Dealers are on the front lines of this. I've said it publicly and I've said it privately. I say the same thing in private as I say in public on all of this. If they keep the EV mandate, rich people are still going to be able to afford cars. It's rural Canadians and Canadians from middle-class backgrounds who won't be able to afford cars.
There are only two ways the auto sector and dealers will have this managed for them by manufacturers. You either pay the $20,000 per vehicle or you sell fewer cars. Our dealers are worried sick that the global manufacturers, to meet these targets, are just going to put fewer cars on the marketplace. When you have fewer cars on the marketplace, there is less choice for consumers and prices go up. You can get the calculation for rural Canadians and Canadians from middle-class backgrounds. The whole thing is a pending disaster.
What's worse about it—I can maybe be a little more direct than Mr. Kingston or Mr. Adams on this—is you have two other governments that have EV mandates. We have the B.C. government and the Quebec government. They've told us that they're waiting for the federal government to move so they can get rid of the mandates there because they know they won't work. Everybody knows they won't work. I support the intentions behind this. Dealers support electric vehicles. We've invested hundreds of millions of dollars. Each dealer has put in more than $1 million to have the lifts, the charging infrastructure, put in their dealership, but what we can't have is a system that just subsidizes Tesla.
Mr. Ste-Marie mentioned that they get a subsidy on the front end of the purchase of the vehicle, but they also get a subsidy from all the other manufacturers who have to buy credits for them. If you want to help Tesla and not your local car dealer, keep the EV mandate.