Evidence of meeting #213 for Finance in the 42nd Parliament, 1st Session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was newspapers.
A recording is available from Parliament.
Manager, National Climate Program, Environmental Defence Canada
No, it would be a sales mandate. It would be a percentage of the sales of vehicles in Canada.
Conservative
Blake Richards Conservative Banff—Airdrie, AB
So, 25% of the cars sold in Canada would have to be electric. That would be at the dealer level, then?
Conservative
Blake Richards Conservative Banff—Airdrie, AB
Okay.
I guess the question that would then beg is, if I'm a car dealer, would this be an annual target, a monthly target? What would it be?
Manager, National Climate Program, Environmental Defence Canada
It would be annual sales.
Conservative
Blake Richards Conservative Banff—Airdrie, AB
Let's say that I get to the last quarter of the year, and I realize it's going to be tough to make this target for the year because there hasn't been enough demand for electric vehicles. What do I do? Do I tell any consumer who's looking to buy a vehicle from me that they can't buy gasoline until the next year? I'm just trying to understand how it would work.
Manager, National Climate Program, Environmental Defence Canada
The requirement wouldn't be at the dealer level. It wouldn't be up to every dealer to sell 25% of their vehicles.... In fact, some dealers might not have any electric vehicles at all, and some might only sell electric vehicles.
Manager, National Climate Program, Environmental Defence Canada
You'd have that mandate at the national level for every car manufacturer that's selling in Canada. You can even set up a trading program so that those vehicle manufacturers that want to go further than that can sell part of their sales quota to other vehicle manufacturers. Make it a market if you want.
Conservative
Blake Richards Conservative Banff—Airdrie, AB
Sure, but we still go back to the point that not all cars that are sold here in Canada are manufactured here, so we wouldn't really be at 25%, I guess, unless you were doing it at the dealer level. I'm still not sure how that would look.
At the end of the day, maybe a lot of the manufacturers would just say, “You know what? We're not going to manufacture cars in Canada anymore because now we don't have to comply with this.”
I'm trying to think of the problems here, and that's certainly the first one I see. Then suddenly you have put a lot of people out of work, right?
Manager, National Climate Program, Environmental Defence Canada
I'm pretty sure the auto manufacturers aren't going to just leave the large Canadian market alone, just because they get legislated to increase their electric vehicle sales.
Conservative
Blake Richards Conservative Banff—Airdrie, AB
No, but we have no control over cars manufactured elsewhere, right? If they just say they're going to move their operations and go into the States, or wherever else maybe doesn't have that target, suddenly we have done that, right?
Manager, National Climate Program, Environmental Defence Canada
The experience in Quebec is interesting because Quebec did put in place exactly that kind of mandate, requiring a certain percentage of their sales, and automobile manufacturers said, “Great. We're going to send all the cars we make that are electric to Quebec,” which basically magnified the problem of supply in the rest of the country. Those long lists of people who want to buy electric vehicles just got longer in Ontario, Manitoba and New Brunswick because electric vehicle sales were increasing and mandated in Quebec.
What makes sense is for that to be set federally, and for manufacturers to supply that market demand in a way that increases electric vehicles gradually over time and allows for our road stock to be turned over to one that is much less impactful on the environment.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Wayne Easter
We are going to have to end it there, on a point of dispute, I guess.
With that, thank you to all the witnesses for preparing your presentations, coming in and taking our questions.
The meeting is adjourned.