This article was written by Michelle Chapman and was published in the Toronto Star on January 10, 2026.
General Motors will be hit with charges of about $6 billion (U.S.) as sales of electric vehicles sputter after the U.S. cut tax incentives to buy them and also eased auto emissions standards.
Shares slid about two per cent before the opening bell Friday.
The charges that will be recorded in the fourth quarter follow an announcement in October the Detroit automaker would take a $1.6billion charge for the same reason in the previous quarter, with automakers forced to reconsider ambitious plans to convert their fleets to electric power.
The EV tax credit ended in September. The clean vehicle tax credit was worth $7,500 for new EVs and up to $4,000 for used ones.
GM, which had been the most ambitious among all U.S. automakers with plans to replace internal combustion engines, said in its filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission late Thursday the $6 billion in charges includes noncash impairments and other noncash charges of about $1.8 billion as well as supplier commercial settlements, contract cancellation fees, and other charges of approximately $4.2 billion.
EVs have been considered to be the future of the U.S. automotive industry. GM announced in 2020 it was going to invest $27 billion in electric and autonomous vehicles over the next five years, a 35 per cent increase over plans made before the pandemic.
GM expected more than half of its factories in North America and China would be capable of making electric vehicles by 2030. It also pledged at the time to increase its investment in EV charging networks by nearly $750 million through 2025. Its goal was to make the vast majority of the vehicles electric by 2035 and the entire company carbon neutral five years after that. Those plans have be shaken due to the drastic differences in economic and environmental policies between the Biden and Trump administrations.
China has become a global leader in electric vehicle technology in recent years, with factories there churning out millions of cars and laying the groundwork for a massive charging network for vehicles.
Earlier this month, Tesla was dethroned as the world’s largest EV automaker, replaced by China’s BYD, which produced 2.26 million electric vehicles last year.
The EV tax credit ended in September in the U.S. The clean vehicle tax credit was worth $7,500 for new EVs and up to $4,000 for used ones
This article was written by Matthew McClearn and was published in the Globe & Mail on January 8, 2026.
Ontario’s government approved construction of a new underwater electricity line Wednesday that would connect Canada’s most populous city to the first nuclear power plant built in the country in more than a generation.
Known as the Third Line, it would run about 65 kilometres along the bottom of Lake Ontario from the Darlington Nuclear Generating Station in Clarington, Ont., to a terminal station in the Port Lands district just east of Toronto’s downtown core.
It would have a transmission capacity of 900 megawatts, enough to deliver all power produced by three of the four 300-megawatt small modular nuclear reactors planned to enter service at Darlington by the mid-2030s. (Construction of the first unit began last year. Darlington already hosts four much larger reactors built in the 1980s and 90s.)
Energy Minister Stephen Lecce said it would be Ontario’s first underwater transmission line. Subsea cables are used extensively elsewhere, including other Canadian provinces – one example being the Maritime Link, a 470megawatt cable across the Cabot Strait that connects the Muskrat Falls hydroelectric project in Labrador to Nova Scotia.
Including insulation, sheathing and armouring, the new cable could be one foot or more in diameter – although such engineering details haven’t yet been finalized.
Officials said the government will launch a competitive procurement later this year to select the transmitter to build the Third Line. Construction will begin next year and continue for between seven and 10 years. Mr. Lecce said the line must be in service by 2037 at the latest.
The project is expected to cost around $1.5-billion, Mr. Lecce said. That’s based on a high-level engineering estimate; the range is between $750-million and $3billion.
Officials acknowledged it’s the highest capital cost among the three options considered by the province’s grid operator, the Independent Electricity System Operator.
But IESO representatives argued Wednesday the additional cost was justified because the two land-based options, which follow existing transmission corridors from Pickering into Toronto, would provide less electricity transmission capacity. They would therefore meet the city’s requirements only until about 2040, so additional capacity would be needed shortly after their commissioning.
Chuck Farmer, the IESO’s executive vice-president of power system development, said the underwater line would meet all likely scenarios for electricity demand “well into the 2050s.”
Officials also said the underwater cable would be more resilient to storms and other extreme weather than overland lines.
The approval arrives at a moment when electricity demand within Toronto is expected to surge. A report published by the IESO in October warned that peak demand within the city (currently around 5,000 megawatts) could nearly double within 20 years.
Chuck Farmer, the IESO’s executive vice-president of power system development, said the underwater line would meet all likely scenarios for electricity demand ‘well into the 2050s.’
And although the highest demand for power has traditionally occurred during the summer, the IESO expects those peaks could arrive during the winter as soon as the early 2030s.
Toronto is served by two overland transmission lines, one from the east and another from the west. The government expects these lines will reach their maximum transmission capacity beginning in the 2030s.
Toronto Hydro, the city’s local electricity distributor, offered unequivocal support for the submarine cable. Chief executive officer Jana Mosley said electricity demand is expected to double over the next 25 years, driven by new homes, expansion of the city’s transit system and adoption of electric vehicles. She said her utility connected more than 4,800 customers last year.
“With the province taking the next step in linking future generation resources to future customer growth through this essential transmission project,” she said, “we know that we’re going to have the electricity that Torontonians need for decades to come.”
The Third Line could influence the future of the Portlands Energy Centre, a natural-gas-fired power plant east of downtown Toronto. Citing the greenhouse gas emissions from the facility, the municipality has called on the IESO to retire it by 2035 and thereafter use it only in emergencies or exceptional circumstances.
The IESO insists that the station is “critical to the reliability of both Toronto’s and the broader province’s electricity supply,” but that the Third Line would reduce local reliance on the station. Even so, the 550-megawatt fossil fuel station “may still be needed to meet the provincial grid’s peak needs,” the IESO said in its October report.
Mr. Lecce said the underwater line would allow Toronto to reduce its dependence on natural gas, including “over time” decommissioning the plant.
This article was written by Lawrence Ulrich and was published in the Globe & Mail on December 29, 2025.
A newer model Toyota Prius is displayed at the Canadian International AutoShow in Toronto in February. Toyota played up testimonials from stars, such as Leonardo DiCaprio and Meryl Streep, that helped sales boom from 5,500 in 2001, the year the Prius was first sold, to a peak of 236,000 in 2012.
The 2001 model kicked off an era of hybrids and built the automaker’s reputation as the global leader in green cars
In a different world, an electric vehicle would be just another car. But in today’s hyperpartisan climate, battery-powered cars carry not just passengers but a punishing load of political and cultural baggage.
Supporters may view electric cars as heroes, helping halt climate change or making American automakers more competitive around the world. But others see in them the heavy hand of government, pressuring consumers to ditch gasoline whether they are ready to or not. Throw in Elon Musk and his highly charged social media commentary, and even loyalists of his car company, Tesla, may no longer know whom or what to believe in.
“EVs have become such a partisan thing that they’re not defined as cars,” said Mike Murphy, a Republican strategist who leads the EV Politics Project and EVs for All America, which aim to make electric cars less political. “It’s like we’re having political fights over toasters.”
To industry experts, the seeds of this poisonous debate may have been planted inadvertently 25 years ago, with a humble, shoe-box-shaped sedan: the Toyota Prius. The groundbreaking 2001 Prius kicked off an era of gas-electric hybrids and built Toyota’s reputation as the global leader in green cars.
Mr. Murphy said Toyota had used marketing that implied that buying a Prius was a way to save the planet. That excited liberals, but drew a strong backlash from people less attuned to environmental issues. Nissan made a similar choice with the Leaf, its electric vehicle, in 2010, he said. In one Nissan TV ad, a polar bear hugged a Leaf owner.
“Climate shouldn’t be polarized, but in America it is,” said Mr. Murphy, who worked for Arnold Schwarzenegger and Mitt Romney. “So when you market vehicles for green virtues, others see it as pushy dogma. Then you’re stuck in politics.”
Imported from Japan, the 2001 Prius arrived when many Americans were switching to sport utility vehicles. Average fuel economy for the 2001 model year had fallen to a 21-year low, at 20.4 m/g. The Prius came bearing a green olive branch; federal testing showed that it could travel 48 m/g.
Margo Oge bought one of the first Priuses. Later, as an official at the Environmental Protection Agency, she would become the chief architect of fuel-economy standards enacted under the Obama administration in 2010.
“The Prius was just this cool little car to save you money and protect us from air pollution,” Ms. Oge said. “The government didn’t ask for or require Toyota to develop this tech. It wasn’t seen as a mandate as EVs later were.”
Unlike electric vehicles, which use no gasoline, Ms. Oge said, the hybrid Toyota should have been less threatening to industries like oil and ethanol, or to consumers.
Even so, some critics attacked Prius fans for engaging in virtue signalling, being hypocritical or wanting to impose nanny-state policies. In 2001, an article in Car and Driver magazine praised the Prius’ engineering, but noted that its testers managed to get only 35 m/g.
“It can be no surprise that Toyota Motor Corp. enjoys its share of adulation from the Sierra Club, from Washington, D.C., windbags and from everyone else who conveniently forgets about the five models of sport utilities and two models of pickups also peddled in Toyota dealerships,” the article said.
Toyota played up testimonials from stars, such as Leonardo DiCaprio and Meryl Streep, who publicly adopted the Prius. Sales boomed from 5,500 in 2001 to a peak of 236,000 in 2012.
Red-carpet appearances helped make the Prius a hit, Mr. Murphy said, but at a lingering cost. To some, hybrids and electric cars became vehicles for coastal liberals and do-gooders, not “mainstream” Americans. In 2006, South Park called hybrids the nation’s “leading cause of smug.”
But if the Prius attracted gibes, the Chevrolet Volt became a certified punching bag.
That model, a plug-in hybrid sedan, won top car awards. It also became inextricably linked to federal aid for General Motors. To some, the Volt was a fourwheeled symbol for “Government Motors” or “Obama Motors.” President Barack Obama sat in a Volt at its Detroit factory in 2010 and said he would buy one after he left office.
Mr. Obama and his EPA also sought to double the fuel economy of the average new car to about 50 mpg. Politicians assailed the Volt as a socialist scheme to force Americans into electric cars.
Rep. Darrell Issa, R-Calif., accused the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration of conspiring to hide a Volt defect.
“I’m a free-enterprise guy,” Mr. Issa said. “And the Volt insults a lot of us with being a demo project funded by edict.”
Robert Lutz, a former Marine fighter pilot and the outspoken vice chair of GM – who once derided global warming – publicly defended the car.
“The problem with conservatives is getting them to accept that an electric car is not necessarily a left-wing environmental plot,” Mr. Lutz, a Republican, said in 2012 before Mr. Obama was reelected. “We’ll probably see the Volt as a political football through November, and then it’ll go away.”
If only. Electric vehicles became even more political as Tesla began its rise with the release of the Model S in 2012.
Though Mr. Musk, the CEO of Tesla, is now a conservative star, many on the right previously attacked his company for earning billions by selling climate credits to other automakers, a windfall enabled by government policy. The company also received a federal loan, which it paid back early.
Of course, many businesses receive government support. Oil and gas companies enjoy many tax breaks, some going back decades.
Mr. Lutz, now retired, said he knew many “staunch Republicans” who drove and loved electric cars. The end of federal policies to encourage their sales and discourage the use of gasoline, he said, can ease some objections. Shorter charging times, he said, more than politics, may persuade more drivers to choose electric cars.
“EVs will progress more slowly now, but they will just continue to gain market share until they are by far the dominant technology,” he said.
Mr. Lutz, 93, owns a pair of electric Cadillacs, the Lyriq and the Escalade IQ. He recently got a Corvette ZR1, a gasoline sports car with 1,064 horsepower and a 233 mph top speed. Yet Mr. Lutz believes internal-combustion engines, after 120 years of development, have nearly reached their technical peak. Electric cars are just getting started.
“When you drive them, there’s just no contest,” he said. “They’re better, they’re faster, they’re quieter, with fewer moving parts.”
In a bitter turn for Toyota, Tesla’s ascent turned the Japanese company, once an environmental hero, into an ostensible villain. Toyota, Ms. Oge noted, lobbied against pro-electric vehicle policies in several countries.
Now, as sales of electric cars have cooled, Toyota and its hybrids are back in vogue. Other automakers are rushing to offer more hybrids, and the cars are rarely attacked by politicians or in popular culture.
Tesla did not respond to a request for comment. Toyota and GM declined to comment.
The decades of pitched battles have culminated in President Donald Trump’s fulsome attacks against electric cars. That includes a bid to unwind former president Joe Biden’s signature climate and energy legislation and regulations. The Biden administration’s policies would have effectively required automakers to sharply increase sales of electric and hybrid cars in the coming years.
Mr. Biden’s policies, which included a US$7,500 federal tax credit for the purchase or lease of electric vehicles, helped lift sales. But Ms. Oge said his fuel economy and emission regulations were a “political overreach” that turned many car owners, not just Republicans, against them.
“The Biden administration lost control of that message, completely,” she said. “It became ‘The government wants you to buy this car.’”
But if the Biden administration’s rules were too ambitious, Ms. Oge said, the Trump administration is aiming to make them even weaker than those put in place by Obama 15 years ago.
With political temperatures hot enough to fry a battery, Mr. Murphy said he advised automakers to eschew controversy. They should not tout electric cars’ environmental benefits, he said, because people either know about them or don’t base buying decisions on them. Automakers should instead lead with the models’ zesty performance, hushed interiors, energy savings, easy maintenance or new technology.
“These cars can win a fair fight as vehicles for most people,” he said.
In his groups’ November survey of the public’s views about electric vehicles, 48 per cent of self-identified Republicans held an unfavorable view of these cars, versus 22 per cent of independents and 14 per cent of Democrats. Conservative opposition has softened somewhat, Mr. Murphy said. He added that 40 per cent of respondents identified as Republican.
“So if automakers can’t crack the Republican consumer market,” he said, “EVs will never become as big as we need.”
This article was written by Aya Diab and was published in the Globe & Mail on December 29, 2025.
It feels simple: You shop, find something you want and click to buy. It shows up today, overnight or tomorrow. We’ve gotten used to that speed. But that convenience comes with a climate cost.
Multiple factors shape the environmental toll of a delivery. These include the distance from a fulfilment centre, whether the shipment rides in a half-empty truck, how many trips a driver makes in the same area and the type of transportation used to move the package.
When customers choose faster shipping and earlier delivery dates, the system shifts from optimized routing to whatever gets the package out fastest, and that means higher emissions, said Sreedevi Rajagopalan, a research scientist at MIT’s Center for Transportation and Logistics. For example, trucks may leave warehouses before they’re full and drivers might loop the same neighbourhood multiple times a day, she said.
“For the same demand, fast shipping definitely increases emissions 10 to 12 per cent,” she said.
To meet tight delivery windows, retailers may rely on air freight, which produces far more emissions than other options such as trains, making it the most carbon-intensive.
“Given that companies want to be competitive in terms of speed, it comes at the cost of your efficiency,” Ms. Sreedevi said. “Vans are half full, and you make multiple rounds, multiple trips to the same location … your fuel consumption goes up, and you’re not able to consolidate.”
One way companies such as Amazon.com Inc. try to minimize that is by placing their supply chain closer to customers to reduce mileage and improve speed for the customer. Their goal is to make the journey fast and effective, but reduce its emissions at the same time.
“By really leveraging our supply chain efficiencies that we have at scale, we’re able to both offer better speed and sustainability outcomes at the same time,” said Chris Atkins, director of Worldwide Operations Sustainability at Amazon.
Getting items to customers’ doors from a fulfilment centre – referred to as the “last mile” or “last kilometre” of shipping – is one of the hardest stages to make less polluting, Ms. Sreedevi said.
Emissions rise even more when customers place multiple small orders throughout the week.
“If I place an order this morning and then I place an order this evening and choose fast shipping, the company might have already processed my morning order and wouldn’t wait for my evening order to consolidate,” she said.
And sending more half-full trucks out on the road means more trips overall. “Imagine you’re not only sending a half-full truck, you’re also bringing back that truck empty. … Emissions are going to go up,” Ms. Sreedevi said.
Consumers can lower emissions if they’re willing to wait even a tiny bit, and they’ll save money at the same time, said Christopher Faires, assistant professor of logistics and supply chain management at Georgia Southern University.
Delaying delivery by one to two days can result in a 36-per-cent reduction in carbon-dioxide emissions, and three to four days pushes that reduction to 56 per cent, so opting for standard or delayed shipping instead of next-day or two-day shipping helps, according to Ms. Sreedevi.
Amazon’s Mr. Atkins said changes to their network are cutting emissions linked to fast delivery. The company has expanded the use of electric delivery vans and shifted more packages to rail and to delivering by foot or bicycle in dense cities.
“Aviation is very carbon-intensive relative to ground shipping,” said Mr. Atkins. “One of the other things that Amazon and other logistics companies are looking at doing is: How do we mode-shift to less carbon intensive forms of transportation?”
Amazon says providing shipping options that encourage customers to consolidate orders have also helped. Data for the first nine months of 2025 shows that when customers chose a single delivery day for all items, it reduced more than 300 million delivery stops and avoided 100,000 tons of carbon emissions, according to Mr. Atkins. People are more likely to delay or consolidate orders once they understand the environmental impact of fast shipping, according to Ms. Sreedevi, who coauthored a 2024 study of delivery customers in Mexico.
“A significant number of consumers decided to wait for longer delivery or delayed their shipping when we showed them the environmental impact information in the form of trees,” said Ms. Sreedevi. “So it’s important that they are educated.”
While fast shipping isn’t likely to go away, experts say its climate impacts can be meaningfully reduced through small behaviour shifts, both from shoppers and companies. Bundling orders, skipping the overnight option and choosing a single weekly delivery can all make a difference.
Rural communities seek changes as communication regulator looks to extend reach of system
This article was written by Jim Bronskill and was published in the Toronto Star on December 27, 2025.
Rural municipalities, Indigenous organizations and civil society groups are calling for changes to ensure people in remote parts of Canada receive emergency alerts during a crisis.
The suggestions to the federal communication regulator are aimed at closing gaps in the National Public Alerting System — more commonly known as Alert Ready — which delivers urgent messages about everything from missing children to tornadoes.
The Canadian Radiotelevision and Telecommunications Commission requires cellphone service providers, cable and satellite television companies and radio and television broadcasters to send out emergency alerts.
The CRTC solicited comments from interested parties on aspects of the system, including wireless public alerting gaps across Canada, distribution of alerts in English and French and the possible addition of Indigenous and other languages.
The CRTC review comes as the federal government works on a broader overhaul.
The recent federal budget promised $55.4 million over four years starting in 202627, and $13.4 million ongoing, for Public Safety Canada to support a new National Public Alerting System model.
In a submission to the CRTC review, the Saskatchewan Association of Rural Municipalities said many rural areas and highways in the province lack reliable cellular service. “This means emergency alerts from NPAS don’t always reach those who need them most — farmers, travellers, Indigenous communities, and those living remote from urban centres,” the brief said.
The association called for improving the system by working with internet service providers to upgrade critical infrastructure and address cellular coverage gaps, especially along highways and remote roads.
In its brief, Rural Municipalities of Alberta suggests requiring wireless providers to meet minimum geographic coverage levels in sparsely populated areas, where alerts struggle to reach residents.
The James Bay Cree Communications Society pointed to the 2023 Quebec wildfires as an example of the National Public Alerting System’s shortcomings.
No federal or provincial alerts were received during the evacuation of the Cree community of Mistissini, the society said in its submission to the CRTC.
The society said it worked with the Eeyou Communications Network — a majority Creeowned telecommunications carrier — and the Cree Nation Government to issue verified updates in Cree and English via FM radio and livestream on social media platforms, becoming a trusted information source for thousands of residents.
“Canada’s publicalerting framework must evolve from consultation to cogovernance — ensuring that every community can receive lifesaving information in a language they understand, through systems that endure when power and connectivity fail,” the society’s brief added.
“A truly national alerting system must make local voices part of its design, not its workaround.”
The Eeyou Communications Network called on the CRTC to ensure public alerting policy reflects the realities of northern and Indigenous regions, where locally built and governed networks already carry essential public safety communications.
“Strengthening NPAS requires recognizing the role of Indigenousowned carriers, establishing northernappropriate standards, and ensuring that funding mechanisms align with operational needs in remote communities,” the network said in its submission.
The CRTC asked participants in the review about the feasibility of creating a national mobile app, available for download across Canada, as a possible solution for reducing gaps in wireless public alerting. The Public Interest Advocacy Centre told the commission there are certain limitations and concerns when it comes to the creation and operation of such an app.
“Firstly, it is unclear whether and how effective this national app will be in issuing timely emergency alerts, particularly in the rural and remote regions,” the centre’s submission said.
It added that such a feature would require access to a phone or other digital device, which may not be possible for lowincome people.
The Canadian Red Cross said alerts must reach everyone, including people in remote areas, those without reliable internet or cellular connectivity, individuals without access to mobile devices and people with disabilities.
“They must also be culturally appropriate and aligned with trusted local communication channels,” the organization’s submission said.
Communications firm BCE Inc. advised the CRTC to avoid creating expensive new public alerting system obligations for distributors of messages.
“This caution is particularly relevant for television and radio stations, which are facing severe and welldocumented financial challenges,” the company’s brief said. “Any increase in regulatory costs or administrative burden risks further cutbacks or closures to local stations, and thus, any new obligations should be well thought out before implementation.”
A June 2025 memo prepared for the federal deputy minister of public safety warned the current arrangement for the alerting system is no longer viable due to a decline in the number of cable and satellite television subscribers.
Companies pulling back targets amid slowing sales
This article was written by Craig Trudell and was published in the Toronto Star on December 17, 2025.
Ford Motor Co. has announced $19.5 billion (U.S.) in charges tied to the retreat from an electric strategy it vowed to go all in on eight years ago
The global transition to electric vehicles is beginning to unravel the way major changeovers often do: slowly at first, then all at once.
This week brought a cascade of signals that the EV era is entering a more uncertain, more contested phase. The European Commission backed away from what had been the world’s most aggressive timeline for phasing out internalcombustion engines, granting manufacturers and consumers more time to move off gasoline. A day earlier, Ford Motor Co. announced $19.5 billion (all figures U.S.) in charges tied to the retreat from an electric strategy it vowed to go all in on eight years ago.
The pullback is no longer confined to a few laggards or skeptics. From relative newcomers to legacy giants, the signs of reckoning have been mounting for months.
Take Tesla Inc., the U.S. company that did more than any other in the world to kickstart the EV uprising. The Elon Muskled manufacturer was never going to keep up the meteoric rise pulled off at the beginning of the decade, but it’s no longer just slowing down — worldwide vehicle deliveries are poised to drop for the second year in a row. Musk’s interests have wandered from pursuing a $25,000 electric car to developing humanoid robots and driverless taxis.
China’s BYD Co. will become the new No. 1 purveyor of batteryelectric cars in 2025, though it too is now having growing pains, with total sales falling each of the last three months. The company is still producing one plugin hybrid with a gas engine under the hood for every batteryonly EV, and its momentum is stalling in part because authorities in Beijing are increasingly scrutinizing pricing practices.
Ford has had plenty of company in struggling to catch up with the electric leaders.
Its rival General Motors Co. recently incurred $1.6 billion in charges tied to paring EV production capacity, and flagged more such moves may be in the offing. Stellantis NV has scrapped plans for a fully electric Ram pickup and revived gasguzzling V8 engines it will have no trouble selling in a U.S. market that has hollowed out fuel economy and emissions standards.
When Volkswagen AG — Europe’s carmaker that was once most motivated to chase Tesla — ends output of electric ID.3 hatchbacks this month in Dresden, it will be the first time in 88 years the carmaker will have ceased production at a German assembly plant. VW, too, has taken substantial financial blows, booking 4.7 billion euros ($5.5 billion) in charges tied to its subsidiary Porsche AG reversing from EVs.
For all the challenges the industry is having, the transition isn’t being abandoned.
“EVs remain our North Star,” GM CEO Mary Barra told investors recently, and she’s repeatedly stated batteries are fundamentally better than internal combustion engines.
Volvo Car AB, which had lobbied for the EU to keep in place its effective phaseout of ICEpowered cars by 2035, noted EVs are a segment of the car industry that is growing.
But the reality that policymakers in Brussels are bowing to this week is that EV sales aren’t growing at nearly the pace required to reach targets set for a decade from now.
The degree of relief the European Commission is granting is somewhat incremental, with tailpipe emissions still needing to drop 90 per cent by 2035, instead of the previous objective for a 100 per cent reduction. The commission also is conditioning its relief on carmakers compensating for additional pollution by using lowcarbon or renewable fuels, or locally produced green steel.
“It’s probably a win for the consumer more than a win for the industry,” said Philippe Houchois, an automotive equities analyst at Jefferies.
“For carmakers, if you have multiple powertrains, you have more time to make the investments, but you have to spread your investment over multiple technologies.”
For Ford, the eyepopping charges the carmaker expects to record are linked to moves including the cancellation of a planned electric FSeries truck line, shifting production toward gas and hybrid vehicles and repurposing battery plants to produce energy storage systems instead of EVs.
“We’re seeing the same thing around the world,” Ford CEO Jim Farley told Bloomberg Television. “We need to give customers choice, and then use our manufacturing flexibility to go where the customers are.”
This article was written by Rachel Doran and Joanna Kyriazis, and was published in the Toronto Star on December 8, 2025.
RACHEL DORAN IS EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR AND JOANNA KYRIAZIS IS DIRECTOR OF POLICY AND STRATEGY AT CLEAN ENERGY CANADA, A THINK TANK AT SIMON FRASER UNIVERSITY.
Despite what you may have heard, the electric vehicle has not fallen out of favour.
On the contrary, global EV sales are up 23 per cent year to date so far in 2025, and it’s not just China, where sales are up 22 per cent, or Europe, up 32 per cent — it’s also the lesstalkedabout rest of the world, which has collectively seen a 48 per cent increase in EV sales.
Indeed, it is North America that is the EV outlier with its paltry four per cent sales increase in 2025. And believe it or not, despite everything U.S. President Donald Trump has done to stack the deck against EVs down south — including weakening tailpipe emission standards, worsening fuel economy for gas cars, too — the figure has been even worse here in Canada, where sales have declined to approximately 2022 levels.
Case in point: one can hardly imagine reading “Canada” in this recent Bloomberg headline: “Europe Car Sales Keep Climbing as Automakers Tout Budget EVs.” If that sounds like another reality than the one you’ve been experiencing, it’s because falling EV sales is an almost uniquely Canadian problem, and it’s also a 2025 problem.
After warming to the myriad benefits of EVs over the past decade, it isn’t the case that Canadians have suddenly decided they’re no longer stylish in 2025. Rather, this has been a recent policy choice. Which is to say the federal government made a number of decisions that have collectively broken Canada’s EV market over this past year, and while that likely wasn’t the intention, it has certainly been the end result.
The first piece fell last fall, when Canada erected a 100 per cent tariff on Chinese EVs to appease the U.S. While Europe, Mexico and Brazil all have similar tariffs, they are significantly lower (the U.K. and Australia have no special tariffs on Chinese EVs). Canada and America opted to wall their competition out entirely.
Then, a few months later, the federal EV rebate ran out of money. But it wasn’t just the fact that there was no longer a $5,000 incentive that left wouldbe buyers on the sidelines — it was also a lack of clarity. The federal government for months said it would bring back a rebate, then did not do so in the recent budget.
Even still, it’s not entirely clear if some new incentive program may yet return. The vast majority of interested EV buyers understandably said in a September poll that they would rather wait to make a purchase than potentially lose out on a rebate.
For almost the entirety of 2025, the next wave of Canadian EV buyers has been left waiting in incentive purgatory.
And still, yet another blow for EV consumers came about this September, when the federal government paused its Electric Vehicle Availability Standard (or EV mandate). The market signal for automakers and consumers alike has been a resounding question mark ever since.
The EV Availability Standard requires automakers to make more EVs available to consumers, meaning they must offer affordable models to grow their market share.
But rather than building those economy EVs, U.S. automakers have lobbied to both kill Canada’s mandate and to keep out any Chinese or even European competition that might bring in the lowerpriced models they’ve largely ignored.
A September Clean Energy Canada study found that Europe has 21 EV models selling for less than the equivalent of $40,000 (only seven of which are Chinese, by the way), while Canada has only a single EV in that price range.
Yes, Tesla boycotts didn’t help, but if this was just a Tesla popularity problem, yearonyear EV sales wouldn’t be up dramatically in Germany (53 per cent), France (40 per cent), and the U.K. (24 per cent).
The difference is those markets have everything Canada does not: lower tariffs on Chinese EVs, active regulations to make cars cleaner, existing or soontobe renewed consumer incentives and access to more European models currently unavailable to Canadians (this, too, Canada could and should change).
The federal government is presently weighing a number of key EV decisions — from regulations, to tariffs, to incentives — the combined outcome of which could be announced in the weeks to come. For now, we can only hope Industry Minister Mélanie Joly meant it when she said her “government will be hawkish on competition” to restore affordability for Canadians.
That starts by acknowledging that Canada broke its EV market and it did so alone.
Fixing it requires an end to the radio silence and a package of policies to improve access to more affordable EVs, aligned with Canada’s longterm economic aspirations in critical minerals, innovation and a more diversified auto sector.
This opinion was written by Gus Carlson and was published in the Globe & Mail on December 8, 2025.
A visitor looks at a Ford electric pickup truck at the Essen Motor Show in Germany on Thursday. Ford reported that sales of its EVs fell more than 60 per cent in November.
The nosedive in U.S. sales of electric vehicles since the elimination of the federal EV tax credit at the end of September is the latest moment of truth for the sector.
And that truth, when free market forces determine the true value of a product stripped of artificial sweeteners and incentives for buyers, is harsh.
Ford’s report last week was a grim reminder of how precarious the way forward for EVs has become. Sales of its EVs fell more than 60 per cent last month, continuing a downward trend from October. Ford said that due to weak demand, it had paused production of its F-150 Lightning EV pickups to focus on gas-powered trucks.
Despite strong EV sales in the third quarter – when buyers raced to make purchases before the tax credits expired – Ford said its EV business lost US$1.4-billion in the period.
But Ford was not alone. Sales of Hyundai’s Ioniq EV models dropped 50 per cent in November, as did sister company Kia’s EV sales. Honda EV sales dropped 80 per cent.
The post-tax-credit tumble exposes the wide valley of death between the ideological aspirations of early EV adopters and the economic reality holding back the next wave of buyers.
Prices of EVs are still too high. Charging infrastructure is still inadequate to ease range anxiety. The quality of the products made by legacy automakers continues to lag that of pure-play manufacturers such as Tesla. And the development of new models has been slow and inconsistent.
Even Tesla’s not looking at a particularly bright future. As was the case with Ford, its U.S. sales were juiced in the third quarter by buyers trying to beat the expiry of the rebate, but its international numbers were down sharply.
Many blame U.S. President Donald Trump for hobbling the sector by eliminating the tax credits as part of his crusade to dismantle the green agenda of his predecessor, Joe Biden, which included incentives of US$7,500 for new EVs and US$4,500 for used vehicles.
But Mr. Biden had a golden opportunity to advance the EV ball and fumbled. Early in his term he earmarked nearly US$8-billion to build a nationwide network of EV changing stations. By the time he left office, the program had created only a handful.
The EV faithful also complain that legacy automakers are partly to blame because gas and hybrid models are more profitable and there is no incentive for manufacturers to fast-track EV design and production – and no penalty for not doing so.
But automakers are not charities, and altruism is not a winning corporate strategy in a competitive global marketplace, especially with high-quality, competitively priced Chinese models gaining share.
Like any business, automakers prosper, grow and create jobs based on their ability to meet customer demand. And the economic reality is that there is a huge universe of car buyers out there who remain unconvinced that EVs are right for them.
Two recent moves by big legacy automakers in Canada underline the point.
Ford’s decision to shelve plans to convert its Oakville, Ont., assembly plant to EVs was made well before Mr. Trump imposed tariffs on Canadian-made vehicles. The rationale for the move was market-driven – weak demand for its EVs – and the company made the call to convert the plant to build strong-selling heavy-duty trucks instead.
Stellantis blamed tariffs in part for its recent decision to halt the conversion of its Brampton, Ont., plant to EV production, but it is worth noting that the company’s redeployment of resources and people from Canada to several U.S. plants is not focused on EVs.
The hard truth is this: The EV sector needs to start standing on its own. For it to grow and avoid becoming a footnote, legacy automakers in particular must step up and address the deficiencies themselves.
Recent history has shown that it is hard enough to push forward with an administration such as Mr. Trump’s that doesn’t favour EVs. But having an ineffectual champion such as Mr. Biden has been no help, either.
Prices need to come down, charging station deployment needs to become a priority, model refreshment must keep customer engagement high, and quality must at least match that of Chinese rivals.
For too long, the EV sector has been living the charmed life of an adolescent whose mom and dad (in this case, taxpayers) have paid the freight. When the tax incentives expired, it was akin to the teenager being kicked out of the house and forced to make it on his own. He stumbled, and even recent rebates from automakers did not soften the fall.
The EV sector is out of the nest now, at least in North America. It needs to prove it is a viable, sustainable business that can survive and thrive without being propped up in an artificial environment of subsidies and incentives. Simply put, it needs to grow up – and quickly.
This opinion was written by Eric Reguly and was published in the Globe & Mail on December 6, 2025.
Workers assemble Zeekr 001 EV models at the Chinese automaker’s Ningbo plant in April. China’s battery and hybrid cars are racing ahead pretty much everywhere except Canada and the U.S.
German carmakers have always used a peculiar mix of solid, retro engineering and dazzling technology to create machines that were built like safes but loaded with features that, if not invented by the Germans, were refined by them – anti-lock braking, all-wheel drive, stability control, adaptive suspension and other gadgets. The combo turned Germany in the postwar decades into an automotive superpower.
The German automotive minds were less adept at leadingedge drivetrain technology. They were slow to mass produce pure electric vehicles (EVs) and hybrids, handing that market to Tesla in the United States and, lately, to the Chinese auto giants, among them BYD, Geely and SAIC Motor. Of course, the German automakers’ showrooms are full of EVs, but they are neither mass produced nor bargains for average families.
The most “affordable” Volkswagen EV, for instance, is the compact, and not especially luxurious, ID.3, which starts at about €30,000 ($48,000) and can top out at a hefty €48,000 ($77,000). No wonder VW is in trouble and, for the first time in 88 years, closing domestic factories.
The sales and profits crisis in the German car industry has sent the technocrats and politicians in Berlin and Brussels into a lowgrade panic as auto jobs disappear, not just in Germany, but also in France and Italy. Their response is to dilute the European Union’s green agenda.
The upshot is that old-tech cars – those powered by gasoline and diesel engines – may live on for another decade or two, or three. Aside from the obvious outcome that Europe’s air will be less clean as the death sentence for internalcombustion-engine cars is lifted, the less obvious outcome is that it will take some of the pressure off Europe’s car companies to develop advanced technologies (which may or may not use batteries) simply because they can keep relying on the old ones.
Talk about a gift to China, whose battery and hybrid cars are racing ahead pretty much everywhere except Canada and the U.S., where 100-per-cent tariffs on Chinese EVs shut them out of the market.
The green rollback is picking up momentum in many big markets. In the U.S., President Donald Trump, no fan of EVs in spite of his bromance with Telsa boss Elon Musk, this month gutted the tight new fuel efficiency and tailpipe emission rules for cars and trucks. The U.S. automakers cheered the move, with Ford chief executive officer Jim Farley calling it a “victory for common sense and affordability.”
In the European Union, rightwing party gains in recent elections have amplified the shouts to “stop the Green New Deal.” At the moment, the EU’s environmental agenda calls for the phase-out by 2035 of new cars powered by internal-combustion engines. That deadline is expected to be delayed if those engines are powered by low-emission fuels, such as biofuels, or highly efficient combustion technology. Details should be known on Dec. 10, when the EU is to unveil a new package of automotive policies.
At the same time, holes are also being poked through the EU’s painfully named Corporate Sustainability Due Diligence Directive (CS3D), which was adopted in 2024. Its dizzying web of regulations requires large companies to shift their global supply chains to low-carbon operations. In a comment piece in the Financial Times this week, Andrew Puzder, the U.S. ambassador to the EU, called CS3D “economic suicide” for the EU.
The EU won’t fully comply, but lobbying efforts from French President Emmanuel Macron, German Chancellor Friedrich Merz and the bosses of several bigname industrial and energy companies are removing CS3D’s fangs. The directive’s net-zero goals are being eliminated, for instance – another victory for the Chinese auto industry, which would face lower compliance barriers to sell its EVs in Europe.
While the EU green-dilution campaign might save a few car factories from closing over the next few years, it may not do the automakers any favours over the medium to long term. Removing some of the pressure on them to find alternatives to gas and diesel engines only provides a market opening for the Chinese automakers, who have turned into the world’s leading makers of EVs. Their autos are generally much cheaper than those of European rivals, and the quality has improved fast, to the point where they are rated on par with Teslas, or close to them.
The automakers’ soaring market shares outside China say as much. Germany’s Schmidt Automotive Research said Chinese EVs will capture 11 per cent of the Western European EV market this year, up from 9.6 per cent last year and a mere 3.8 per cent in 2021. The gains will continue now that Hungary is about to build Chinese EVs and car batteries in huge volumes. Because Hungary is a member of the EU, those products can escape the bloc’s hefty import tariffs on EVs.
Sometimes industries and businesses need a swift kick to get them moving. Allowing the European automakers to keep their old technologies alive for another generation will do them no favours. It will just ensure they lose more ground to the fast-moving Chinese companies in the EV war.
This article was written by Marie Woolf and was published in the Globe & Mail on December 1, 2025.
Crude oil tankers docked at the Westridge Marine Terminal in Burnaby, B.C., on Nov. 19.Jimmy Jeong/The Globe and Mail
B.C. Premier David Eby says he would be prepared to talk with Alberta and Ottawa about the prospect of a new oil pipeline, but only if the existing ban on tanker traffic off his province’s northern coast remains in place.
Prime Minister Mark Carney and Alberta Premier Danielle Smith signed a memorandum of understanding last week that, among other things, includes a potential exemption to the north coast tanker ban if a bitumen pipeline is eventually approved.
Mr. Eby has opposed lifting the tanker ban and also complained that he had been cut out of talks about the agreement. The Coastal First Nations, an alliance of nations on British Columbia’s north coast, have condemned the agreement and said they intend to fight it.
“If we can agree that the oil tanker ban is going to stay in place, then let’s have those conversations,” Mr. Eby said in an interview withCTV broadcast on Sunday.
“I think that would make life a lot better and easier in British Columbia in terms of our relationship with Coastal First Nations. [It] would definitely take down the temperature and maybe enable some creative solutions.”
Mr. Eby said scrapping the ban would be a “grave mistake,” adding, “I think that the risk of an oil spill is really significant in terms of the economic harm.”
Alberta has long advocated for an oil pipeline to the north coast, an idea that was rejected by the government of former prime minister Justin Trudeau when it blocked the proposed Northern Gateway pipeline nearly a decade ago.
Ms. Smith has repeatedly called on Ottawa to repeal the tanker ban, and her province is now working with several companies on a potential proposal. The Alberta Premier has made it clear that her preferred route for a new pipeline would end on the north coast.
Carolyn Svonkin, a spokesperson for federal Energy Minister Tim Hodgson, said in an interview Sunday that it’s “not impossible” to approve a pipeline while still maintaining the tanker ban – if the proposed route ends somewhere not covered by the ban, such as in the Vancouver region.
She said the federal government plans to have talks with Alberta and B.C. on a path forward.
Ms. Svonkin said that aroute has yet to be decided for a potential pipeline. She added that “formal and robust consultation” with First Nations in northern B.C. would also take place.
She said maintaining a tanker ban was potentially feasible if the pipeline’s terminal is at a port where tankers are currently allowed, such as Trans Mountain Pipeline’s Westbridge marine terminal in Burnaby, near Vancouver, which already handles crude oil exports.
“Alberta has been clear that they would like it to go from B.C.’s north coast,” Ms. Svonkin said. “In particular, Prince Rupert would be their stated preference.”
She said she expected Alberta, as the federal government had done, had “noted the Premier’s comments, and this will be a point of discussion.”
“I’m sure they’ll be factoring it into their work as they proceed,” she added.
Mr. Hodgson met with Mr. Eby on Friday.
The B.C. Premier had previously expressed frustration about his province’s exclusion from negotiations between the federal government and Alberta on the memorandum of understanding.
The agreement removes the oil and gas emissions cap, suspends clean electricity regulations and includes a commitment from Ottawa to enable the export of bitumen, a viscous oil product, from a deepwater port to Asian markets. The deal states this could include adjusting a 2019 law that prohibits oil tankers carrying more than 12,500 tonnes of oil from loading or unloading at ports along B.C.’s northern coast.
Ms. Smith’s and Mr. Eby’s offices did not respond to requests for comment on Sunday.
The route of the proposed pipeline, which will not receive federal funding, is expected to provoke intense debate.
Richard Masson, executive fellow at the University of Calgary’s School of Public Policy and former chief executive officer of the Alberta Petroleum Marketing Commission, said maintaining the tanker ban could mean the pipeline going to Vancouver, rather than Prince Rupert or Kitimat, further up the coast.
He said Prince Rupert’s deepwater port is closer to both Edmonton and the Asian markets, and is less congested than the Vancouver port.
“My understanding is that there are no other ports that could work,” he said.
Rather than a new pipeline, Mr. Eby has proposed increasing the amount of oil that could be shipped through the existing Trans Mountain pipeline. This could boost its capacity by about 40 per cent. The province has given the go-ahead for the Vancouver Fraser Port Authority to dredge the Second Narrows waterway to allow tankers to load more oil at the Trans Mountain marine terminal.
Ms. Svonkin said the final decision about a potential route for a new pipeline would need to follow studies and conversations with First Nations.
“You can’t do formal consultation on a project if you don’t know what the route is,” she said.
My Climate Change Website 