AMBITIOUS PLAN TO CHOP EMISSIONS
But David Booth says there are far more questions than answers from Quebec
That Quebec is a distinct society — the exact words are actually “that the Québécois form a nation within a united Canada” — should, by now, be accepted doctrine. That the Meech Lake Accord actually failed to constitutionalize said uniqueness doesn't change the fact there is a lot more than a simple language barrier that separates — oops, did I use a bad word there? — La Belle Province from the rest of Canada. Its politics are noticeably more left wing, its religiosity more grassroots and, unless you've never read this column before, you know that its automotive market is unlike any other in the nation.
More diverse (almost half of Mitsubishi Canada's Mirage sales are east of the Ottawa River) and more price sensitive (ditto), the Quebec automotive market is also greener than the rest of our fair country.
Decidedly greener. Small cars abound (see, yet again, the little three-cylinder Mitsu), scooters are extremely popular and, more importantly in these revolutionary times, Quebec has become North America's Norway-like poster province for electric vehicles.
Six per cent of all the cars sold in Quebec last year were plugins, and the province can already boast more than 66,000 ZEVs registered for the road, more by far than any other province.
It's the result of some of the most aggressive regulations and subsidization in North America. Besides massive incentives — the province throws as much as $8,000 at EVs on top of the $5,000 the federal government subsidizes their purchase — Quebec has emulated California's ZEV mandates that punish automakers for not selling enough plug-ins. Its goal is aggressive — some might say oppressive — calling for at least 22 per cent of all car sales to be ZEV by 2025.
Those regulations just got even more draconian: the signature headline for the province's Plan pour une economie verte — a “green economy” — calls for a complete ban on the sales of new vehicles powered by internal combustion engines. That, for reference, places it on par with California's latest pronouncements (internal combustion engines banned by 2035) and ahead of the Liberal government's expected 2040 ban, but behind Boris Johnson's completely unrealistic 2030 deadline for the U.K.
But, while Quebec's announcement succeeded in creating big headlines — it even (temporarily) interrupted the U.S.'s all-Trump-all-the-time news cycle — it also raises far more questions than it answered.
Benoit Charette, the province's environment minister, told La Presse that plug-ins would continue to be counted as zero emissions vehicles, but there's nothing in the green plan that confirms it.
What will become of motorcycles? If the conversion to battery power by 2035 is problematic for cars — sourcing enough lithium for batteries, a truly complete and comprehensive charging infrastructure, etc. — it's almost impossible for motorcycles.
Getting more range out of a car is relatively simple: just add more batteries. Even if that makes your Tesla Model S as tubby as a GMC Sierra, it's at least feasible.
Unfortunately, motorcycles have a lot less real estate to swallow lithium ions, and the best highway range for current battery-powered motorcycles is about 125 kilometres.
And where will all the money for this grand revolution come from?
Premier François Legault has already allocated $6.7 billion for his “green economy” over the next five years, much, if not most, of it aimed at converting the province's fleet to hydro power. But even the most EV-friendly analysts think this will fall dramatically short of what's needed, the CBC noting that even though Quebec cut its emissions by 10 million tons between 2007 and 2014, “between 2014 and 2017 (the latest figures available), emissions actually increased slightly.”
The government says it is only following the will of the people for greener motoring.
But the only way it can get people to convert to battery power is to generously subvent the purchase of electric vehicles, penalize any manufacturer who dares not produce enough EVs and, if Moreau is to be believed, punish consumers who refuse to see the light.
For a revolution that is being billed as inevitable, that seems like a whole lot of coercion.