Thank you, Chair.
Good morning. My name is Evan Wiseman. I'm the senior climate policy manager at The Atmospheric Fund. We are a regional climate agency that operates in the greater Toronto-Hamilton area and provides investments, grants and policy support to help scale low-carbon solutions.
Today, I would like to talk to you about a policy that is more than just a climate measure: It is a health policy, an economic policy and a statement about Canada’s future. That policy is the electric vehicle availability standard, or EVAS.
EVAS is not just about cars: It’s about choice, affordability and competitiveness. It ensures that Canadians can access reliable, affordable electric vehicles when and where they need them. Countries without strong domestic policies risk becoming dumping grounds for outdated technologies while consumers elsewhere enjoy cleaner, cheaper options.
If I can refer you to the chart, under the original EVAS timeline—20% EV sales by 2026, 60% by 2030, and 100% by 2035—we would have secured $91.9 billion in health benefits, cut 362 megatonnes of greenhouse gas emissions and prevented 11,000 deaths by 2050. That’s our baseline and our reference point. It's what we would have achieved before the delay.
The health case is overwhelming. EVAS will help to avoid 11,000 premature deaths, reduce asthma attacks, lower cancer rates and clean the air in our communities. These numbers aren’t inflated; they are, in fact, conservative estimates. They represent fewer hospital visits, lower health care costs and longer, healthier lives.
Again, the chart tells the story. What we would have advised was to stick to the original timeline and achieve $91.9 billion in health benefits. A delay of just one year drops it to $83.8 billion, a loss of $8.1 billion. This has already happened, and this is not just a delay: It’s a cost that each and every Canadian pays out of pocket through our taxes and, most importantly, with our health.
You might be wondering how these health numbers work and what’s in them. They’re based on Health Canada’s “benefits per tonne” method, which is the dollar value of air pollution reductions. In simple terms, we calculated how much air pollution drops when gasoline use declines and people shift to the use of EVs, and then applied Health Canada’s dollar values for the health impacts of those reductions. That includes fewer asthma attacks, lower risks of lung and heart disease, reduced hospital visits and reduced mortality rates. When you add it all up across the major regions and over the lifetime of these vehicles, the benefits exceed $90 billion in the original scenario.
These numbers are further conservative in that, at the time of calculating, Health Canada was able to provide air modelling only for southwestern British Columbia and the Windsor to Quebec City corridor, meaning that this number is at the absolute low end. We hope to have greater and more precise modelling that includes the rest of Canada in the future.
Every time we weaken this regulation, we are not saving money: We are paying for illness, especially in children, for hospital beds and longer emergency wait times, and for lost productivity. The one-year delay already implemented will cost Canadians $8 billion in health benefits and 36 megatonnes of emissions reductions. If you push the targets further out, the losses expand.
Again, as per the chart, the one-year delay, plus the weakened back-end targets, costs $20.9 billion in health benefits and 82 megatonnes of emissions. In the fourth scenario, with a delayed back end, the cost is $19.8 billion.
Let’s call this what it is: Every concession to weaken EVAS increases the costs to Canadians and props up yesterday’s technology at the expense of Canadians’ health and wallets.
Affordability matters. EV sales dipped in 2025 after the federal rebates were cancelled. Renewing rebates and adding measures like compliance credits for vehicles under $40,000 or zero-interest financing will help keep EVs within reach for Canadian families.
Again, if you look at the chart, without these enabling policies, we risk sliding toward scenarios like Quebec’s weakened back-end approach, which is the fifth scenario on the chart. That would cost Canadians $8.4 billion in health benefits.
To keep EVAS strong, we need scheduled reviews every five years—flexibility without compromise—because the chart makes it very clear that every deviation from the original timeline costs billions in health benefits and millions of tonnes in emissions reductions. Regulatory certainty is the single most important catalyst for private investment in charging infrastructure.
EVAS delivers measurable gains for health, climate and the economy. It offers the certainty investors need, the affordability consumers expect and the cleaner air that Canadians deserve. Weakening EVAS is not a neutral choice; Canadians will suffer, and they will have to pay out of pocket with their taxes and with their health.
Let’s choose progress. Let’s keep Canada moving forward with the rest of the world.
