For us, the piece of analysis that hasn't been done thoroughly is the options available to Canadians. Moving to a heat pump costs $20,000. Buying an EV has an incremental cost that is out of reach for most people. The economic theory is that, if you tax people, they will make behavioural changes. When the behavioural change is out of reach for all of the reasons that we're discussing today, I think it's time to revisit that initial premise of “we will tax it and people will make a switch”. We need to relook at the initial assumptions that went into this thinking and come up with a better solution.
On November 14th, 2023. See this statement in context.