Motor Mouth: What EV platform are you voting for this Monday?

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September 20 is election day in Canada, and one of the subjects that will help determine its outcome is the transformation of our transportation network to electric. Though the subject is mentioned prominently in virtually every party’s platform, the sad truth is virtually all the statements surrounding the implementation of an electric vehicle policy are so vague that even reading their official programmes — and beyond journalists and corporate lawyers, who does that? — it’s almost impossible to decipher what a post-election electric vehicle mandate looks like. Oh, they’re all willing to brag about how many of our tax dollars they’re willing to spend, but will share precious few details on how that hard-earned money will be spent.

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Thankfully, Daniel Breton, president and CEO of Electric Mobility Canada — and a friend of Driving — sat down with the appropriate representative of all five major parties — Monique Pauzé (Bloc Québécois), Tim Grant (Green Party), Gérard Deltell (Conservative Party), Brian Masse (NDP), and Steven Guilbeault (Liberal Party) — for an exhaustive exploration of how each will promote electric vehicles across our great country. Here’s what he found.

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Motor Mouth: What EV platform are you voting for this Monday? Back to video

The Need for a Comprehensive Electric Mobility Strategy

Now, given current realities and public sentiment, it will come as no surprise that all five party representatives replied in the affirmative — and very enthusiastically — to Breton’s query of whether their party “was in favor of the creation and deployment of a comprehensive Canadian electric mobility strategy that includes a ZEV-supply-chain strategy in order to create sustainable, high-paying high-quality Canadian jobs across the country.” Long-winded, yes, but choose whichever clause of that question — electric mobility, supply chain strategy, or high-quality Canadian jobs — that concerns you most, and a “no” to any of them would be political suicide.

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What is far more important is how desperately we need some sort of program to reduce GHG emissions. As Breton reminds us, the International Energy Agency says that the average Canadian vehicle is the heaviest in the world. Yes, weightier even than the average American car. Worse yet, the Canadian vehicle fleet is the absolute worst in greenhouse gas emissions per kilometre, our fleet average (marginally) worse than our glutinous American friends , presumably because internal-combustion engines are less efficient in cold weather, especially on startup. Whatever the reason, first place in the GHG-emissions-per-kilometre sweepstakes would not seem in keeping with our public persona, especially since we’ve done little in recent years to actually reduce our footprint.

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The Need for a Nationwide Zero-Emissions Mandate

Another area of agreement amongst all the parties is that they would all mandate a cut-off for the sale of ICE-powered cars. Three of the five parties echoed the Liberal Party’s commitment — which itself echoes most international mandates – that all light-duty new-vehicles sales would be ZEV by 2035. The exceptions were the Green Party, which wanted internal-combustion engines banned by 2030; and the Conservatives, who say they are mimicking the British Columbia mandate of having 30 per cent of all new vehicle sales being low-emission by 2030 (with a commitment to 100 per cent ZEV sales to be, as they say, negotiated later).

As to which policy makes the most sense, I suppose that would depend on whether you think climate change is a “problem” or whether we have already reached the “catastrophe” stage. From a simple supply/demand perspective, considering that sales of EVs in B.C. and Quebec — the most enthusiastically subsidized provinces — currently hover around the 10-per-cent sales level, and Ontario — with no provincial subsidies — is barely at three per cent. Meanwhile, EV sales in the prairies are virtually nonexistent, meaning the Green Party’s assertion that we can rid ourselves of internal combustion in nine short years seems beyond fantastical. Shooting for 2035 would still seem overly ambitious, but at least plausible. The Conservative’s 30-per-cent-by-2030 dictum is far more realistic, but then when was the last time anyone got elected by proposing a sensible, common-sense policy platform?

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The Need for Continued EV Incentives

In terms of the need to encourage the purchase of new electric vehicles, all agreed that some form of subvention is still required. But, while the Bloc Quebecois, Green, and Liberal parties would all keep the rebates at their current $5,000-per-vehicle level, the NDP has proposed a complicated, sliding-scale “family” rebate.

On the positive side, Masse proposes that incentivization for lower-income families must be increased. The much-promised low-cost BEV has yet to materialize, so subventing the purchase of lower-cost EVs based on income levels would seem to make sense. On the negative side, the NDP wants its rebates to favour domestically manufactured EVs, which unfortunately, smacks of the same polemic political partisanship as the U.S. Democratic Party suggesting rebates for EVs specifically built in unionized American plants. Indeed, one of the great ironies of the NDP’s position, at least as it pertains to the auto industry, is that it seems more than a little reminiscent of Donald Trump’s “Buy American” dictum. Strange bedfellows, indeed.

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The more controversial — or at least mysterious — aspect of the NDP’s program is that it is “family”-based, too. Not only has the party not defined what a family is — and given current politics, you can be assured the definition will be pretty broad — but they seemingly haven’t decided how many cars it applies to. Do you get the full $15,000 if you only buy one EV? And if your “family” buys three, does that means that 15-large has to be split three ways? In terms of the vagueness to which I previously spoke, the NDP’s family designation would seem the most open to interpretation — and abuse.

Every dollar of incentives offered for an EV purchase has to come from money collected from other Canadians

The Conservatives are the lone hold-out in the incentivization discussion, promising to (eventually) replace the current rebate system with what they’re calling a Low Carbon Savings Account. According to its platform, under a Conservative regime, all the carbon taxes we pay would be directed in their entirety to a personal bank account through which consumers could individually decide what carbon-reducing purchase they’d like to subvent. Essentially, all the gas taxes — and other carbon-reducing tariffs — paid would be made available to you to buy a zero-emissions vehicle.

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There are two obvious benefits to this proposal. You’ll be a fan, of course, if you think you’re a better judge of how to reduce your personal carbon footprint than the government. The other, more important, effect will be that the plan incentivizes gross polluters more than those who have already reduced their GHG emissions. A pickup truck owner will have a lot more loonies in their (low-carbon) piggy bank than someone who drives a subcompact sedan and, even if this disparity offends the Canadian sense of fairness, I think we can all agree that it makes more sense to encourage an F-150 owner to move into a plug-in vehicle than getting a Prius driver to go all-electric.

The downside is that I am not sure the Conservative plan will put enough money in anyone’s coffer to promote the switchover. The party’s proposal is for the carbon tax to start at $20/ton, and top out at $50. Neither number seems large enough to emulate the Liberal’s $5,000 incentive, let alone the NDP’s generosity. And one has to worry that, like all such regulations, the definition of what constitutes a low-carbon purchase is far too open to partisan definition. I suspect that, if this low-carbon account were directed only at ZEV vehicles, it might get more support from the pundits currently pooh-poohing it.

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It might also be worth noting that only the Conservative party representative reminded us that every dollar of incentives offered for an EV purchase has to come from money collected from other Canadians, and the programs therefore should eventually be phased out. Even Breton hopes that incentives will no longer be needed by 2025, though we are now no nearer to the price parity with ICE-powered cars that we’ve been promised for the last five years.

The Need for Some Conclusive Canadian Consensus

In the hopes of closing this with some the consensus we Canadians are supposed to be famous for, it is worth noting that all the parties were universally in favour of including used EVs in their subvention programs, whatever they might be. Ditto the medium- and heavy-duty electric trucks that are just now starting to come to market.

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All five political parties, of course, promise to mine our minerals responsibly and, suffice it to say, all will ensure that First Nations’ property rights will be respected. There was also uniform consensus that we need improve Canada’s charging infrastructure, though the importance of comprehensive high-speed charging infrastructure seems to differ between those who actually drive and those, um, less familiar with a steering wheel. Liberal Steven Guilbeault, for instance, doesn’t own a car, thinks a long trip is driving a Chevrolet Bolt from Montreal to Ottawa, and therefore seems to believe that consumers’ range anxiety is imagined. Meanwhile, the NDP’s Masse, who lives in Windsor — and presumably commutes from there to Parliament — fully understands that we’ll need massive charging networks along major thoroughfares like the 401, if for no other reason than his commute is beyond the range of any electric vehicle.

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Indeed, if one thing stands out from Breton’s interviews — besides the policies or evasion thereof — it’s that, save for the NDP critic, none of the major party representatives seemed to have a deep understanding of Canada’s car culture or the industry that serves it. I might not agree with all of the NDP’s policies, but Masse’s knowledge of the subject stands in marked contrast to the criticisms that current Liberal Party stakeholders hold little expertise in the ministries and subjects they command. It is therefore the highest compliment I can pay to Mr. Masse — and indeed any of the representatives — to say that, if you must vote socialist and electric vehicle policy is your primary concern in this year’s election, vote NDP.