Madam Speaker, I am pleased to rise as the member representing the newly named riding of Central Newfoundland, formerly known as Coast of Bays—Central—Notre Dame. I am truly grateful for those who supported me, put their trust in me and sent me to this place again to bring their thoughts, concerns and worries to this place.
I owe a world of gratitude to all those who helped on my campaign. We had a tremendous campaign, and it meant so much to everybody and even more to me. God bless everybody who was involved. I thank them very much. I will continue to speak out on behalf of the people of the riding of Central Newfoundland while I am in Ottawa, in this chamber or on the fisheries committee.
I rise today to speak to our Conservative opposition day motion calling on the Liberal government to immediately end its mandate to ban gas-powered vehicle sales in Canada. This is supposed to happen by 2035, when all vehicles sold in Canada are to be zero-emitting, and there are various targets along the way. By 2026, 20% of all vehicles sold in Canada are to be zero-emitting. By 2030, that figure is supposed to go to 60%. Of course, by 2035, it goes all the way up to 100%.
Consumers are rejecting EVs for various reasons. There is the fact that they lose 40% of their battery life in cold weather. We have lots of cold weather in Canada, and we certainly have it in Newfoundland and Labrador. That stat is based on the Canadian Automobile Association. They did the test. This is not something we are coming up with off the top of our heads. It is scientifically proven that these batteries cannot take the cold.
There is a lack of charging stations. In Newfoundland and Labrador, right now there are only 120 charging stations. Another reason people are choosing to be against electric vehicles is the cost of these vehicles. They cost, on average, $15,000 more than an equivalent gas-powered model.
Where do we stand heading into 2026? The latest data from February and March is that only 6.6% of vehicles that were purchased were EVs. In order to get on target for the 20% mark by the end of 2026, EV sales would have to triple what they were in the last recorded months. This is not going to happen.
What will be the result of this consumer rejection and of this Liberal plan? The Liberals would charge auto manufacturers that fail to meet this target a $20,000 tax per vehicle. I see my colleague from Winnipeg. He is listening intently because he knows this is the case.
Consumers are going to pay the price, and this is exactly what the Prime Minister wants. This is not straying from his mantra. We can go back to 2021, when he wrote a book called Values. I will give a little quote from that book. He said, “A host of other fiscal and regulatory policies can be highly effective in setting out the contours of a net-zero economy, including...regulations to phase out the sale of new internal-combustion vehicles in the next decade”. That is 10 years. That is not a long time.
“Fiscal and regulatory policies” is what the Prime Minister stated in his book. Let us unpack that a bit.
EVs are a failure in Canada. People do not want them, and as a result, Canadians are going to pay the price. They are going to pay the price for Liberal failures.
The government has known for quite some time that this mandate will fail. It has been warned by utility companies that the grid will not stand up to it. Electricity demand will go up by close to 23% by 2035, and the electricity market is governed by supply and demand like every other commodity. With the continued electrification of everything, the price of electricity is going to go up. That will be another inadvertent consequence, with collateral damage to the people of Canada.
To have our grid ready with additional power generation, with an upgraded transmission grid and with more charging stations, the cost is forecast to be $300 billion. This is according to the Liberal government's own research, published last July by Natural Resources Canada. The government knows its zero-emissions EV target will not work.
Building electricity generation and transmission infrastructure takes time. If we are going to expand our grid by 23% just to have enough electricity to power these vehicles, it is going to take decades to build that kind of infrastructure.
What is the Liberal Prime Minister's real goal? It is to tax Canadians. Canadians will pay the price. They will pay for this doomed plan. Who will also pay for it, besides the consumer? According to the peer-reviewed Canadian Journal of Economics, in the best-case scenario, our auto sector will lose $140 billion by 2035 under these mandates, and the worst-case scenario is that it continues to lose until 2050, at a cost of $1.3 trillion. Can members believe that? It is possible that these EV mandates could cost the automotive industry $1.3 trillion.
Job losses in the sector are projected to be 137,000 jobs. That is not my number. The hit to our GDP would be 4.8% nationally per year, and the demand for autos would drop by 10.5%.
All of this is to drop our emissions in Canada by a mere 6%. It will cost $3,400 per tonne. That is 20 times the original Trudeau carbon tax nominal rate per tonne. There is no need for this. If consumers think electric vehicles are better, they will choose them.
According to the Fraser Institute, “Electric vehicle mandates mean misery all around”. That was the headline out of the Fraser Institute, a very respected organization. It goes on to say, “The latest news of slowing demand for electric vehicles highlight the profound hazards of the federal government’s Soviet-style mandate”. That ums it up. It is a Soviet-style mandate. EV mandates will mean lots of suffering and no freedom.