Environment Committee on March 24th, 2022

[Steven Guilbeault, Liberal, Laurier—Sainte-Marie, QC]

Of course there is. We will be deploying—

[Dan Mazier, Conservative, Dauphin—Swan River—Neepawa, MB]

I heard that you're going to take them into account, but I didn't hear a specific plan.

[Steven Guilbeault, Liberal, Laurier—Sainte-Marie, QC]

We will be deploying these charging network stations all across the country, including in rural Canada.

In Quebec in 2015, we had six charging stations. We have more than 2,000 now, in a matter of four or five years. Things can change really rapidly and things are changing rapidly when it comes to electrification.

[Dan Mazier, Conservative, Dauphin—Swan River—Neepawa, MB]

Are you confident that electric vehicles can survive -45°C going across the Prairies, with five charging stations?

[Steven Guilbeault, Liberal, Laurier—Sainte-Marie, QC]

I don't own an electric vehicle. I don't own a vehicle, full stop. My service vehicle is fully electric. It's 100% EV. I take the train as much as I can between Montreal and Ottawa, but when we take the car, even in the winter, it works.

Norway, as you may know, is a cold country. Fifty per cent of the vehicles in that cold country are electric today. It can be done.

[Dan Mazier, Conservative, Dauphin—Swan River—Neepawa, MB]

It's not the size of Canada, though.

[Steven Guilbeault, Liberal, Laurier—Sainte-Marie, QC]

It's 3,000 kilometres from one coast to the other.

[Dan Mazier, Conservative, Dauphin—Swan River—Neepawa, MB]

Minister, what is the average cost of an electric vehicle in Canada?

[Steven Guilbeault, Liberal, Laurier—Sainte-Marie, QC]

I don't know that by heart. We could provide that information to you in writing.

[Dan Mazier, Conservative, Dauphin—Swan River—Neepawa, MB]

You're going to be mandating Canadians to buy electric vehicles, and you don't know the cost of them.

[Steven Guilbeault, Liberal, Laurier—Sainte-Marie, QC]

Again, it's 50% by 2030, and 100% by 2035. Most experts agree that by 2024-25, there will be no cost difference between an internal combustion engine and electric vehicles. Our mandate will come—

[Dan Mazier, Conservative, Dauphin—Swan River—Neepawa, MB]

Canadians are concerned about today, though.

[Steven Guilbeault, Liberal, Laurier—Sainte-Marie, QC]

We're not mandating anything today, sir.

[Dan Mazier, Conservative, Dauphin—Swan River—Neepawa, MB]

Okay.

[Steven Guilbeault, Liberal, Laurier—Sainte-Marie, QC]

We're encouraging—

[Dan Mazier, Conservative, Dauphin—Swan River—Neepawa, MB]

Toyota was in front of the committee here a while back, and they said that basically the average cost of a zero-emissions vehicle was $56,000. That's double the price of a gas-powered vehicle.

Minister, the median household income in my riding is just below $50,000. Not all Canadians make $270,000 like you, Minister.

Do you believe these vehicles are affordable?

[Steven Guilbeault, Liberal, Laurier—Sainte-Marie, QC]

As I said, most experts agree that by 2024-25, there will be no cost difference between electric vehicles and internal combustion engines. Our mandate comes years after that. The first part of the mandate comes in 2030—it will come into force way after the cost difference between internal combustion engines and electric vehicles....

You have to remember that right now EVs are more expensive to buy, but they're way cheaper to operate. If you look at the full life-cycle cost of owning and operating a vehicle, there are substantial savings. Simply looking at the cost of purchasing the vehicle is only looking at half of the equation.

[The Chair, Liberal, Francis Scarpaleggia]

You have 10 seconds.

[A voice]

Time flies when we're having fun.

[Voices]

Oh, oh!

[Dan Mazier, Conservative, Dauphin—Swan River—Neepawa, MB]

Yes, that's right. I'm done.

[The Chair, Liberal, Francis Scarpaleggia]

We have Ms. Taylor Roy.

[Leah Taylor Roy, Liberal, Aurora—Oak Ridges—Richmond Hill, ON]

Thank you.

I actually wanted to turn to the supplementary estimates for Parks Canada. I was noticing that we do such great work with Parks Canada in terms of our cultural and heritage sites.

I was also noticing that we need a lot of money to go into protecting them, especially with the extreme climate events that we've been seeing recently. I was wondering whether the supplementary budget requests will be going into protecting these parks and dealing with wildfires and other threats.

[Steven Guilbeault, Liberal, Laurier—Sainte-Marie, QC]

I could try to answer, but I think Andrew could give you a much better answer than I can on that.

[Andrew Campbell, Senior Vice-President, Operations, Parks Canada Agency]

Thank you, Minister and thank you, member.

Certainly, a portion of the $7.5 million that is in supplementary estimates (C) does go directly into our wildfire preparedness program.

It actually does, I think, three things that are important to talk about. One, it does fire safety around different communities and economic interests that we have close by in parks. Two, it looks at the effect of fire on biodiversity and our ways of projecting into what will go on. Three, from a fire prevention perspective, it looks at how we would reduce some of the fuel stores through a prescribed burn-type of operation that we do in many places across the country.