Canada’s Environment Minister Steven Guilbeault has proposed that one-fifth of all passenger cars, SUVs and trucks sold in the nation starting 2026 will need to run on electricity under new regulations.
According to the proposal, by 2030, the mandate will hit 60 per cent of all sales and by 2035, every passenger vehicle sold in Canada will need to be electric.
Harping on the development, Guilbeault’s parliamentary secretary Julie Dabrusin said the new target is “about making sure that Canadians have access to the vehicles they want.”
The Canadian Environmental Protection Act has it that manufacturers or importers who don’t meet the sales targets could face penalties.
Experts believe that Canada still has a long way to go before approaching the first target in 2026. Records have it that in the first six months of this year, sales of fully-electric and plug-in hybrid vehicles made up just 7.2 per cent of new car registrations. For all of 2021, the proportion was 5.2 per cent.
Making her input on the development, Cara Clairman, president and CEO of Plug’n Drive, a non-profit organization that encourages electric vehicle use, said the toughest part of promoting the change from gas-powered vehicles is availability.
She said “Long waiting lists are definitely discouraging consumers that are ready to make the switch. And if we all agree that we’re in a climate emergency, we need to help consumers make the switch as soon as possible.”
On his part, the president and CEO of the Canadian Vehicle Manufacturers’ Association, Brian Kingston noted that the federal government should be building out necessary infrastructure for electric vehicles before regulating sales.
Brian averred that Canada’s infrastructure is not on track to support a growing fleet — and those who will be driving the new cars. “The vehicles are coming, but we need a supercharged effort to help marketing, and actually make that purchase and make it easy, convenient and accessible,” he said.
It is imperative to note that under the draft regulations, to be formally published Dec. 30, the government proposes tracking the sales by issuing credits for vehicle sales.
More so, fully electric cars and trucks would be worth a bigger credit than plug-in hybrid versions, though the government acknowledges that plug-in hybrids will likely remain in demand in rural and northern areas.
Experts believe that the new policy would decouple Canada’s regulatory regime from the United States, Kingston warned, and the impending penalties for vehicles sold outside of the prescribed federal targets could raise the overall cost of operating in Canada.
Reacting to the development, Clean Energy Canada, an advocacy group housed at Simon Fraser University, celebrated the announcement in a press release but warned that the penalties will need to be legally enforced, “a time consuming process” that will create complexity and uncertainty.
According to the group, other countries have opted to use immediate financial penalties as soon as auto-makers are non-compliant.
The government said the new targets will be countrywide, though some provinces are already ahead of others.
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