Automotive
The Pawns Push Back against the Trudeau Government’s Electric Vehicle Diktats
From the C2C Journal
By Gwyn Morgan
Perhaps there is a certain twisted logic to the woke left’s attempt to convince schoolchildren that math is racist and that 2 plus 2 might well equal 5. For this may be the only way to get the “math” surrounding the Justin Trudeau government’s push to force Canadians into buying only electric vehicles as of 2035 to work in any way at all. Gwyn Morgan reviews the actual math of key elements of the EV transition scheme – the electric power needs, the subsidized purchases, the tax credits, the vast number of required charging stations, the maintenance of roads – and finds both the costs and the implementation obstacles to be a mixture of steep, dubious and prohibitive. So much so, Morgan concludes, as to cast the entire EV transition in doubt.
The federal government has mandated that all new passenger vehicles and light-duty trucks sold in Canada be electrically powered by 2035. Two of the many serious obstacles to achieving that goal will be the requirement for vastly more electrical generating capacity along with hundreds of thousands of additional charging stations.
A study by the Fraser Institute released in March, Electric Vehicles and the Demand for Electricity, found that the addition of millions of EVs to Canada’s roads would push nationwide demand for electricity up by more than 15 percent, requiring the equivalent of either 10 new large hydroelectric dams the size of B.C.’s nearly completed Site C Dam on the Peace River, or 13 large new natural gas-fuelled facilities. The Site C dam needed 10 years to gain environmental approval, took an additional decade to build and has cost $16 billion. All to generate approximately 1,100 megawatts of electricity. Most of Canada’s viable large-scale sites have already been dammed, and opposition to any new dam would be bound to be even more stubborn than against Site C. Planning, funding, building and commissioning 10 new dams the size of Site C or larger in the next 11 years is clearly unrealistic.
The cost of a charge: Research suggests that adding millions of EVs to Canadian roads would require an over 15 percent increase in nationwide electricity supply – equivalent to 10 large hydroelectric dams the size of B.C.’s $16 billion Site C Dam on the Peace River (bottom). (Source of bottom photo: BC Hydro)
That leaves the natural gas-fired plants. Technically, these could be built in such a time-frame, and western Canada is producing sufficient natural gas to fuel them. But not only is the Justin Trudeau government vehemently opposed to building any new fossil fuel-powered electricity plants, doing so would kibosh those EV’s zero emissions; they would become fossil-fuel-powered vehicles, just indirectly.
Powering up all the anticipated new EVs will require a major push to install charging stations all over Canada. Here again, taxpayers are being forced to ride to the rescue with Ottawa’s $680 million ‘Zero Emission Vehicle Infrastructure Program’. Meaning, subsidized charging stations.
In addition, the cost of building and operating those gas plants would be enormous. And who would pay? Since it’s virtually impossible to separate power billing by source, their costs would need to be rolled into existing electricity rates. That would increase the burden on Canadian ratepayers and businesses, many of which are already struggling. And it might even lead inflation-weary, economically hard-pressed citizens sick of all the costly political games to riot in the streets. The only alternative, then, would be huge nationwide power subsidies in a country with an already massive national debt.
The whole campaign to “transition” Canadians into EVs is already prodigiously expensive. Consider just the direct EV subsidies, aimed at narrowing the price advantage that internal combustion engine vehicles have over EVs. The federal government currently kicks in a $5,000 subsidy for every EV purchased in Canada. Another 24 million or so EVs will need to be sold to switch over Canada’s entire light-duty vehicle fleet. The overall subsidy math is pretty simple.
Then, powering up all the anticipated new EVs will require a major push to install charging stations all over Canada. Here again, taxpayers are being forced to ride to the rescue with Ottawa’s $680 million Zero Emission Vehicle Infrastructure Program (ZEVIP). Meaning, subsidized charging stations. ZEVIP comes after the federal government has already spent more than $1 billion “to make EV’s more affordable and chargers more accessible for Canadians.” How has that worked out? As of late 2021 the entire country had just 6,000 publicly available EV charging stations. ZEVIP has the grandiose goal of adding another 84,500. But Canada requires some 160,000 gasoline and diesel pumps to keep its vehicle fleet running and make refuelling reasonably convenient nearly anywhere. Recharging an EV takes at least 10 times as long as gassing up a regular car, implying the need for a couple of million EV charging stations.
Good luck with that: The Government of Canada claims its $680 million Zero Emission Vehicle Infrastructure Program will help get nearly 85,000 charging stations built. But in the U.S., President Joe Biden’s US$7.5 billion charging station construction program has produced just eight charging stations in two-and-a-half years. (Sources of photos: (top) Marc Bruxelle/Shutterstock; (bottom) EV Central)
The program will also be burdened with the maddening reality – as I detailed in this recent column – that nothing government touches comes in on time or on budget any longer. So what will ZEVIP’s $680 million really buy? Recent U.S. experience may be sadly instructive. The enormous Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act passed at the behest of the Joe Biden Administration in late 2021 allotted US$7.5 billion to build a promised 500,000 EV charging stations by 2030. As of last month, the U.S. government had succeeded in building a grand total of – wait for it – eight. No, there aren’t any zeros missing. So I’m not hopeful that EV charging stations will magically mushroom all across our nation, either.
Adding to the taxpayer-committed largesse here in Canada, a recent report by the Osler law firm carries news of a new EV supply-chain incentive included in the Liberals’ gargantuan Budget 2024 that provides a further 10 percent tax credit, this one for buildings used to manufacture EVs, batteries, and related materials. It comes on top of the existing, massive 15-30 percent tax credits on investment in or manufacture of “clean” technology and EVs. The latest corporate giveaway was designed for Honda’s recently announced $15 billion plant, but also applies to other new projects.
If your head isn’t already spinning in trying to comprehend the massive scale of consumer and taxpayer largesse being shovelled towards the EV industry – all in an effort to convince Canadians to switch en masse to these expensive, unreliable and inconvenient cars – there’s another huge subsidy: free road use. We reprehensible drivers of gasoline and diesel vehicles pay a lot in fuel taxes.
The Canadian Taxpayers Federation’s 24th Annual Gas Tax Honesty Report shows that Canadian drivers in 2022 paid an average of 55 cents per litre in gasoline taxes (based on a retail price of $1.76 per litre; exact tax rates vary by province, of course). Combining that information with Statistics Canada data estimating total gasoline consumption of 42.5 billion litres in 2022 means that Canadian drivers collectively pay over $23 billion in road use taxes annually to all levels of government.
Meanwhile, EV drivers continue to pay nothing. Besides the grievous disparity of this situation, Trudeau’s EV mandate would gradually remove gasoline and diesel-fuelled vehicles from the road. Then who will pay to maintain the roads for all those EVs to travel on? Clearly, EVs will need to be taxed in some way, and some provinces are just starting to do so, like Saskatchewan’s $150 extra annual registration fee on EVs, introduced in late 2021. But such baby steps will need to get a lot larger if gasoline-powered vehicles really do start vanishing from daily traffic. But having to start paying their share to maintain roads will make EVs even less attractive to car buyers.
Clearly, the answer to the question ‘Will the shift to EVs have any net environmental benefit?’ is ‘No.’ Moreover, the human cost of trying to meet the EV targets will be profoundly negative.
Now for the most important question. Will this big shift to EVs have any environmental benefit? Manufacturing EV batteries requires huge quantities of “rare earth” minerals as well as conventional metals. A Fraser Institute report published in November, Can Metal Mining Match the Speed of the Planned Electric Vehicle Transition? references an International Energy Agency study showing that to meet international EV pledges a gargantuan 388 new lithium, nickel, cobalt and other related metal mines will be needed worldwide. But the typical timeline from regulatory application to first production varies from six-nine years for lithium to 13-18 years for nickel. Rare-earth mineral production can’t possibly ramp up fast enough to meet the Trudeau government’s 2035 all-EV “mandate”.
What about the human cost of all those mines? Most of the world’s known large rare-earth mineral deposits are in developing countries. A report from a team of researchers led by Northwestern University, entitled Understanding cobalt’s human cost, examined the impact of cobalt mining in the Democratic Republic of Congo. It found that such mining had “dire effects on human well-being,” including “increases in violence, substance abuse, food and water insecurity, and physical and mental health challenges,” as well as uprooting farmers from their lands and in some cases kicking them out of their houses. Half of the world’s rare-earth minerals lie in Africa, where reports of child labour and other human rights abuses are all too common.
The human cost of a “green” future: Depicted is the main cobalt mining site in the Democratic Republic of Congo, where 75 percent of this critical input to EV batteries is mined; as one recent academic report notes, this hazardous industry has “dire effects on human well-being”, including on physical and mental health, and often involves child-labour and human rights abuses. (Source of photos: Siddharth Kara, retrieved from The Independent)
Clearly, the answer to the question “Will the shift to EVs have any net environmental benefit?” is “No.” Moreover, the human cost of trying to meet the EV targets will be profoundly negative.
These formidable direct obstacles to a smooth EV transition make it highly unlikely that Trudeau’s ban on gasoline vehicles will happen. But the most profound underlying reason the entire scheme is probably doomed comes from the man who first articulated the principles of personal and economic freedom. In his 1759 book The Theory of Moral Sentiments, economist and philosopher Adam Smith stated, “The man of the system seems to imagine that he can arrange the different members of a great society with as much ease as the hand arranges different pieces upon a chessboard. But people are not chess pieces to be moved around by a hand from above.”
Like philosopher Adam Smith’s (top left) “man of the system”, Justin Trudeau (top right) tries to arrange people as if they are “pieces upon a chessboard”; but the thousands of unsold EVs filling vast parking lots in China, the U.S. and seaports around the world suggest car-buying consumers are still capable of independent decision-making. (Sources of photos: (top right) The Canadian Press/Chad Hipolito; (bottom) Golden Shrimp/Shutterstock)
Justin Trudeau is the very embodiment of Adam Smith’s “man of the system”, attempting to push Canadians around like pawns on an ideological chessboard. But even as I write this column come reports of EV sales collapsing – and of vast parking lots of unsold and perhaps unsaleable EVs in China, Australia and dockside at various seaports – despite aggressive price slashing and all those ever-increasing taxpayer subsidies. The “hand from above” is losing to the independent thinking of regular people.
Gwyn Morgan is a retired business leader who was a director of five global corporations.
David Krayden
General Motors laid off 500 workers at his Electric Vehicle (EV) plant in Ingersoll, ON.
It had nothing to do with the tariffs.
It had everything to do with the plummeting fascination that Canadians have for EVs. They are selling like used Edsels in the late 1950s. In a useless attempt to create a demand for these “green” vehicles (which aren’t actually green at all because the production of electricity does not result from magic) the governments of former Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and Ontario Premier Doug Ford wasted $42 billions of your tax money. And it was all to bolster an ideology not a demand for cars. There is no demand for these vehicles.
“You just lost 500 jobs. They’ve nuked those jobs. They’re not there anymore.”
-Dan McTeague
Ford, who saw this coming when he called an early provincial election that he knew he probably was going to lose if he waited for the anticipated vote, was actually honest to reporters when he admitted the layoffs had nothing to do with the dreaded Trump tariff but everything to do with public taste.
“What I understand from the president of General Motors that I spoke to, it’s going to be about 500 employees. Has nothing to do with the tariffs. He said, the volume is not there. People are not purchasing like they thought they would. So, they have thousands of vehicles sitting there. We make sure we support the workers and make sure that we get the government, especially Canada Post, to pick up some of these vehicles, because that’s what it’s geared for you.”
So, Ford expects Canada Post, another government agency on its last legs, to come to the rescue and pick up all these excess EVs? Sounds like it. The irony is that Ford came into office largely because the previous Liberal government had gone hog wild with its green energy program and hydro rates were among the highest in North America. Ford used to say that a industrialized province like Ontario can’t possibly prosper or even subsist on the energy provided by windmills and solar panels. He was right then but over the years he became firmly ensconced in the pocket of Trudeau and the Liberals, just as he is today with Mark Carney.
I spoke to my old friend Dan McTeague on Saturday about this mess. McTeague is a former Liberal MP from the GTA who is the president of Canadians for Affordable Energy today and well known for predicting gas prices across Canada as the @ gaspricewizard on X. As an MP, he always put principal above expediency, and he is no different today. McTeague is anxious for a Conservative Party of Canada (CPC) victory in this federal election and he is actively campaigning for a CPC nominee.
McTeague was not surprised over the dismal outlook for EVs.
“This is about Pierre Poilievre saying your policies are garbage. They’ve hurt Canadians. They’ve undermined the financial feasibility and sustainability of the federal government and the provincial government, and we’re going to get rid of them, just like we’re going to get rid of the CBC.”
-Dan McTeague
“Well, on the 22nd of March after having gone to the Ingersoll plant. I just tweeted a little while ago. I actually went there, filmed what was there in inventory. There were thousands of these vehicles just sitting there doing nothing. Obviously, Doug Ford didn’t get it on the 22nd of March. I said it says a lot about why the Ford nation is giddy about supporting Carney, he’s committed billions in world EV and battery manufacturing like this one in Ingersoll, where the provincial Feds kicked in over half a billion for bright drops. Was supposed to sell 100,000 units. Only sold 2100 actually, it got wrong. It was 2500 they might have probably given that a few away there. But look, this is anticipating what was there. It’s pretty obvious. I mean, I don’t just predict gas prices. Pretty good idea policies, EV mandates, the entire nets,” McTeague said.
McTeague explained that the “EV mandates are toast,” not just because President Donald Trump eliminated them but because they simply never had traction with consumers. He noted that Carney is playing games with the consumer carbon tax – because he hasn’t eliminated it but merely reduced it temporarily to zero – and has continued to keep emissions caps in place.
“Why are they doubling down on forcing us to have California-style appliances, which are extraordinarily costly to consumers. There are thousands of these things that are coming up. GFANZ, the Glasgow Financial Alliance for Net Zero that Mark Carney put forward, is now subject to antitrust review in the United States. This guy could be charged and billions of dollars taken away from the GFANZ organization,” McTeague said, adding that “anybody who hopped on the bandwagon a few years ago on net zero is now looking pretty damn foolish, and it’s amazing to see so many stunned Canadians falling in for this.”
“You just lost 500 jobs. They’ve nuked those jobs. They’re not there anymore.”
The former Liberal MP said the EV program is just one example of a failed economic record from the Trudeau-Carney regime. “However you slice it, the Liberals have had 10 years of failed policies. Net Zero has laid an egg. It’s not doing anything. And what they’re going to try to do is use a lot more public money and hopefully put enough wool over everyone’s eyes, so that we continue to go down this road of more recklessness as a result of what we’ve seen on EVs.
“Anybody who hopped on the bandwagon a few years ago on net zero is now looking pretty damn foolish, and it’s amazing to see so many stunned Canadians falling in for this.”
McTeague also wondered how the Ontario premier has moved from a commonsense politician on green energy to a cheerleader for Trudeau’s environmental authoritarianism. “For Doug Ford to have signed onto this. I mean, Shame on him, but it probably explains why he doesn’t want to support Pierre Poilievre.”
Said McTeague: “This is about Pierre Poilievre saying your policies are garbage. They’ve hurt Canadians. They’ve undermined the financial feasibility and sustainability of the federal government and the provincial government, and we’re going to get rid of them, just like we’re going to get rid of the CBC.”
“And so, for those reasons, you’re going to see why people are not supporting Pierre Poilievre, because they know, you know, they know which side of the bread is going to get buttered and for guys like Doug Ford, Bad mistake, back the wrong horse, and now we’re holding the bag. That’s why he called the election early.”
McTeague said the federal election is a watershed moment for people to decide what kind of future they want: prosperity or poverty. “If Canadians can’t get their head out of the sand and realize that they’re being duped that they can’t afford, you know, the saddling of the debts that these things are incurring for generations to come, and they think that somehow crapping on pipelines or putting emission caps that won’t allow us to make any more oil or gas to send these pipelines that they now suddenly have discovered are important … If we don’t wake up real soon, next two weeks, I can say confidently the next four years is basically cutting people.”
The energy expert predicted that the worst if yet to come if Carney wins a mandate to govern from the voters. “Nothing has changed, if anything, Mr. Carney and his company, as we well know, has lied on so many fronts. And here’s the big one that I’m going to say it here now, because I’ve said it many places before, but to be absolutely clear, you’re going to get a carbon tax, and that 20 cents you think you’re getting off. It’s going to be 40 cents by 2030, likely by the end of another government, “should they form a majority government.”
McTeague cautioned against Canadians becoming deluded and declaring, “Oh, we’re not worried about the future; we just don’t like Donald Trump, and we think Pierre Poilievre is like him.” Give your head a shake — because you know what, I’m going to spend a lot of time over the next few years, pointing back to the stupidity and frivolity of people. And make no mistake, David, these people know what they’re doing. They’re just trying to be cool and friendly because they made mistakes in 2015, 2019 and again in 2021 and they want to somehow think that they can justify bad decisions. What’s coming at the expense of the country? Coming at the expense of our economic sustainability? It’s likely coming at the expense of what concerns me even more so: the future of the federation of this country.”
“I’ve said it many places before, but to be absolutely clear, you’re going to get a carbon tax, and that 20 cents you think you’re getting off. It’s going to be 40 cents by 2030.”
Dan and I also discussed how he has discovered that much of the polling being conducted during this campaign is over-sampling people over 60, which comprise at least 50 percent of the respondents included in the surveys. This bodes well for Poilievre and the Conservatives.
Tomorrow I will be examining how the Consevatives are appealing to working class Canadians, labor union leaders and blue collar workers. Seeking and winning the “hard hat vote” worked for President Richard Nixon in 1972 and President Ronald Reagan in 1984. It can work for Poilevre too in 2025 — and somehow I think he realizes that.
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From the Daily Caller News Foundation
By Hudson Crozier
People damaging Teslas in anger toward their owners and Elon Musk aren’t picking up on the fact that the vehicles have multiple cameras capable of catching them in the act.
At least nine perpetrators have been caught on video keying, writing graffiti or otherwise defacing Tesla vehicles in parking lots across the U.S. in the month of March alone. Most have led to an arrest or warrant based partly on the footage, which Tesla’s “Sentry Mode” automatically films from the side of the unattended vehicle when it detects human activity nearby.
“Smile, you’re on camera,” Tesla warned in a March 20 X post about its Sentry Mode feature. Musk’s company has been working to upgrade Sentry Mode so that the vehicles will soon blast music at full volume when vandals attack it. The camera system, however, has not stopped an increasing number of vandals from singling out Tesla owners, usually in protest of Musk’s work in the Trump administration for the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE).
One incident happened on March 29, the same day leftists coordinated protests around the country for a “Global Day of Action” against Musk. That Saturday also saw alleged instances of violence at protests. The demonstrations stemmed from an online call to action by groups such as the Disruption Project, which encourages activists to foment “uprisings,” find a “target’s” home address and other confrontational tactics.
Tesla’s press team did not respond to a request for comment.
One man allegedly caught on camera keying a Tesla SUV on March 24 apologized to the owner who confronted him in a parking lot in Pennsylvania, police and media reports said. The man faces charges of criminal mischief, harassment and disorderly conduct for allegedly carving a swastika onto the vehicle.
“I have nothing against your car, and I have nothing against you,” the suspect said while the owner filmed him in the parking lot. “Obviously, I have something against Elon Musk.” The man called his own behavior “misguided.”
The defendant’s lawyer told Fox News his “client is a proud father, long-time resident, and is currently undergoing cancer treatment” and that he would not comment publicly “pending the outcome of the case.”
One of the most aggressive acts caught by Sentry Mode was in the case of a man who drove an ATV-style vehicle into a Tesla on March 25. Texas police identified the man as Demarqeyun Marquize Cox, arrested him and said he allegedly gave two other nearby Teslas the same treatment while also writing “Elon” on them. The public defender office representing Cox did not respond to a voicemail from the Daily Caller News Foundation.
Tesla cameras also caught three other people in Florida, Texas and Arizona keying and smearing bubble gum on the vehicles in March. The three suspects named by police do not have attorneys listed in county records available for contact.
Many of the vandalism cases since Trump’s return have reportedly caused thousands of dollars in damage for individual owners. For example, the bubble gum incident in Florida brought $2,623.66 in costs, while another keying incident in Minnesota brought $3,200.
Some reported attacks on Tesla vehicles and chargers have gotten the attention of federal law enforcement, including cases of alleged firebombing or shooting.
Two other suspected vandals in New York, one in Minnesota and one in Mississippi have reportedly avoided arrest for now — with one owner declining to press charges — but were all seen on the Teslas’ cameras scratching up the vehicles. Police identified the Mississippi suspect as an illegal migrant from Cuba.
One Tesla owner in North Dakota ridiculed a man who allegedly carved the letter “F” into his Cybertruck in a Costco parking lot — as seen on the Cybertruck’s camera. The defendant faces charges of criminal mischief, and county records say he is representing himself in court.
“I can’t believe this guy is potentially ruining his life to follow a political ideology,” the owner told WDAY News.
“If you’re going to vandalize these vehicles, you’re going to get caught,” the owner said.
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