The electric Kool-aid

There’s a revealing new report from Statistics Canada, courtesy of Blacklock’s Reporter, saying cutting subsidies caused EV sales to slump drastically. In fact “New zero emission vehicle registrations experienced their first year over year decline since the start of the Covid-19 pandemic”. Also, it wasn’t Canadians in general buying them, it was a particular subset of Quebecers: urban, prosperous, left-wing, trendy and heavily subsidized. As in, one dares surmise, overwhelmingly government workers. So will the government back off on forcing us all to buy cars we massively don’t want and would never be able to charge, thus being unable to go anywhere, thus ruining “the economy” and our lives? Heck no. There’s a plan, see.

Confronted with this no-longer-slow-motion car-policy crash, our hapless new Environment Minister Julie Dabrusin babbled at Parliament that:

“We do have in place the regulations that set consistently increasing targets for electric vehicle sales going to 100 percent. There are also flexibilities built within that regulation that if we wanted to have a larger conversation about, we could speak about. The regulation remains in place. But we are certainly looking at monitoring.”

They’re very good at this kind of bloviating. Too good, in fact. For instance, to monitor means to look at. So she wrapped up her word salad with looking at looking at. Having previously said “if we wanted to have a conversation” in response to someone trying to have one, and ending “we could speak about” without an object. (And all in response to a Conservative MP asking over and over whether the 100% target was “mandatory or optional”.)

There’s more where that vapour came from, including from the federal “parliamentary secretary for the environment” and do not ask why such a post should exist, let alone draw a salary supplement… oh wait, that’s why it exists. Anyway, he said:

“The Vehicle Availability Standard does not ban vehicles from using gasoline. It phases in targets for the availability of zero emission vehicles.”

Aka the unavailability of the kind people want. And in response to such gibberish the House of Commons voted down a federal motion to end the looming ban by a vote of 194-141, including, as another Blacklock’s story said, the separatists who hate Canada and will fight its government to the very point of collusion on shared goals:

“Bloc Québécois MPs opposed the Conservative motion but ridiculed cabinet’s stated commitment to fighting climate change.”

So they’re having their cake and their country and eating it too. Whereas we are not getting cars worth having.

The first Blacklock’s story underlines some other uncomfortable truths about this situation. Particularly that:

“‘Historically Québec has led in new zero emission vehicle registrations, accounting for over half at 54 percent of Canada,’ wrote analysts.”

And how attached are they to the vehicles of the future? Pas beaucoup. See:

“Québec cut its rebate from $7,000 to $4,000 and announced it would be phased out altogether within three years. The period also coincided with the federal Department of Transport’s January 10 suspension of $5,000 federal rebates. British Columbia suspended its $4,000 rebate program May 15.”

And there went sales. So to keep this charade up, especially having picked the low-hanging sales fruit, they need to keep subsidizing rather than getting our economy back toward a market footing. Oh, and as for what Canadians really want:

“StatsCan yesterday said a total 426,872 new motor vehicles were registered nationwide in the first quarter of the year, an increase of 2.9 percent over the same period last year. Most popular were gas-powered vans, up 23 percent year over year, and pickups (up 10 percent).”

Part of the problem with subsidies is that you get entire industries hooked on them, sometimes ones that might have gotten by without them if they hadn’t developed the habit and sometimes ones that would really not exist without them. For instance the alleged Canadian EV battery industry. Another part, especially if you were, say, a government that had doubled the national debt in a decade and was still on track to rack up huge deficits even while outlining dramatic new spending plans and promising fiscal responsibility is that they cost a lot of money.