Dan McTeague is President of Canadians for Affordable Energy.Regular consumers of mainstream Canadian media may remember that one of the great triumphs of Mark Carney’s tenure as prime minister happened back in February, when he saved us all from the terrible Electric Vehicle (EV) mandate which had been imposed on us by, uh, persons unknown.What a relief that was! It meant that we’ll never have to worry about being forced to drive those glorified go-carts ever again! Thank you, Mr. Carney! Elbows up!Except, of course, that’s not what happened at all. In reality, Carney didn’t “scrap” the EV mandate, as so many headlines claimed. He rebranded it. What was once a mandate that all new vehicles sold in Canada had to be electric by 2035 is now a mandate that all new vehicles in Canada have to emit 75% less carbon dioxide by 2035 and 90% less by 2040. That’s a distinction without a difference. The only vehicles which could possibly conform to this standard are EVs, which have zero tailpipe emissions because they don’t have tailpipes. Which is not to say that there are no environmental concerns with them. There are. More so than with Internal Combustion Engine (ICE) vehicles, in fact. They are just spread out over the entire life of the vehicle — from the critical mineral mining required to manufacture them through the near-impossibility of recycling their spent batteries — rather than at the point of use.So the federal EV mandate is effectively still in force, and all of the problems with it that I’ve articulated over the years — from forcing Canadians to buy cars which work poorly in our climate to the exorbitant costs to both buyers and taxpayers, in the form of subsidies, to the strain on our already-unstable electrical grid — haven’t gone away..And one of those problems has arguably gotten worse. That is the role of China, its heavily subsidized EV industry, and its potential to further degrade the Canadian auto market.Remember that shortly before this rebrand, Carney dropped Canada’s 100% tariff on Chinese EVs, a move which I condemned at the time. Well, now the results are coming into focus. Chinese EV giant BYD — which overtook Tesla to become the world’s largest EV manufacturer in 2025 — has announced plans to open 20 dealerships across Canada this year, as a first step towards building out a proper sales network here. Geely, another huge Chinese automaker, which has acquired international firms like Volvo, Lotus, and Polestar, has been signalling its intention to bring more of its own EVs to the Canadian market.There are increasing discussions about Chinese firms taking over recently shuttered EV plants in Canada. Stellantis is exploring such a deal with Zhejiang Leapmotor Technology Co., at its idled plant in Brampton.And lest you think that this is good news, that it will replace those jobs which evaporated when those EV plants closed in the first place, these firms are apparently planning extensive use of “Complete Knock Down” (CKD) car kits. These allow vehicles, which are built almost entirely in China, to be shipped here for minimal final assembly. .As Flavio Volpe, president of the Auto Parts Manufacturers’ Association of Canada, put it, “The general public doesn’t understand the difference between knock-down kits and full assembly. When you buy furniture from Ikea, you bring it home, and you put it together. That’s not you manufacturing a sofa, and that’s what a CKD kit is from China.According to Volpe, a fully operational Canadian assembly plant making 150,000 vehicles a year supports thousands of jobs — in the plant itself and further afield — and generates billions in economic activity. But a CKD operation might employ just a few hundred people doing screwdriver work, with almost all the value and parts staying in China. So the rebranded mandate will continue to distort the entire Canadian auto market by suppressing the gas-powered vehicles people actually want, and creating an opening that state-funded Chinese producers are rushing to fill. This is the next step of the hollowing out of our automotive sector that I’ve been warning about for a long time.Don’t be fooled by the latest EV sleight-of-hand, whether it’s being peddled by Ottawa, BC, or Quebec, or anywhere else. It’s more of the same net-zero nonsense that the Liberals have been pushing on our country for the past decade plus. And like the rest of the net-zero program, all it does is empower China while leaving Canadians out in the cold.Dan McTeague is President of Canadians for Affordable Energy.
