Industry and Technology Committee on May 4th, 2026

[Cherith Sinasac]

I don't know if I'm going to answer your question directly, but we see it as a major barrier. We're an electrical industry, and when a customer is asking us to install an EV charger, one of the major barriers we keep seeing is the electrical infrastructure itself. This problem is absolutely massive. It's not going to solve itself without some government intervention.

We have existing multi-unit residential buildings that need to be retrofitted, but what we really need to stop doing is building multi-unit residential buildings that are not EV-ready. That's continuing to make that problem bigger. We're locking out a large proportion of Canadians from accessing EV charging at home.

[Karim Bardeesy, Liberal, Taiaiako'n—Parkdale—High Park, ON]

Are there Canadian companies that are well-positioned to do this servicing and hookup?

[Cherith Sinasac]

Oh, yes. The electrical supply chain here in Canada is robust. We are highly integrated with the U.S., but definitely those services are here in Canada, as are the electrical contractors. EFC does not represent them, but we obviously work closely with them. There are electrical contractors here in Canada to do that work.

[Karim Bardeesy, Liberal, Taiaiako'n—Parkdale—High Park, ON]

Mr. Kingston, I wanted to ask you about the role of EV rebates, which you mentioned in your statement. I know that you have a relationship with dealers. What are you hearing from dealers and the home office about the opportunities that rebates create?

[Brian Kingston]

Demand for EVs is directly related to rebates. We saw that when the previous federal government rebate went away and the demand for EVs declined quite significantly. It's the same thing at the provincial level. With the introduction of EVAP, there's been an immediate renewed interest in electric vehicles. This is fundamental. If we want more people to switch to EVs, we have to incentivize it in the early years.

[Karim Bardeesy, Liberal, Taiaiako'n—Parkdale—High Park, ON]

Is it necessary, in your view, that those rebates be available for cars manufactured in Canada only?

[Brian Kingston]

No. We support the EV rebate being broadly applied—with the exception of China, which I'm happy to get into. The fact is that we don't build a full suite of electric vehicles in Canada. The only company that's building EVs is Stellantis. If you were to limit it to purely Canadian production, that would be helpful to the production that's occurring here, but we simply wouldn't see enough uptake to drive demand.

[Karim Bardeesy, Liberal, Taiaiako'n—Parkdale—High Park, ON]

Thank you very much.

I have a couple of questions for Mr. Turner.

You mentioned the role of tailpipe emissions as a policy that not only drives innovation but also drives greenhouse gas emission reductions. Could you speak more to your observation around the policy instrument choice of more stringent tailpipe emissions standards?

[Jeff Turner]

The context here is that the previous policy, the EV availability standard, specified a market share of sales of specifically EVs, battery electric vehicles and plug-in hybrids that would increase over time. The shift to a GHG standard responds to requests for more flexibility in achieving emissions reductions.

In the near term, that opens the door to non-plug-in hybrid vehicles that are still powered by fossil fuels but that offer significant reductions in overall fuel consumption. That policy does create flexibility. The only question is, in the long term, how stringent do the targets become? After a certain point, you need to shift towards plug-in vehicles to attain more significant emissions reductions.

[Karim Bardeesy, Liberal, Taiaiako'n—Parkdale—High Park, ON]

We know that the U.S. administration has recently abandoned tailpipe emission standards. Can you speak to other jurisdictions that have them and their effectiveness?

[Jeff Turner]

We've seen a significant push for emissions reductions in Europe. There's obviously a lot of debate over the timelines, as we've seen here as well.

As we've seen in other markets, at this point, EVs represent about one-quarter of new vehicle sales around the world. That's a reflection of policy issues like emissions targets and the significant technology progress as well.

At this point, it's frustrating for me, as a Canadian, to see us behind the global average, but I'm excited for this new policy to be defined over the coming years, along with the other supportive measures to push towards those longer-term targets.

[Karim Bardeesy, Liberal, Taiaiako'n—Parkdale—High Park, ON]

Could you speak either broadly or specifically about how EV-friendly policies incent economic activity over a broader range of geographic areas rather than just in the manufacturing space?

[Jeff Turner]

Charging infrastructure is obviously a key ingredient. Most people do most of their charging at home if they have a driveway. Right away, there we have work for electricians to upgrade homes to enable that charging infrastructure.

I think most people right away think about the equivalent of a gas station. We need public charging infrastructure to enable longer trips. That's a significant investment that we need to make across the country, not concentrated in just one region for manufacturing. In every region across the country, we need electrical contractors, civil contractors and the companies that are producing this charging infrastructure as well.

[Karim Bardeesy, Liberal, Taiaiako'n—Parkdale—High Park, ON]

Thank you.

[The Chair, Liberal, Ben Carr]

Thank you very much, Mr. Bardeesy.

Mr. Ste-Marie, the floor is yours for six minutes.

[Gabriel Ste-Marie, Bloc, Joliette—Manawan, QC]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

My first questions are for Mr. Kingston, but first I'd like to take a moment to welcome all the witnesses. Once again, we have a lot to get through today. I thank them for joining us.

I, too, would like to extend a special welcome to Mr. Kovrig.

Mr. Kovrig, during your years of detention in China, we followed every news item about you throughout Quebec. We were very worried about you, given that you were detained under horrific conditions, and you were facing Kafkaesque accusations. I'm glad to see you're now out of those conditions. It's very moving for me to be able to say these words on behalf of my colleagues and friends.

Now back to the committee's work.

Mr. Kingston, you were in the room during the minister's presentation in the first hour.

Do you have any comments to make about the minister's remarks or on the exchanges you heard here, not just about the electric vehicle industry, but also about the auto industry as a whole?

[Brian Kingston]

Is there any specific element, or is it just more broadly?

[Gabriel Ste-Marie, Bloc, Joliette—Manawan, QC]

Generally speaking.

[Brian Kingston]

With respect to the whole concept that Canada is going to attract Chinese joint ventures, that is not feasible. That is not realistic. It's not going to happen. That's not how Chinese OEMs operate.

If you look at any of the JVs that they've done in other markets around the world, they're with knock-down kits. That's what they do. If they build a plant, they bring in labour from China. As we've seen in Hungary, the conditions have been characterized as slave-like conditions. This whole concept around creating JVs and attracting Chinese investment is really missing the point.

We need to focus on protecting what we have, which is an industry that is totally integrated with the United States. That is never going to change, so our priority must be on working with the Americans, not opening the market to China.

[Gabriel Ste-Marie, Bloc, Joliette—Manawan, QC]

Alright, thank you.

At the end of her appearance, the minister alluded to a possible partnership with the European Union to develop a common market for electric vehicles.

Does this idea have real potential, or should we really be targeting the U.S. market?

[Brian Kingston]

No, there's no world in which we're going to create an industry that exports large volumes to Europe. We've seen in the past some manufacturers send small volumes of particular cars to the EU, but if you're going to service Europe, you'll do it from Europe or somewhere close by.

This industry has been created over 60 years based on a North American supply chain. We just happen to sit beside the largest, most dynamic and wealthiest economy in the world. The gravity model of trade dictates that you're going to do the overwhelming share of your trade with the largest economy that is in closest proximity.

It's not only that, but the European Union is not what I would characterize as a high-growth market. I was just there a couple of weeks ago. There's a lot of hand-wringing about the future of Europe, demographic challenges and weak economic growth.

Our future lies in working with the American economy. That's where we have to focus our efforts.

[Gabriel Ste-Marie, Bloc, Joliette—Manawan, QC]

Thank you very much for your answers.

My next question is for Ms. Sinasac.

What you're suggesting is very interesting. You're saying that electric vehicle batteries should be seen as an asset that could help power the entire grid and manage peak demand. We could even use them during power outages.

To the best of your knowledge, are there cities, countries or regions where something like this is already in place, or are we still just at the proposal stage?

[Cherith Sinasac]

There are EV adoptions around the globe. The Netherlands, obviously, is the top European leader, with widespread vehicle-to-grid capabilities and charging infrastructure. Germany entered a commercial vehicle-to-grid phase in 2026, with a new framework for removing regulatory barriers. You'll see that Mercedes-Benz is now releasing a vehicle-to-grid-ready mass market car. Look no further than the U.S., in California, where they are currently piloting projects.

[Gabriel Ste-Marie, Bloc, Joliette—Manawan, QC]

Alright, thank you very much.

I would have liked to ask what's needed to start doing this in parts of Canada or in the provinces, but my colleague Mr. Bardeesy already asked you. So I already have my answer.

Mr. Turner, do you have any comments on integrating electric vehicle batteries into Quebec's grid, for example, or into a regional grid?

[Jeff Turner]

Yes, certainly. Thank you. I'll answer in English.

This is a new and exciting area for Canada. We have some exciting progress in different parts of the country. Nova Scotia Power conducted a bidirectional charging pilot a few years ago. Just last year, BC Hydro demonstrated a bus that was providing power back to the grid.

This is an important emerging area that's showing a lot of promise. The utilities that we work with across the country are paying a lot of attention to this and see EVs as an overall net benefit to the grid. The increased demand during off-peak times, when there's spare capacity, increases revenue for the electric utility to help pay for all the fixed costs. Our analysis suggests that thanks to that, and with careful management of EV load growth, we can actually drive electricity costs down for all consumers.

There are important steps to be taken. We're helping to coordinate a nationwide effort to seek coordination on vehicle grid integration across the country. We'll be tackling such issues as the communications standards that are required to support this, cybersecurity issues and how to make the business case for these types of programs and policies.