The Quebec government was spinning its wheels on Thursday after Premier François Legault was forced to walk back statements from his energy minister that the province would need to cut the number of cars on its roads by half to meet its 2050 net-zero targets..It comes after the Quebec and federal governments announced on Thursday plans to hand out $644 million — or more than half the cost — for Ford to build a $1.2 billion EV plant at Bécancour, due to open in 2026..Pierre Fitzgibbon, Legault’s energy and environment czar who is also responsible for HydroQuebec, made the off-the-cuff remarks to reporters as he headed into a cabinet meeting in Quebec City on Wednesday..He was actually discussing a plan to restart the Gentilly-2 nuclear power plant in Bécancour, which has been shuttered since 2012. Fitzgibbon made an offhand remark that he would like to see the number of automobiles on Quebec’s roadways cut in half, and added that those should be electric..Quebec has almost seven million cars registered to 8.8 million people. The province is aiming to get two million electric cars on the road by 2030 but so far there are just 76,000 fully electric and 57,000 plug-in hybrids registered in the province, according to Statistics Canada..Nonetheless, the remarks caused a stir. Environmentalists were elated; car dealers less so..On Wednesday, Legault was softening both the tone and tenor of Fitzgibbon’s remarks at his government’s first caucus meeting since the summer break. .He reportedly joked that his minister had been reading “environmental reports this summer,” but denied there was any official policy to start banning cars, or even the internal combustion engine..But he did agree on the need to eventually reduce the number of automobiles — by improving transit, for example — at some point down the road..“We need to understand Quebec is big and in the regions of Quebec the population density does not allow us to have public transit everywhere,” Legault told reporters. “We have to be realistic in these matters.”.“I think that the priority right now is to move from gas cars to electric cars. We don’t have a target for reducing the total number of cars.”
The Quebec government was spinning its wheels on Thursday after Premier François Legault was forced to walk back statements from his energy minister that the province would need to cut the number of cars on its roads by half to meet its 2050 net-zero targets..It comes after the Quebec and federal governments announced on Thursday plans to hand out $644 million — or more than half the cost — for Ford to build a $1.2 billion EV plant at Bécancour, due to open in 2026..Pierre Fitzgibbon, Legault’s energy and environment czar who is also responsible for HydroQuebec, made the off-the-cuff remarks to reporters as he headed into a cabinet meeting in Quebec City on Wednesday..He was actually discussing a plan to restart the Gentilly-2 nuclear power plant in Bécancour, which has been shuttered since 2012. Fitzgibbon made an offhand remark that he would like to see the number of automobiles on Quebec’s roadways cut in half, and added that those should be electric..Quebec has almost seven million cars registered to 8.8 million people. The province is aiming to get two million electric cars on the road by 2030 but so far there are just 76,000 fully electric and 57,000 plug-in hybrids registered in the province, according to Statistics Canada..Nonetheless, the remarks caused a stir. Environmentalists were elated; car dealers less so..On Wednesday, Legault was softening both the tone and tenor of Fitzgibbon’s remarks at his government’s first caucus meeting since the summer break. .He reportedly joked that his minister had been reading “environmental reports this summer,” but denied there was any official policy to start banning cars, or even the internal combustion engine..But he did agree on the need to eventually reduce the number of automobiles — by improving transit, for example — at some point down the road..“We need to understand Quebec is big and in the regions of Quebec the population density does not allow us to have public transit everywhere,” Legault told reporters. “We have to be realistic in these matters.”.“I think that the priority right now is to move from gas cars to electric cars. We don’t have a target for reducing the total number of cars.”
