Last year’s Trump-Musk arguments over EV mandates made one thing clear: Electric vehicles have become a political proxy for much larger questions about affordability, industrial policy and climate change action.

Canada saw a similar shift in 2025. Ottawa not only paused the first step of its zero-emission vehicle (ZEV) sales mandate, but also shut down the national EV purchase rebate program after it ran out of funds.

This year, the Carney government signed an agreement with China to allow up to 49,000 Chinese EVs a year into the Canadian market at the most-favoured-nation tariff rate of 6.1 per cent. They had faced tariffs of 100 per cent for several years.

Ottawa then unveiled a new auto strategy that repeals the mandates that had required manufacturers to sell a certain percentage of EVs each year and that all new vehicle sales be EVs by 2035. It replaced the mandates with stronger greenhouse gas emission standards for new vehicles — a move the government claims will put Canada on a path to reaching a target of EVs being 75 per cent of all new auto sales by 2035.

It also reintroduced subsidies for consumers to purchase new battery electric, fuel-cell and plug-in hybrid vehicles, and pledged to invest $1.5 billion to expand Canada’s charging network.

These measures put far too much political and rhetorical weight on new vehicle sales targets and purchase incentives in the hope they can carry the entire green transition in this industry. The goal is to increase the number of new EVs on the road. But this alone won’t succeed. Ottawa also needs to ensure that these new EVs are replacing older vehicles that contribute far more to pollution.

Unless that happens, there will be no benefit for the communities most impacted by traffic-related air pollution, no reduction in inequity in exposure to pollution and no way to lock in the biggest health gains.

Mandates versus subsidies

The Union........

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