Another “kick in the teeth” for electric vehicles. They have been promoted as our environmental saviour – if you do not think so, that is fine, but look at the billions of dollars being poured into battery plant subsidies and buy one, get $5,000 back from your federal government, in addition to tens of billions of dollars required for the development of EV charging stations and the almost incalculable expense to upgrade the electricity grid.
All this is on top of the annual interest on the national debt bill of approximately $115 billion dollars. I can see it now. All this is going to come crashing down around us, and who is going to be blamed? The next government. Sorry, I digress. Now, the problem.
The Problem?
The problem is two-fold. First, to afford one of those EV beasts, you must at least be in the upper middle class. The folks who are struggling to survive, which is many of us in Canada – just ask the seven million people who face food insecurity and energy poverty each day – cannot afford one of those EVs, but we all pay for the $5,000 subsidy in taxes. Where is the equity with that?
Second, several studies have suggested that the subsidies do not work, and the federal government knows they do not work to lower GHG emissions. But they continue anyway. Most recently, the Fraser Institute calculated that the $5,000 subsidy costs each Canadian $355. Compare that to the carbon tax of $65, and we are paying much more for the subsidy than the cost of the carbon tax.
All the reports support the hypothesis that the cost of the subsidy is 36% higher than the Trudeau government’s estimate of the so-called “social cost” of emissions – when has the Liberal government ever told us the truth? To us, it is the facts that matter, and all this is a sad commentary on a process that lives on the back of political opportunism and the thirty-second sound bite, without having the positive impact that we should all expect to address climate change and global warming.
The End
This is all a sad commentary of the Liberal government “damming the torpedoes” to make it look like they are doing all the right things to attack climate change. But the shine is coming off. We are on the precipice of the cliff that our national debt has created; the EV subsidies are not working and are costing a lot more than other viable alternatives.
And by 2026, we are mandated that 20% of the new vehicles sold in Canada must be electric? We need to get this all sorted out, and that will only happen if we speak out.
Best wishes ....
Vancouver, BC, Canada
Comments