Sad to see the EV targets get softened like that, but with Chinese vehicles entering the market and the price disparity between combustion vehicles and EVs narrowing this is exactly the kind of thing that will help nudge the market along to organically grow EV adoption to similar percentages as previously mandated.
This is good news, hopefully this starts a chain reaction into clean energy and battery manufacturing.
Canada could become a big player in clean energy and manufacture its own batteries.
Removed by mod
Means-testing would make it unnecessarily expensive. Just make it so it only applies to cheap EVs. Applying reabtes to used would be really nice but unfortunately is impossible because a car could be sold used an infinite number of times.
EV incentives are always going to benefit people who can afford cars, which is absolutely imbalanced, but the goal is to just get more EVs on the road and not wealth distribution.
Carney government would never do this, but we should just fund public transit so that it’s free, and fund EV bus fleets.
Rebates on used cars can come with the stipulation that the current owner has owned it for a certain number of years, and the amount can also be smaller.
Yeah about funding transit, dunno if you saw this one from yesterday https://www.theglobeandmail.com/politics/article-big-city-mayors-carney-5-billion-cut-to-transit-funding/
ffs
Such incentives should be available only for ‘Made in Canada’ products (and I mean really made in Canada, not just sold by a company with headquarters in Canada but all the production abroad). The EU is in the process of establishing a similar a law afaik.
Are there any vehicles ‘really made’ in any single country? For instance, I don’t think there are any cars 100% made in the US. Assembled in the US of course, but my understanding is the parts come from around the world - the Corvette is the first example that comes up in a search - assembled at the Bowling Green, Kentucky plant, using a combination of domestic and international parts. Roughly 40-41% of parts for the 2025 C8 originate from the U.S. and Canada, while approximately 31-32% are sourced from Mexico…
There are no 100% American made vehicles. Tesla is actually the top most American made vehicle and is not all American made.
Not surprised to see Doug flip-flop on EV incentives. I wonder where we’d be now in Ontario if EV rebates kept pace 5 years ago.
We may have had EV manufacturing established in the Ford Oakville plant by now. There used to be plans for that.
Nice, I need to check for a new car too.
Interesting this comes after trade deal with china to sell electric cars…so Canadian tax payers are subsidizing Chinese profits…
Is it better to subsidizing facsist profits ?
I believe the rebate is only available to vehicles sold from countries that have free trade agreements with Canada. That excludes China.
Hah, what profits?? Chinese auto makers have been massively subsidized by the Chinese government for the last several years. Any profits on their balance sheets have been propped up by those subsidies. The Chinese government has already indicated that those subsidies will be ending, because they’ve created a supply glut that China cannot absorb domestically and cannot offload internationally. No country on the planet is going to allow the wholesale dumping of heavily subsidized Chinese autos into their domestic market since it would damage or destroy any local auto manufacturing industry.
Carney’s decision to allow a nominal amount of Chinese EVs is smart because it’s a net win for Canada no matter what happens. It gets Canadian soybeans shipping to China again, while the number of EVs being allowed is too small to have an outsized effect on the Canadian auto industry. That’s just the basic first-order stuff, there are huge potential upsides down the road. This acts as a trial balloon to see whether the Canadian market has an appetite for Chinese made autos. I suspect yes at first just based on price, but those prices will rise as Chinese subsidies draw down. If Canadians show a willingness to buy Chinese made autos, Canada can float expanding the import limit in exchange for some percentage of local manufacture.
The US auto industry is pulling back from Canada, so Canada is making deals with South Korean auto makers. We’ve seen what happened when Canada put too many eggs in the proverbial US basket. Replacing those US auto makers with a variety of foreign makers (Germany, South Korea, maybe China down the road) is just pragmatic risk mitigation. It gives us a better local manufacturing base while ensuring we’re not overly beholden to a single foreign trading partner.
