Environment Committee on Nov. 6th, 2025

[The Chair, Liberal, Angelo Iacono]

I'm calling the meeting to order.

Good morning, members.

Today is meeting number 13 of the Standing Committee on Environment and Sustainable Development. This meeting is taking place in a hybrid format and is in public. We have witness testimony for two hours.

For those in person, please follow the health and safety guidelines on the cards that are found on the table to prevent audio or feedback incidents.

The committee is resuming its study on the electric vehicle availability standard.

This morning, we will hear from a few witnesses.

From Clean Energy Canada, we have Joanna Kyriazis, director of policy and strategy.

From Electric Mobility Canada, we have Daniel Breton, president and chief executive officer.

From High Country Chevrolet Buick GMC Ltd., we have Mr. Doug Green, president, who is here by video conference.

Witnesses, you will be seeing at some point that I will be lifting up this card, which indicates that you have one more minute to respond to the question that's being asked of you. Once it's flipped over, please to try to end your sentence as best you can.

Thank you.

Each witness will have five minutes for their presentation.

We will start with Joanna Kyriazis. You have five minutes.

[Joanna Kyriazis, Director of Policy and Strategy, Clean Energy Canada]

Good afternoon, Mr. Chair and members of the committee.

Clean Energy Canada is a national think tank at Simon Fraser University that is focused on advancing the country's energy transition.

Today I'd to like to speak to why the EV availability standard is one of the best policies we have to drive down costs for Canadian families and ensure that our industries are set up for long-term success.

You may have heard that the EV transition is slowing, but the numbers tell a different story. EV sales are up in almost all regions of the world this year. EVs now make up over 30% of new car sales in the EU and over 50% in China. EV popularity is also skyrocketing in less developed countries, with places like Nepal and Ethiopia seeing sales shares of 60% to 70%.

It's true that Canadian EV sales have dipped this year. Uncertainty around federal and provincial rebates has caused many buyers to hold off on purchasing, pushing our sales numbers artificially low and making Canada a global outlier in EV sales trends in 2025.

This isn't because Canadians have cooled on EVs, though: Nearly half of the Canadians we polled this summer still lean towards an electric vehicle for their next vehicle. Those percentages are higher in certain provinces, such as B.C. and Quebec; certain regions, like the GTHA and metro Vancouver; and among young people. This is because six in 10 Canadians rightly know that driving an EV will save them money. Today's Canadian EV drivers pay the equivalent of around 40 cents per litre of gas to charge their cars.

There's also another Canada-specific barrier standing in our way: We have an EV affordability problem here. By following the U.S. and walling off our car market, Canadians are missing out on many of the lower-priced electric models being sold and enjoyed in other countries around the world. A recent Clean Energy Canada analysis found that Europe has 21 EV models selling under the price point of $40,000 Canadian. In Canada, we have only one.

Often carmakers introduce affordable models in the EU but not in North America, whether it's Volkswagen's ID.3, which is an all-electric compact hatchback, or the Kia EV3, a compact electric SUV.

Canada's EV availability standard was put in place to address this exact issue. Its very purpose is to make more EVs available for consumers here. As it ramps up in ambition, automakers will be incentivized to produce lower-priced models to meet more of the market. Canada's EVAS would reduce the average price of an EV by 20%, according to one study.

This is likely why we found that Canadians support this policy. Two-thirds of those polled in September said that they want to keep a version of this policy in place. Helping more drivers get behind the wheel of an EV would go a long way in easing the second-biggest cost households endure, transportation.

We recognize that circumstances have changed since Canada's original EVAS was designed and that changes may be required to offer automakers short-term relief. President Trump's tariffs and premature cancellation of EV policies have introduced significant uncertainty for the auto sector, causing certain companies to cancel projects and lay off auto workers in the U.S. and Canada alike.

Canada's EV availability standard, though—a policy that has not yet come into effect and that offers a three-year grace period for automakers to comply with once it does—is not responsible for these impacts. In the U.S., where President Trump has repealed federal tailpipe emission standards and state-level authority to implement their own EV sales regulations, thousands of auto workers continue to be laid off and billions in EV-related investments are being abandoned. Repealing Canada's EVAS will not reverse the impacts that Trump's tariffs are having on the North American auto industry. What that would do, however, is deprive Canadians of the lower-priced EVs available in other markets; compromise jobs and investments in Canada's EV charging, electricity and critical mineral sectors; and slow the modernization of Canada's auto sector in a global market where one in four new cars sold will be electric this year.

In this time of turbulence, Canadian industries and consumers need more certainty, not less. As such, we encourage the government to move swiftly to confirm this policy will stay in place, even if revised to respond to the changing context.

Thank you for the opportunity to contribute today. I look forward to your questions.

[The Chair, Liberal, Angelo Iacono]

Thank you very much.

Mr. Breton, you have five minutes.

[Daniel Breton, President and Chief Executive Officer, Electric Mobility Canada]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

My name is Daniel Breton. I'm the president and CEO of Electric Mobility Canada, or EMC.

EMC is Canada's transportation electrification industry association. It has over 190 members, including car manufacturers, truck and bus manufacturers, labour unions and research centres. Also, I'm certainly the most knowledgeable and experienced person in Canada to talk about this, having worked in the auto industry on the Sainte-Thérese assembly line, from repair to assembly to sales. I also worked as a writer. In fact, last year I wrote a book called 50 Myths and Half-truths about Electric Vehicles. I was also a member of Parliament and Minister of the Environment. In 2012, I was responsible for the first proposed transportation electrification strategy in Canada.

According to a 2025 report by Ernst & Young, our industry already employs 130,000 workers, and it is expected to employ between 360,000 and 600,000 over the next 10 years.

Today I won't talk about the details surrounding the EV availability standard. I would rather talk about the facts versus the fake news or falsehoods surrounding it.

As facts, the purpose of the EVAS is, first, to make sure that Canadians have access to a growing choice of affordable EVs, which we don't have right now, as Joanna just said. Second, it's to bring market predictability to companies investing in the EV industry in Canada all along the supply chain, from mining to infrastructure to mobility to electricity production to R and D. Third, it's for Canada to lower GHG emissions and air pollution, helping to save thousands of Canadian lives and billions of dollars in health costs.

Now let's talk about the falsehoods.

First, according to some people, it's going to make cars less affordable. That's false. It's actually the exact opposite. Right now we don't have access to affordable cars, whether gas or electric.

Second is the idea that it's the equivalent of a $20,000 tax on cars with gasoline engines. That's false as well. Saying that means that the people who say it do not understand the EVAS credit system or that some people are misleading Canadians.

Third is that carmakers have to sell 20% EVs in 2026. That's false as well. Because of the early compliance credit system and other flexibilities, no carmaker has to sell 20% EVs in 2026.

Fourth is that Tesla was going to be the carmaker selling most of the credits. That's false as well. In 2023 in California, GM was the carmaker that sold the most credits, almost three times as many as Tesla. As well, who sold the most EVs in Canada last year? It was GM.

Fifth is that it's going to cost 38,000 jobs. That's false. The Canadian professor who wrote that so-called report conveniently forgot to include the jobs created in the EV industry, but then again, he is the same person who co-signed the Trump administration report on energy and climate this summer.

Sixth is that the EVAS is redundant because we also have GHG emission regulations in place for light-duty vehicles. Well, that's false, as that regulation is designed to be aligned with the U.S. regulation, which is now being scrapped by the U.S. administration, so beyond the 2026 model year, there will be no GHG emission regulation left.

Seventh is the idea that the EVAS is akin to “banning the rural way of life”. I live in rural Canada, so I know this is false, not only because I travel across rural Canada day in and day out with an electric car—I do 50,000 to 60,000 kilometres a year—but also because PHEVs are included in the regulation, which means that you don't have to worry about charging if you don't feel comfortable driving a BEV.

Regarding the so-called “freedom of choice” argument, the truth is that right now, Canadians do not have the choice of buying the vehicle they want; they have, rather, the choice of buying the vehicle that carmakers have decided to offer them from the U.S. To me, choice and affordability are very important points.

Anybody with common sense knows that the Trump administration right now is moving in the wrong direction, not only on EVs but on science, on the environment, on health and on the jobs that will come to define the 21st century. Those who advocate that Canada should scrap the regulation and instead blindly follow Donald Trump's path on EV policies and regulation while he is currently in the process of eliminating regulation and setting the U.S. back 50 years are certainly not acting in the best interests of Canadians. Indeed, their stance would only subordinate our regulations and our interests to those of the U.S., as if we were the 51st state, so the real question is this: As Canadians, are we supporting health, the environment and jobs in Canada, or are we supporting 51st state policies?

Thank you.

[The Chair, Liberal, Angelo Iacono]

Thank you, Mr. Breton.

That's very interesting. Your presentation was very lively and very concrete. We really appreciate it.

Mr. Doug Green, the floor is yours for five minutes. Thank you.

[Doug Green, President, High Country Chevrolet Buick GMC Ltd]

Good morning, Mr. Chair, and thank you very much.

I'm Doug Green, president of High Country Chevrolet Buick GMC Limited. I'm in the small rural town of High River, just outside of Calgary.

To date, I've invested $200,000 in my facility to be ready to sell EVs. I've had to change power requirements for my building, replace the trenched power supply to my transformers, purchase and install EV chargers, and purchase a hoist, a battery table and a forklift.

To date, in the last three years, I've managed to sell three EVs, with losses totalling over $10,000.

When the EVs first came on the site, I was excited. I invited 1,000 of my customers to come in for a ride on test drive day; 30 customers showed up. They all drove the new Blazer, Equinox and Hummer. There was lots of fanfare and excitement, but at the end of the day, not one person was interested in buying them.

They all said comments like, “That's nice, but it doesn't work for our rural lifestyle”, “Our climate is too cold; there's no range in the cold with winter tires”, “I can't pull my trailer and get range”, “There's no local charging structure in my town or the neighbouring towns around”, “I have four drivers; how do I charge four EVs from home?”

The list continued on and on, so I took my remaining three EVs and sold them to a dealer in Quebec, taking a $2,000-per-vehicle loss, totalling another $6,000. Why was it Quebec? It had a $14,000 federal subsidy. Without subsidization, consumer demand is not there.

Right now, dealers are not making profit to recoup their investments. I am a for-profit business. Perhaps we forget that. We're not a government that can run deficits. I'll never recover my $200,000 investment, and my losses pale in comparison to what the manufacturers are losing—which is millions and billions—in trying to reach these mandates.

Manufacturers are losing $30,000, $40,000, $50,000 per EV sold. Ford publicly stated that they're losing $36,000 per EV sold. That's why plants are being idled, production is being scaled back and battery plants, such as those in Quebec, are going broke before they're even opened.

In the past three to four years, we've seen huge price increases on our vehicles, and it's not because of tariffs or inflation; it's primarily to subsidize the EV losses. Everybody's banking on the idea that prices will come down, battery prices will go down and range will extend, but that's a big if and a maybe.

If there are no gas sales to subsidize EVs, the question is very simple—who goes broke first and when? When one of the large manufacturers says it's too difficult to sell them or we're going to go broke, they pull out of Canada, leaving the distribution network all across the country abandoned.

Sadly, GM proved this point last month, when they pulled their EV BrightDrop plant in Ingersoll because of mounting losses and no demand for the vehicle.

If we continue down this road, we're going to destroy the auto industry as we know it in rural towns across the country. My store won't survive if I'm forced to sell EVs. “A family-run business put out of business by the government after 45 years in business” is going to be the headline.

We're a profit-based, free market economy, and the adoption rate of new technologies such as EVs is based on price, reliability, ease of use, long-term durability, value and resale. EVs right now are not more affordable because of regulations in our country. Yes, the Chinese ones are cheaper, but as you know from watching the news, they tend to catch on fire a little bit more.

The infrastructure is not there. It's not there anywhere. It works right now because we have a limited number of EVs on the road, but if you go to a 100% EV mandate, we won't be able to charge them.

Because we're not moving at the speed that you want, you're going to try to mandate sales in communities like mine. If EV mandates are left in place, people like me are going to go out of business because I just don't have the demand and the small volumes will not allow me to remain profitable.

When I go out of business, the downstream effect is going to be that Mr. Lube, Midas, transmission repair shops and the small backyard mechanic who fixes things won't be able to sustain themselves either. That backyard mechanic doesn't have the resources to invest in the technology. The return on investment, friends, is not there.

Gas stations do not have the capital or the land to install the chargers needed for full electrification. Customers don't have 30 to 50 minutes to go to a quick charger. Home charging requires a 48- to 80-amp service; homes come with 100-amp service, so this complicates things. When you look at that, you see that you can charge your car or you can run your dishwasher or stove, but you can't do both.

If the RV dealers collapse, so do the boat dealers, because you can't pull your boat with your RV and get there.

We need EV mandates that are grounded in reality. Sales are slowing, costs are rising and workers are feeling the pressure. Repealing the EV mandate doesn't mean we're abandoning it; it means that we're giving time to do it properly and to make things work. If you try to push a string, it buckles, and so will the economy and the manufacturers, but if you slowly pull that string with good leadership, you'll get to where you want to go.

Mandating stuff is never the way. It's a bully tactic. It doesn't work.

Thank you.

[The Chair, Liberal, Angelo Iacono]

Thank you, Mr. Green, for your opening remarks.

I will now move to the Conservative Party for six minutes.

Ms. Anstey, the floor is yours.

[Carol Anstey, Conservative, Long Range Mountains, NL]

Thank you, and thank you for your strong opening statement, Mr. Green.

I'd like to start by saying that you live and die with these mandates and have lived experience with them, so I would qualify you as the expert in this space.

I also have a large family-owned dealership in my riding in Newfoundland and Labrador and I've spent lots of time having conversations with them.

There's so much to unpack. I want to break it down and give you more opportunities to expand on some of the things you said.

Family-owned dealerships often operate on tight margins, and they are deeply rooted in their communities. You mentioned in your opening statement that you made a $200,000 investment in upgrades and that you sold only three units in three years. How do this top-down approach and the cost of requirements place additional financial pressure on you?

I want you to expand on that a little, and also specifically on your competitiveness with dealerships in more urban areas and the unique challenges that you face in having a dealership in a rural area.

[Doug Green]

Thank you very much.

In a small town, I meet with my customers day in and day out. They sit with me and they tell me that they don't have the capital to buy these things.

When I invested in my facility, I did it out of the fear that I might lose my franchise. I didn't do it because I thought it would be profitable. At the end of the day, I am a for-profit businesses, so I looked at it and said that if I have to do this, then I will. If it can increase my marginal sales, then great.

However, the reality is that when General Motors made cost and invoice the same, because they were losing so much money, there was no advantage in coming to my store as opposed to another store. I paid the same price that I sold the vehicle to you for. If I was a good gentleman and met all of my compliances, they would send me a token amount of profit at the end of the day, which wasn't enough to sustain me. The interest that I had to pay on these units to have them sit here on my lot for six or eight or nine months far exceeded the potential profit that I could ever make on them.

The capital investment for my store—the power changes, the transformer changes, digging up my lot to put transformers in—was large. For big-city stores, it's massive. I didn't have to buy a gas station to sell gas-powered vehicles. Why did I have to spend hundreds of thousands of dollars to put in charging?

I did not put in my chargers as forward-facing. I did not want the traffic to come here, because there's not any profit in selling the power and electricity. That's why the free market has not put these things everywhere.

In my town, there's a FLO charger. It's been disabled and now abandoned after being broken for a year or two, but it still shows on the map. Everybody came with their EVs and tried to charge there, but it was broken. There was no gas station attendant. Who do you call? There was nobody. They don't care.

There are so many realities that we're not facing. I appreciate all the other panellists, and yes, we can say all these great platitudinal things, but when it boils down to rubber meeting the road, do customers want them? Not yet, but maybe, so let's keep pursuing it. I'm not saying abandon it, but don't force it. Don't try to make something happen that the free market is not willing to see happen. The free market goes on profit, and if there isn't profit and it's not reliable—and it's not—then the free market is not going to run with it.

We'll get there slowly. Keep pushing. Keep going. Maybe electricity isn't the right choice. Maybe it will be hydrogen or maybe wind power. I'm game for that. I want to see advancements. I want to see our industry lead, but I do not want to be forced, bullied or coerced into selling something that my consumers do not want to buy. They can't, because if they drive 300 or 400 kilometres on a cold day on a gravel road with winter tires in a pickup truck, they're not getting home. If they go to the hospital in High River, there's no charger there.

There's no charger in the neighbouring town. It shows that there's one on the map, but it's been abandoned. It's no longer there. The map shows my charger there, but you can't use my charger, because I didn't make it forward-facing, and there are reasons for that. I can share why: My neighbouring colleague did, and somebody drove away with his vehicle plugged in. It cost him $6,000 to replace that charging cord on a quick charger, rather than the $200 cost if you drive away from the pump when it's still in your gas-powered vehicle. I can't absorb that. I can't recoup that.

It's nice to speak in platitudes. It's nice to think green and go there. I get it and I'm with you, but you can't force it. You're trying to go way too fast, because the free market is not getting there and they're not ready to get there yet.

[Carol Anstey, Conservative, Long Range Mountains, NL]

Thank you so much. I appreciate all your comments. I'm picking up on your passion and I appreciate it as a small business owner myself.

You touched on something that I also hear: It's also this idea of it being a mandate. That has implications as far as your business is concerned.

I've heard from other dealers that it's counterintuitive from the consumer perspective as well. Do you think that Canadians appreciate being told what type of vehicle to drive?

[Doug Green]

Well, a recent poll by Automotive News said that 59% of Canadians oppose a federal EV mandate, so yes, we have lots of free loving, free enterprise people here, and no, they don't want to be told. They want to be given choice.

The reason we don't have a choice of the kind that exists in China and other places is that we have very different standards. I don't want a $10,000 EV that's going to catch fire. Where do you charge your vehicle? It's supposedly at home. When does it catch on fire? That's potentially when you're charging it at your home, in your garage.

There has to be a standard that maybe other countries don't want to comply with, and that's fine. That's their prerogative. We set ours. We have to meet them. That's why they're not quite as affordable as in other places around the world.

Yes, people are pushing back against being told what they have to buy. Give them affordable choice, but you can't mandate it. If the manufacturer can't make money, they're out of business.

[Carol Anstey, Conservative, Long Range Mountains, NL]

Thank you, sir.

[The Chair, Liberal, Angelo Iacono]

Please go ahead for six minutes, Mr. Grant.

[Wade Grant, Liberal, Vancouver Quadra, BC]

Thank you, Mr. Chair, and thank you to the witnesses for coming forward.

Ms. Kyriazis, thank you for your statements.

I was reading a recent poll that Abacus conducted for Clean Energy Canada. It found that a large number of Canadians are actually inclined to get an EV. In fact, 69% of those in metro Vancouver, where I am from, have said that they're inclined toward getting an EV in the future, and then the younger generations are very keen on it. In fact, my two kids, who are 15 and 17, have said that their first car would probably be an EV.

What sort of incentives can the government provide and offer to make the concept of ZEVs more affordable as we move forward?

[Joanna Kyriazis]

Certainly federal and provincial rebates help.

We know that an electric vehicle comparable to a gas car saves significant amounts of money—$30,000 to $40,000—over the course of the vehicle's life, but right now the sticker price is still slightly higher, so rebates help bring down that upfront cost and help Canadians unlock the savings faster.

The EV availability standard is also designed to drive affordability, because as the ambition ramps up, carmakers need to start offering lower-priced models to meet more of the market. We're seeing that happen in the EU, where they invest in battery technology, better charging systems and better range.

They can also choose to change their pricing structures internally by offering better discounts on electric vehicles. Often car manufacturers will offer 0% down or low-interest financing for gas cars, but we're not seeing similar incentives for EVs.

Also, requiring carmakers to sell more can help unlock some of those private sector incentives.

[Wade Grant, Liberal, Vancouver Quadra, BC]

You just mentioned the EU, and you said in your opening statement that buyers have more options in Europe and the United States right now, and that Canadians have access to fewer EV options. How does the EVAS availability standard help close that gap?

[Joanna Kyriazis]

It ensures that the Canadian market is prioritized when carmakers globally are deciding where to send their inventory. It's not a production mandate; it's a sales mandate. It's about where the inventory is sent, and you can see the impacts play out within Canada.

B.C. and Quebec are the only jurisdictions that have this policy in place. It's not in place in Newfoundland or Alberta or federally. Those two jurisdictions, B.C. and Quebec, always get the first offerings of new EV makes and models, whether it's the Fiat 500e or the Jeep Wagoneer S. Even when the electric Dodge Charger was rolling off assembly lines in Ontario, it was not available for Ontarians to buy. It was exclusively available to Quebec and B.C. residents. Jurisdictions that have these policies in place are first in line for the best makes and models out there.

[Wade Grant, Liberal, Vancouver Quadra, BC]

Thank you.

Mr. Breton, thank you for your statements as well.

Can you tell us how many jobs the EV industry can create in Canada, compared to the current number of jobs across the automotive industry?

[Daniel Breton]

As I said, we currently are at about 130,000 jobs in the EV industry, from mining to manufacturing to infrastructure to electricity production to R and D. According to the EY report that was published and updated just a few weeks ago, we will be at approximately 600,000 jobs in the EV industry by 2035 because of policies that are pro-EV, whether on infrastructure or manufacturing.

I can't help saying something about what the dealer said when he talked about fires in electric cars. Actually, you have 20 to 30 times more chances of having a gas or diesel car catch on fire than an electric car in North America or in Europe. This whole notion that electric cars could catch on fire and be dangerous is just false.

This is part of all of the fake news that I'm hearing day in and day out. That's why I wrote a book about it. I think it is important.

[Wade Grant, Liberal, Vancouver Quadra, BC]

With reference to gas-fuelled cars, global automakers are already setting their own phase-out dates for gas engines. Without the EVAS, how would Canada ensure that we're not left behind or treated as a dumping ground for the older ones?

[Daniel Breton]

Let me give you two examples.

Nissan announced that the Ariya won't be sold in the U.S. anymore, because there are no longer any EV policies. As well, Kia announced that their new, more affordable electric model won't be sold in the U.S., because there are no EV policies, but it will be sold in Canada.

If you want to talk about choice, that's a perfect example. If we don't have regulation, we'll end up having no choice.

[Wade Grant, Liberal, Vancouver Quadra, BC]

Finally, do you see the EVAS a part of an industrial strategy that keeps Canadian workers and suppliers competitive in the global EV market?

[Daniel Breton]

I do, absolutely.

As I said, it is consumer-based, but it's also helping to create the conditions that are going to give more predictability to investors, in particular when it comes to EV charging infrastructure and utilities.

Some of our members are utilities, but some of our members are companies like Parkland, for instance. They have gas stations across Canada, and because of the EVAS, they know how much they want to invest. If we get out of the EVAS, they're saying that they won't invest as much as they should.

People are saying there are not enough chargers and that they want to get rid of the EVAS. That's completely counterproductive, because we want to install more chargers.

[Wade Grant, Liberal, Vancouver Quadra, BC]

Thank you.

[The Chair, Liberal, Angelo Iacono]

Thank you, Mr. Breton.

Mr. Bonin, you have the floor for six minutes.