I began these discussions with the federal government 18 years ago. That's quite a while. As I was saying earlier, China has really got a head start of many years over the entire planet. It's not just a Canadian problem, but one that also affects Europe, the United States, Japan and Korea, where people were much less interested in electric vehicles. For the past five years now, however, the world has woken up and there's a lot of catching up to do.
Honestly, I think the federal government has been doing a lot over the past two years to speed up the adoption of electric vehicles; measures include rebates on the purchase of light electric vehicles, and here was the announcement this summer of a rebate on the purchase of medium and heavy electric vehicles, and on infrastructure deployment.
Even though his figures don't hold water, Mr. David Adams is right. We obviously need more charging infrastructure. The federal government can't do it alone and that's why the governments of Ontario and Quebec, the Maritime provinces and British Columbia have been doing a lot of work in this area.
As for research and development, don't forget that a 2022 Tesla makes use of two battery technologies: LFP technology, developed at the Hydro-Québec Research Institute, and NMC technology, developed by Jeff Dahn's team at Dalhousie University in Nova Scotia.
One key factor is making sure that there are qualified workers capable of effecting the transition of declining industry sectors to this growing industry sector. Indeed, the transportation electrification sector is the most rapidly developing sector in the world, and that's why there's a lot of work to be done.