Prime Minister Mark Carney speaks to the media after touring auto parts manufacturer Martinrea Industries in Woodbridge, Ontario, Feb. 5.Carlos Osorio/Reuters
Kenneth Green is a senior fellow at the Fraser Institute.
The Carney government gave me a birthday present on Feb. 5, when it terminated the electric vehicle sales mandate to ensure all new cars sold in 2035 would be battery-powered or at least half-battery-powered (plug-in hybrids). This is a big policy win for the Canadian people. Or is it?
A closer look suggests this is yet another sleight-of-hand, false-reform smokeshow by Prime Minister Mark Carney that will, in fact, retain the government’s onerous policy, but make it stealthy by, for example, reintroducing tailpipe-emissions regulations. This has become Mr. Carney’s modus operandi.
Consider the consumer carbon tax. Faced with an endless drumbeat of opposition, and a political challenger actually “sharpening his ax,” Mr. Carney conspicuously “axed the tax.” At least, that’s what he did on the surface. Below the surface, he simply transferred the consumer carbon tax onto Canada’s “large industrial emitters,” who would then pass the tax onto Canadians hidden in the costs of their products, goods and services. The consumer carbon tax is still there – but Canadians can no longer see it directly, so it’s no longer a political problem for Mr. Carney.
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Or consider the pipeline problem. Alberta’s battle to continue oil production from its massive oilsands deposits, and gain access to non-U.S. markets via pipeline, has become a wildly contentious issue. Finger in the wind, Carney decided to neutralize the issue by, on the surface, forging a “deal” (or memorandum of understanding) with Alberta that would end, weaken or at least partly mitigate many of Ottawa’s objectionable laws and regulations, which include an emissions cap on the oil and gas sector and an onerous pipeline approval process.
Except most of that is an illusion. As part of the deal, Alberta had to pledge fealty to the federal government’s greenhouse-gas control plan to 2050, and critically, raise its own “industrial” carbon tax, which would make an explicit oil and gas emission cap unnecessary. All in return for an illusion of certainty that Ottawa will allow a pipeline to the British Columbia coast.
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Which brings us back to the EV sales mandate. On my birthday, the Carney government said it would scrap the mandate – and replace it with more stringent tailpipe regulations aimed at gas-powered vehicles. In other words, Mr. Carney is effectively assuring that car dealers will sell EVs and plug-in hybrids rather than gas-powered vehicles. And he’s also restoring subsidies for the purchase of EVs, funded by many taxpayers who can’t afford to buy an EV or charge one at home. Either way, explicit or not, Ottawa’s EV mandate continues.
Again, this has become Mr. Carney’s MO. Put on the appearance that you hear and acknowledge objections to various damaging policies, conspicuously “axe” the overt regulations tied to that policy, then hide the mechanisms that effectively continue to implement that policy goal. Don’t want to directly pay a carbon tax? Fine, you’ll pay it in the cost of chicken. Don’t want the government to blatantly shut down oil and gas production? Fine, we’ll impose a damaging new tax on oil producers that you won’t see. Don’t want the government picking EVs over gas-powered cars?
Fine, we’ll scrap the EV mandate, and hide the ball with stricter “pollution standards” that can only be met by, you guessed it, EVs.
Canadians should beware of this bait-and-switch game by a punitive government and instead demand real policy reform.