Electric car advocates are waiting to see spending details in this week’s federal budget, but for the first time, pro-EV business leaders and economists are expressing new optimism that Canada’s move away from internal combustion vehicles may have reached a turning point.
After years of excuses, there are signs that a conjunction of forces is pushing the country into a technological and social revolution that has been compared to going from horse to automobile and will bring affordable electric cars and trucks to roads and parking spaces across Canada.
High gasoline prices, a gradual increase in the price of carbon and a request by European powers for the world to use less fossil fuels to break Russian leader Vladimir Putin’s grip on their economies, are pushing us in that direction. A series of technological developments that have made electric vehicles not just as good as internal combustion vehicles but better and cheaper to run have helped make it possible.
Now, if only drivers ready to make the switch could find one on the lot to buy.
Missing piece of the puzzle
According to the founder of Canadian media start-up Electric Autonomy, Nino di Cara, the only missing piece of the puzzle is that automotive manufacturers and dealerships simply haven’t been stocking and selling enough EVs.
“There is already a huge amount of consumer interest and demand,” said di Cara in a phone interview last week.
As gas prices soar there have been many reports of surging orders for electrics that the industry has not been able to satisfy. But di Cara notes that it is not a recent problem.
Germany’s Economy Minister: “You are helping Germany, you are helping Ukraine, when you reduce your use of gas, or energy in general.”<a href=”https://t.co/3qw1yw8In3”>pic.twitter.com/3qw1yw8In3</a>
As I reported myself well before the recent supply chain headaches, despite repeatedly prompting that I was looking for a really fuel-efficient car, the salesman at a local lot did not mention the hybrids or electrics the company sold. And when asked directly, he was discouraging, saying they were very expensive and hard to get. What kind of salesman discourages you from buying something expensive?
Moving EVs off the lot
The new federal plan is intended to solve that reluctance, insisting that in order to sell internal combustion vehicles, salespeople must also move a certain percentage of zero-emission vehicles (ZEVs) off the lot as well.
The scheme has been proven to work, not just in California, a leader in what’s called the ZEV mandate, but also in British Columbia and Quebec where sales are more than triple the rate in Ontario and more than 10 times EV sales in Saskatchewan. (B.C. and Quebec also offer higher rebates.)
In an extensive CBC interview last week, industry representative Brian Kingston, president of the Canadian Vehicle Manufacturers’ Association, raised many of the standard industry concerns. Making electrics is expensive. Charging networks are not yet complete. Government tax incentives are too low.
WATCH | More charging stations, incentives needed to speed EV switch:
Calls for more charging stations, incentives for EVs in Canada’s climate plan
4 days ago
Duration 2:02
Advocates say Canada’s climate plan needs significantly more investment in providing enough charging stations and incentives to spur consumer demand for electric vehicles. 2:02
Clearly there has been a strong business case for most car makers to sell as few electric cars as possible. Although he later changed his position, the late head of Fiat Chrysler, Canadian Sergio Marchionne, once begged customers not to buy the company’s electrics because he said he lost money on every one the company sold. As he complained in 2014, in order to sell the cars as the government required, he had to lower the price far below the additional cost of the EV technology that went into them.
Level playing field
As a businessman himself, Nino di Cara is sympathetic to the challenges faced by an automotive industry facing radical changes that don’t pay off in the short run.
“From an automaker point of view, it is quite understandable, you prefer not to have those mandates and requirements to sell a certain number of vehicles,” said the Toronto-based entrepreneur, who came to Canada from Britain 15 years ago after a successful career in publishing.
But he said having standardized rules in place for every manufacturer levels the playing field for competing Canadian dealerships.
“It’s no longer a question of EVs when, it’s now just a question of how,” said di Cara.
He pointed out that when the world switched from horse power to oil power, there was almost no oil, and yet in a matter of years businesses learned to drill miles underground and made a fortune doing it. Rather than waiting for charging station networks to be complete or having a stock of battery minerals in hand, those industries will grow in tandem, earning profits in the process.
“Sometimes when industry pushes back on a policy like this it almost sounds like they don’t understand the market,” said Mark Jaccard, a professor of sustainable energy at Vancouver’s Simon Fraser University in a phone call last week.
Dragging their feet
Jaccard, often described as the architect of British Columbia’s groundbreaking carbon tax under the right-leaning provincial Liberal government, takes a market-friendly stance on what he sees as the essential move away from fossil fuels. But he has been critical of the automotive industry for unnecessary foot-dragging in a transition that they will find enormously profitable.
“Unfortunately, the auto industry keeps convincing governments that an ambitious transition to ZEVs is impossible,” wrote Jaccard last October predicting this week’s budget move toward compulsory EV sales.
Jaccard said he thinks that the country has reached a turning point where consumers and the industry are both finally on the path to phasing out fossil fuel vehicles. And he said the evidence can be seen in B.C., where EV sales have already exceeded the provincial 10 per cent mandate, with the province upping compulsory ZEV sales to 26 per cent by 2026 and 90 per cent by 2030, well ahead of federal targets.
The winning design for an EV charging station by Edinburgh architect James Silvester. Service station company Parkland, a sponsor of the competition run by Electric Autonomy, committed to building this winning design at a location in British Columbia. (James Silvester/Electric Autonomy)
But he said that with the federal Canada-wide target at 20 per cent by 2026, even in the case of the election of a pro-fossil fuel government — for instance, after the Liberal-NDP agreement ends in 2025 — it will make the process hard to stop. He compares it to the shutdown of Ontario’s coal plants. Even after the election of the Ford government, it was impossible to reverse course.
Jaccard also said that since the mandate is based on number of cars sold — not dollar value — auto retailers will be motivated to pull down the price of cheaper models at first so that they can continue to sell more profitable high-end gas guzzlers.
New research last week from Clean Energy Canada comparing EVs with their internal combustion equivalents insists that buying an electric car already saves a consumer a minimum of $15,000 over the life of a car.
From concept to business reality
Electric Autonomy’s di Cara said that besides egging on car makers, the transition will cause a new flood of entrepreneurial businesses to serve the industry similar to his own start-up, an EV-based online media venture. One of the company’s recent projects was a challenge to architects to create the EV equivalent of gas stations.
The winning design by Scottish architect James Silvester, used to illustrate this story, will actually be turned into a reality in British Columbia by service station company Parkland, one of the sponsors of the competition.
So is this latest federal move the watershed moment when Canada can switch everyone away from fossil fuel vehicles? Di Cara is hesitant to call it a sure thing.
“I will only believe in the watershed moment when vehicles end up being sold and they are in drivers hands,” said di Cara. “I think this is absolutely an enormous step in the right direction.”
CALGARY – MEG Energy says it earned $167 million in its third quarter, down from $249 million during the same quarter last year.
The company says revenues for the quarter were $1.27 billion, down from $1.44 billion during the third quarter of 2023.
Diluted earnings per share were 62 cents, down from 86 cents a year earlier.
MEG Energy says it successfully completed its debt reduction strategy, reducing its net debt to US$478 million by the end of September, down from US$634 million during the prior quarter.
President and CEO Darlene Gates said moving forward all the company’s free cash flow will be returned to shareholders through expanded share buybacks and a quarterly base dividend.
The company says its capital expenditures for the quarter increased to $141 million from $83 million a year earlier, mainly due to higher planned field development activity, as well as moderate capacity growth projects.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Nov. 5, 2024.
Premier David Eby is proposing an all-party committee investigate mistakes made during the British Columbia election vote tally, including an uncounted ballot box and unreported votes in three-quarters of the province’s 93 ridings.
The proposal comes after B.C.’s chief electoral officer blamed extreme weather, long working hours and a new voting system for human errors behind the mistakes in last month’s count, though none were large enough to change the initial results.
Anton Boegman says the agency is already investigating the mistakes to “identify key lessons learned” to improve training, change processes or make recommendations for legislative change.
He says the uncounted ballot box containing about 861 votes in Prince George-Mackenzie was never lost, and was always securely in the custody of election officials.
Boegman says a failure in five districts to properly report a small number of out-of-district votes, meanwhile, rippled through to the counts in 69 ridings.
Eby says the NDP will propose that a committee examine the systems used and steps taken by Elections BC, then recommend improvements in future elections.
“I look forward to working with all MLAs to uphold our shared commitment to free and fair elections, the foundation of our democracy,” he said in a statement Tuesday, after a news conference by Boegman.
Boegman said if an independent review does occur, “Elections BC will, of course, fully participate in that process.”
He said the mistakes came to light when a “discrepancy” of 14 votes was noticed in the riding of Surrey-Guildford, spurring a review that increased the number of unreported votes there to 28.
Surrey-Guildford was the closest race in the election and the NDP victory there gave Eby a one-seat majority. The discovery reduced the NDP’s victory margin from 27 to 21, pending the outcome of a judicial review that was previously triggered because the race was so close.
The mistakes in Surrey-Guildford resulted in a provincewide audit that found the other errors, Boegman said.
“These mistakes were a result of human error. Our elections rely on the work of over 17,000 election officials from communities across the province,” he said.
“Election officials were working 14 hours or more on voting days and on final voting day in particular faced extremely challenging weather conditions in many parts of the province.
“These conditions likely contributed to these mistakes,” he said.
B.C.’s “vote anywhere” model also played a role in the errors, said Boegman, who said he had issued an order to correct the results in the affected ridings.
Boegman said the uncounted Prince George-Mackenzie ballot box was used on the first day of advance voting. Election officials later discovered a vote hadn’t been tabulated, so they retabulated the ballots but mistakenly omitted the box of first-day votes, only including ballots from the second day.
Boegman said the issues discovered in the provincewide audit will be “fully documented” in his report to the legislature on the provincial election, the first held using electronic tabulators.
He said he was confident election officials found all “anomalies.”
B.C. Conservative Party Leader John Rustad had said on Monday that the errors were “an unprecedented failure by the very institution responsible for ensuring the fairness and accuracy of our elections.”
Rustad said he was not disputing the outcomes as judicial recounts continue, but said “it’s clear that mistakes like these severely undermine public trust in our electoral process.”
Rustad called for an “independent review” to make sure the errors never happen again.
Boegman, who said the election required fewer than half the number of workers under the old paper-based system, said results for the election would be returned in 90 of the province’s 93 ridings on Tuesday.
Full judicial recounts will be held in Surrey-Guildford and Kelowna-Centre, while a partial recount of the uncounted box will take place in Prince George-Mackenzie.
Boegman said out-of-district voting had been a part of B.C.’s elections for many decades, and explained how thousands of voters utilized the province’s vote-by-phone system, calling it a “very secure model” for people with disabilities.
“I think this is a unique and very important part of our elections, providing accessibility to British Columbians,” he said. “They have unparalleled access to the ballot box that is not found in other jurisdictions in Canada.”
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Nov. 5, 2024.
WINNIPEG – A public memorial honouring former judge, senator and chair of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission into residential schools, Murray Sinclair, is set to take place in Winnipeg on Sunday.
The event, which is being organized by the federal and Manitoba governments, will be at Canada Life Centre, home of the NHL’s Winnipeg Jets.
Sinclair died Monday in a Winnipeg hospital at the age of 73.
A teepee and a sacred fire were set up outside the Manitoba legislature for people to pay their respects hours after news of his death became public. The province has said it will remain open to the public until Sinclair’s funeral.
Sinclair’s family continues to invite people to visit the sacred fire and offer tobacco.
The family thanked the public for sharing words of love and support as tributes poured in this week.
“The significance of Mazina Giizhik’s (the One Who Speaks of Pictures in the Sky) impact and reach cannot be overstated,” the family said in a statement on Tuesday, noting Sinclair’s traditional Anishinaabe name.
“He touched many lives and impacted thousands of people.”
They encourage the public to celebrate his life and journey home.
A visitation for extended family, friends and community is also scheduled to take place Wednesday morning.
Leaders from across Canada shared their memories of Sinclair.
Premier Wab Kinew called Sinclair one of the key architects of the era of reconciliation.
Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said Sinclair was a teacher, a guide and a friend who helped the country navigate tough realities.
Sinclair was the first Indigenous judge in Manitoba — the second in Canada.
He served as co-chair of the Aboriginal Justice Inquiry of Manitoba to examine whether the justice system was failing Indigenous people after the murder of Helen Betty Osborne and the police shooting death of First Nations leader J.J. Harper.
In leading the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, he participated in hundreds of hearings across Canada and heard testimony from thousands of residential school survivors.
The commissioners released their widely influential final report in 2015, which described what took place at the institutions as cultural genocide and included 94 calls to action.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Nov. 5, 2024.
