts that the mandate is “part of a comprehensive plan by the Government of Canada to develop a robust electric vehicle supply chain and infrastructure.” The EV mandate should be scrapped, but that should not mean that Ottawa abandons the idea of accelerating the auto industry’s shift toward zero-emission vehicles – merely that the federal government adopt more flexible policies. Happily, the Liberals do not need to come up with such a policy. One already exists: the greenhouse gas emission standards for vehicles and light trucks, which have been in force since 2010. Those regulations set company-specific goals for average emissions – an elegant tool ready to be used. Those standards would be far more flexible than the EV mandate, and would allow for a broader and more effective push in reducing emissions from passenger vehicles. Auto companies could promote sales of hybrids, more fuel efficient smaller vehicles, and of course, electric vehicles to meet their targets. And those standards could be tightened over time, eventually reaching a point where the only way to meet them would be to have an EV-only product line. Automakers would be able to pursue different paths to meet those requirements. Some might choose to shift their product lines to hybrids in the short term. Others might opt for a leap to purely electric vehicles for passenger cars. That should avoid massive compliance costs that would be inevitably be passed on to consumers. As part of this policy pivot, the federal government should make it clear there will be no more subsidies for EV purchases. Instead, Ottawa can focus any spending on building up charging infrastructure, the lack of which is a major constraint in EV adoption. If there must be a subsidy program, it should be limited to defraying the cost of household charging stations, a far more cost effective approach. That would require a major shift on the part of the Liberals, but Mr. Carney has shown a willingness to scrap other high-profile measures of the Trudeau government: the federal carbon charge, the digital services tax, and the hike in capital gains taxation. The EV mandate should join that growing list of Trudeau-era policies that the current prime minister has reversed. https://www.theglobeandmail.com/gift/c3d546739880b8bed2d238db61b6b0afe7278b66743f0d23f0a7c22b7124320a/IT6ZYRI5TFHTLDAWZGH4GWE2KY/