Evidence of meeting #19 for Natural Resources in the 43rd Parliament, 2nd session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was minerals.
A recording is available from Parliament.
Conservative
Greg McLean Conservative Calgary Centre, AB
Are they research centres that are funded by government and utilities that are funded by the public?
President and Chief Executive Officer, Electric Mobility Canada
Some utilities are funded by the public. Some of them are private. It depends on.... If you talk to OPG or Hydro-Québec, they're differently funded, because some of them are private and some of them are public.
Conservative
Greg McLean Conservative Calgary Centre, AB
OPG is significantly funded by the Government of Ontario and Hydro-Québec is a Crown corporation, so really, they're all organizations subsidized by the taxpayer and the governments of Canada and the provinces.
Tell me the size of your budget.
President and Chief Executive Officer, Electric Mobility Canada
We have a budget of about $2 million a year.
President and Chief Executive Officer, Electric Mobility Canada
As I said, infrastructure providers, EV groups, environmental groups or vehicle manufacturing companies like New Flyer, these are all private companies.
President and Chief Executive Officer, Electric Mobility Canada
Most of our members are private companies.
Conservative
Greg McLean Conservative Calgary Centre, AB
Thank you very much. I appreciate it.
I'm going to go through a bit of an indication of statistics here. The federal government funds electric vehicles with $5,000 per vehicle right now in a program. They fund $300 million to vehicle buyers, $72 million of which goes to Tesla; $130 million to charging stations, most of which are sourced in the United States; $500 million to automakers that have plants in Canada and are American companies; and 100% writeoffs to companies that are buying electric vehicles at this point in time.
I would say that we're at the edge of a very subsidized industry, an industry subsidized by the people of Canada. I'm going to read a quote about the CFO from Transport Canada, when he was asked about this at the Senate committee in October 2020:
...the biggest winner among the car companies so far has been California-based Tesla, with more than $72 million....
But what are these sales doing to lower emissions?
The Trudeau government doesn’t know, according to...[Mr.] Pilgrim, who testified before the Senate...committee.
This is something we're looking at right now. Can you tell us at the end of the day, with some definitiveness—which the government hasn't been able to provide so far—what the net emissions associated with electric vehicles are?
President and Chief Executive Officer, Electric Mobility Canada
Actually, there will be a report out in a few weeks talking about net emissions from electric vehicles compared with equivalent gas vehicles, which are between 20% and 50% lower by vehicle, I'd say, whether you are in Quebec, Manitoba or Alberta. Even in Alberta, greenhouse gas emissions from electric vehicles are lower than that of gas vehicles. There will be an NRC report published in a few months, and an EMC report in a few weeks, actually, that will be giving all the details on that.
All in all, if what you're saying is that we are subsidizing an industry, we are also subsidizing other industries. We are making a transition, so if you want to transition from fossil fuel industry to a greener industry, it's a shift that the government wants to support, and that's what's happening across the world. Yes, we are lowering greenhouse gas emissions where we are going from gas vehicles to electric vehicles, whether it's light-duty or heavy-duty vehicles.
Conservative
Greg McLean Conservative Calgary Centre, AB
It's safe to say that you're lowering emissions at the tailpipe, but the effect of—
President and Chief Executive Officer, Electric Mobility Canada
No, I'm talking about all life-cycle emissions, not just the tailpipe.
Conservative
Greg McLean Conservative Calgary Centre, AB
Most studies show that the life-cycle emissions in Canada are not that significant at all. The amount we're getting in bang for buck is actually very little in the switchover to electric vehicles.
President and Chief Executive Officer, Electric Mobility Canada
The data you have must be obsolete, because I can show you the data where we see that we have a significant difference in greenhouse gas emissions from cradle to grave from extraction of natural resources, to assembly of vehicles, to the use of vehicles, to the [Technical difficulty—Editor].
Conservative
Greg McLean Conservative Calgary Centre, AB
Okay.
Tell me where the power comes from once we do away with the internal combustion engine. Right now electricity provides about one-third of the power in Canada. If we do away with self-sustained diesel, internal combustion engines, etc., where will the electric power come from?
President and Chief Executive Officer, Electric Mobility Canada
Already 82% of electricity production in Canada comes from non-emitting sources, whether it's—
Conservative
Greg McLean Conservative Calgary Centre, AB
We're not talking about electricity. We're talking about replacing power from other sources besides electricity and moving them to electricity. Where is the extra electricity going to come from?
President and Chief Executive Officer, Electric Mobility Canada
Actually, since electric vehicles, whether they're light duty or heavy duty, are much more efficient than gas vehicles, you need pretty much one-third of the energy that you use in a gas vehicle for an electric vehicle. This means that you need proportionately less energy to make electric vehicles run than gas vehicles. We will need more electricity. That's for sure, but there's huge potential in renewables, like wind, solar—
Conservative
Greg McLean Conservative Calgary Centre, AB
The question remains, where are we going to source this electricity?
Liberal
The Chair Liberal James Maloney
I'm going to have to interrupt both of you, unfortunately. We're a little bit over time on that segment.
We'll move on to Mr. Weiler.
Liberal
Patrick Weiler Liberal West Vancouver—Sunshine Coast—Sea to Sky Country, BC
Thank you, Mr. Chair.
I'd also like to thank all the witnesses for joining today.
I'd like to pick up where my colleague left off with asking some questions to Mr. Breton from EMC.
I've had a chance to read through some of your advocacy, and it seems it really does revolve around driving demand in Canada for EVs. I hadn't seen so much reporting on natural resources and how they fit into this, so I look forward to seeing your new reporting on this that you mentioned earlier in your opening.
Looking at your board, it's quite a diverse group—utilities, EV charging infrastructure, EV manufacturers, mining companies—and it's a good example of how the whole ecosystem works together or could work together.
In this committee so far, we've heard that we have many of the critical minerals that we need in Canada, but there is an opportunity for the transformation and value addition to be happening here. How do we make sure that what's mined in Canada is also processed in Canada and not just shipped abroad as raw materials to come back to Canada as a finished product?
President and Chief Executive Officer, Electric Mobility Canada
That's a very good question. That's why we will announce in May that we will put together the ZEV supply chain alliance, and Propulsion Québec will be part of that group. We have to work together to come up with a national strategy if we don't want to make the same mistakes that we've made in the past with wood, for instance, or oil. We want to refine as many products as we can in Canada and work in partnership with the U.S. as well.
As Sarah Houde very aptly said, the Europeans are moving forward with a European strategy. The Chinese are leading the way. If we want to have a Canadian and/or North American strategy, we have to make sure that all the key players in Canada work together and see that there's a big [Technical difficulty—Editor] opportunity for Canada to become a key player in the world.
But we have to have a plan. We don't have a plan yet. We don't have an electric mobility strategy yet. That's why we think that working with the Canadian government and the provinces will ensure that people see the great opportunity that is there right now, but we don't have five years to act. I can tell you that, because right now things are moving really quickly across the world. Things are moving really quickly, especially with the Biden administration coming into power, so we have to act quickly. The time is now.
Liberal
Patrick Weiler Liberal West Vancouver—Sunshine Coast—Sea to Sky Country, BC
I appreciate that answer, and I think we want to make sure we don't fall into the IKEA model, where we're just assembling here. The Government of Canada has made some very strategic investments recently, both within Ontario and then more recently in Quebec with one of your members, Lion Electric.
I'm curious as to where you would see the strategic investments of government best placed to ensure that we have those transformation activities happening in Canada.
President and Chief Executive Officer, Electric Mobility Canada
We have to make sure that people across Canada see that there's an opportunity. In Nova Scotia we have expertise. In Quebec we have expertise, as well as in Ontario, Manitoba, Alberta, Saskatchewan, B.C. That's why when Sarah said we have to find some ways to coordinate actions to make sure that we don't work in silos, I think that's the best way for us to move forward. I think the Canadian government should invest in research and development—that's for sure—but we have to invest in policies as well to make the transition not only for critical minerals and metals but also for the training and retraining of workers.
In the document, one thing that I forgot to mention is the fact that we will have to train and retrain a lot of people right now who will lose their jobs. We've seen that with Kodak. We've seen that with Blockbuster. Many new technologies are disruptive, so they create a new economy. We have to get the Canadian government to help those workers be trained and retrained.
Liberal
Patrick Weiler Liberal West Vancouver—Sunshine Coast—Sea to Sky Country, BC
Absolutely.
I'd like to switch gears a bit, and ask some questions of Mr. Blondal. I had a chance to be at your facility about a year and a half ago for an important announcement.
Where do you source your lithium from for your lithium-ion batteries?