FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

VAUGHAN, Ontario — Today, Prime Minister Mark Carney announced his government’s plan to replace the Electric Vehicle (EV) sales mandate, which held that all new vehicles sold in Canada must be electric by 2035, with a 75% tailpipe emissions reduction target by 2035 and an aspirational 90% reduction by 2040.

The plan also revives a federal EV purchase subsidy of $2,000 to $5,000 for vehicles under $50,000 from select trade partners, while allocating $1.5 billion in taxpayer funds to expand the EV charging network, $3 billion for auto parts makers, and $750 million for worker training.
Dan McTeague, President of Canadians for Affordable Energy, welcomed the end of the mandate but expressed concerns about both the policy replacing it and the cost of the new subsidies.

“I’m glad that the mandate itself is gone, because forcing people to buy cars they don’t want is perverse,” said McTeague. “But I worry that the tailpipe emissions standard replacing it is an EV mandate in all but name, enforcing emissions standards that are so strict that, in practice, only Electric Vehicles could realistically meet them. The Biden Administration attempted something similar in the U.S., which was ultimately rejected by voters.”

“On top of that,” McTeague continued, “the prime minister is proposing to spend huge amounts of money on EVs going forward. The federal EV subsidy program is coming back, despite the fact that it amounts to a subsidy for wealthy Canadians and last time proved way more expensive than expected, so much so that it ran out of money long before it was projected to.”

“Layering on $1.5 billion more for an EV charging network – a network which we’ve already put over a billion dollars into, with piddling results – is just an enormous waste of our tax dollars.”

“We would have been better off,” he concluded, “if Mark Carney had scrapped this program entirely and made a more judicious use of our money. Instead he is doubling down on a top-down green ideology which ignores what Canadians actually need – affordable, reliable vehicles without government meddling.”

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