TLDR:
The EV mandate pause was dumped on a Friday to dodge debate, classic political tactic.
This benefits automakers and corporations, not consumers or the working class.
Canada is one of the best places in the world to own an EV: cheap, clean electricity makes driving 100 km cost $2–$4 vs. $10–$15 for gas.
EV sales aren’t collapsing, they’re at record highs; the “crisis” is manufactured.
Claiming U.S. tariffs justify this rollback is backwards: more EVs = less dependence on U.S. imports and oil.
Bottom line: Mark Carney puts corporate comfort ahead of Canadian households’ savings and independence. Is that what you were promised?
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When a government makes a decision that will affect ordinary people and they choose to announce it late on a Friday afternoon, you know they are hoping you won’t notice. That’s exactly what happened here. The pause on Canada’s electric vehicle mandate was slipped out the back door at week’s end, like a thief in the night.
Now, who benefits from this pause? Not the consumer. Not the family struggling to make ends meet. The beneficiaries are the automobile corporations, companies already earning record profits. The Prime Minister tells us these manufacturers have “enough on their plate.” Well, I’ll tell you who has too much on their plate: the working man and woman trying to feed a family while paying fifteen dollars in gas just to drive to work.
Canada has cheap electricity and we have one of the cleanest grids in the world. Driving a hundred kilometers in an electric vehicle in this country costs two to four dollars. Two to four dollars! For the working class, that is independence from imported oil and from the fluctuations of global markets. It is money kept in Canadian pockets, instead of sent south to refineries in the United States.
But by pausing this mandate, the government has chosen to slow adoption, to stall the building of charging stations, and to tell the working class that their savings and their independence will have to wait. They dress it up with talk of U.S. tariffs, as though bowing to Washington is a sound economic strategy. Yet the truth is plain: more EVs mean less reliance on U.S. imports. This policy shift makes us weaker, not stronger.
And then they tell us sales down, so this is a good time to act. But look at the facts: EV sales in Canada are at record highs. IT'S THE GROWTH that has slowed, but it has not gone backwards. This is no crisis. This is a convenient excuse, a story crafted to justify a retreat from a commitment they never truly wanted to keep.
So, let us be clear. Mark Carney has once again taken the side of the corporations and the wealthy, while the working class, the people who stand to benefit the most from affordable electric driving, are left behind. Canada could be leading the world in electric adoption. Instead, our electeds have mischaracterized a plateau as a collapse, and handed victory to industry lobbyists.
Don't let them convince you this is a win for Canada or that we have a government who is taking care you you and me.
We cannot let them write this off as pragmatism. It is not pragmatism; it is capitulation. It is a choice to protect profits over people. And the losers are not just EV buyers. The losers are Canadian families, Canadian workers, and the future of our environment.