Mr. Speaker, I am going to split my time.
I rise today in support of the Conservative motion in opposition to the government's authoritarian, misguided and altogether nonsensical ban on gas-powered vehicles. A ban on gas-powered vehicles sounds like some kind of conspiracy theory or something straight out of a science fiction novel, but it is real stuff. It is happening right now, and the Minister of Environment told us as much last week. She did not tell us that it was some aspiration or some kind of 100-year plan. She told us that it was a hard ban, a concrete requirement the government is going to bring in less than 10 years from now.
We know that members across the way like to think while wearing their radical thinking caps or their CN Tower-climbing jumpsuits, but let us take them off for one second and really consider what a policy like this does for Canadians and the Canadian economy. It would mean that we would need nearly 700,000 charging ports from coast to coast in less than a decade. We have 60,000 right now, and get this. In 2024, last year, the government managed to install fewer chargers than it did the year before. Apparently, the only thing moving slower than the construction of electric vehicle charging stations is the government email mandating them.
This ban would also mean that $600 billion would have to be spent preparing infrastructure. That is over $11,000 for every single car on the road at the moment. It would mean even lower car sales, lost jobs, higher auto prices and misery for consumers and workers alike. That is not according to me. That is according to the CEOs of some of the largest automakers in Canada.
Canadian economists and the non-partisan number crunchers say that this ban would cost us 38,000 jobs, if the sector remains operational at all. The boots on the ground, the people who make the cars, purchase the parts and navigate international trading relationships, say that a move like this would take us out of alignment with key trading partners like the U.S. in an integrated North American market, threatening our position in the supply chain and the global economy.
Let us not forget that the Liberals want to do all of this at a time when our auto sector is already menaced by tariffs south of the border, when we are already losing jobs left, right and centre, The Globe and Mail reporting more today, and when Canadians are still reeling from the worst inflation in four decades. Add an industrial carbon tax to this and we now have a recipe for uncompetitiveness, all while preaching the bravado of “elbows up”. Canadians cannot even think about putting food on the table or finding a place to live. Frankly, I think the last thing on their minds is putting a new Tesla in the driveway.
The government is going to come in with another job-killing mandate, another burden on consumers and the economy, all because it knows better than people do. I do not think the environment minister has taken any time to think about these mandates in a real way. I know that her accomplice, the heritage minister, who actually put these mandates in place, has not either. This is what we get when we govern by vibes instead of governing by logic and reason. Canadians have certainly gotten used to this from the Liberals, but even by established standards, this ban deserves some kind of award in creative governance.
If we take a deeper dive into the program and the inconsistencies and lack of oversight, we end up with just plain lunacy. I think Canadians watching this at home have no idea that it is happening. This is a plot twist that nobody saw coming, except for every single automaker in the industry.
The federal electric vehicle rebate program just ran out of money two months early, poof, gone, vanished, just like that, but the sales mandates are still in place. It is like telling Canadians that they have to eat nothing but steak for dinner every night while simultaneously taking away their grocery budget and calling it a climate plan.
Automakers, dealers and consumers were shockingly not thrilled to find out that the $5,000 rebate evaporated overnight. Some poor souls even went to the dealership expecting that rebate and did not get it when they were in line to buy their electric cars. I am not a fan of the rebate to begin with, but nothing says stable investment climate like a last-minute pullback of a rebate that Canadians thought they were getting.
Let us not forget the nearly $31 billion in subsidies that were handed out to foreign automakers and battery manufacturers, all of which are already going bust in a really big way. There are billions for multinational corporations and their executives, but heaven forbid a consumer gets $5,000 to buy one of these things.
The new economic model the Liberals always think of is to subsidize the company that builds the product, then subsidize the consumer that buys it, and hope that nobody notices that the math does not add up. We cannot prop up both ends of the see-saw forever. Eventually, someone is going to want a product the government will not write a cheque for. Markets do not work on that basis, when Ottawa plays both the buyer and the seller in all of this.
In Ottawa's mind, the electric vehicle revolution is happening because they said so. Incentives are not their problem. Infrastructure is also somebody else's problem. Communication seems optional for them, but the mandates are very real, and they are sticking to them.
The result will be that automakers will face penalties for not selling enough electric vehicles, consumers will face higher prices and dealers will face unsellable inventory. They have told us as much. They have told the government as much. Ottawa will face absolutely no accountability for any of it.
What is more is that the liberty and freedom of choice that is guaranteed to every single Canadian vanishes with each passing decision. They are being replaced by a government that thinks it knows best about what someone should eat, what they should drink, how they should drink it, or what you should use to drink it, and yes, what kind of car they should drive. For those watching this at home, the government does not want them to drive their gas-powered cars anymore. It has decided to mandate that everybody drives an electric car. It is insanity.
The bureaucrats, the middle managers, the members of Parliament and the ministers of the government think they know better than Canadian consumers, and they want to make those decisions from Ottawa. They think they should be in control of every aspect of someone's life. We have seen this show before. We know how it ends. We can take our pick. It is a mandate, a carbon tax, some weird DEI quota or plastic straws. The Liberals believe they can control someone's life better than they can. They can make decisions better than Canadians can for themselves, and we get significantly worse outcomes. In fact, they backtrack on some of those outcomes. We get those outcomes at a greater cost. It sometimes takes seven times longer than it should, and it leaves everybody worse off.
Instead of a government that does a few important things really well, we get a government that does a zillion things badly. We still cannot get anybody's passport to come in the mail on time because the passport printer is broken and the mail people are on strike.
This is a government that wants to do everything for Canadians, to creep into their lives and to take control. The government wants to build an economy based on edicts, mandates and ideologies, and a healthy sprinkling of fairy dust, and none of this is actually going to happen.
Edicts, mandates, ideology and all of those things do not put food on the table. All of those things do not actually help people. All of those things do not provide the choice that someone should have as a Canadian. This might come as news to the government, but that is what it does.
Individual people living their lives as they see fit, participating in a free market, making decisions based on rational analysis and scarce resources is something the government knows nothing about.
For instance, in my community, there are lots of people who drive electric vehicles because it makes sense. They drive short distances. We do not have erratic weather. We do not have really cold temperatures. With the right incentives, it makes sense based on what people choose. However, try telling somebody who lives in rural Alberta, who has to drive an hour or more just to run errands, and where it gets to -40°C, that they are going to be mandated to drive an electric vehicle by the government. It makes no sense and is not rational, which is exactly why we oppose this mandate.
All those on the opposite side of the aisle might be content to pursue the ideological war on the gas-powered car, but Conservatives on this side of the House will not stand for it. We will speak for every single person who wants to make their own decisions, who wants to make a rational economic decision. We will stand up for the auto workers and for those who build our sector. We will stand up for the decisions made that are common sense, by the auto sector, by the workers in the auto sector and by every single Canadian who wants to make a decision.