The EV Push in Ontario, Canada - An Analysis - Part 1

There is a massive push for electric vehicles in Ontario, with billions and billions of taxpayers money being poured into them. But does that make any sense? Let's attempt to figure this out. This analysis focuses on Ontario, but is to varying extents applicable to other jurisdictions, as the push towards EVs is found not only in Ontario and Canada, but also in other jurisdictions such as the UK and the European Union.


I didn’t pay attention before, but, in Ontario, there are two colors of license plates. The regular ones with black or blue letters, and the ones with green letters, which are specifically for electric vehicles. The message is clear: EVs are good; the other cars are bad.

But is there actually something of any value in these green license plates, introduced back in 2010? Do they reflect a genuinely green product, a genuinely green mode of transportation? Or are they just a green-wash, a virtue signalling ploy, by the government, aimed at marketing those vehicles?

Of course, it’s not just the licence plates. Ontario politicians are now convinced that a transition to EVs is absolutely necessary to save the planet, to make a difference in fighting climate change. They claim that the future of cars is necessarily electric. They are throwing billions and billions of taxpayers dollars at it.

So let’s have a look at all those policies and initiatives in Ontario, which is one of the jurisdictions, in the world, that is the most active at pushing electric vehicles. Let’s attempt to figure out if this makes any sense.

Spoiler Alert: Contrary to what you may have been told, there are no zero-emission vehicles. Zero-emissions vehicles don’t exist. Both electric vehicles (EVs) and internal combustion engine (ICE) vehicles emit CO2 throughout their lifecycle.

In the first part, we will provide context, look at the carbon emissions from cars in the province, look at the importance of the automotive sector in the province, describe the quick evolution of policies encouraging EVs, look at the massive subsidies, both provincial and federal, decided upon to push EVs in Ontario, including through multi-billion battery giga-factories.

In the second part, we will look at issues of market access in the US and Europe, at competition from China, at the actual domestic market for EVs in Canada, at the great variability of electricity pricing among Canadian provinces, at opportunities and issues with mineral procurement for batteries, at the Canadian Parliamentary Budget Officer recent, highly critical report, questioning the multi-billion subsidies into 2 battery giga-factories in the province.

We will also attempt some conclusions and predictions, based on the analysis, which confirms our previous findings that there should absolutely be no rush to transition to EVs. There are indeed much simpler, cost effective, and actually measurable, means to cut CO2 emissions, without creating havoc, for the decades to come, in the automotive, transportation and energy sectors.

See this and other articles at this link.