GUNTER: Taxpayers foot the bill for politicians' EV delusions

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Among gambling addicts, it’s called “chasing your losses,” making ever larger and riskier bets to try to win back the money lost for initial bets.

Canadian politicians are now chasing their losses on electric vehicles (EVs).

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In the last five years, the federal, Ontario and Quebec governments have made enormous gambles on the future of the EV industry. According to the Parliamentary Budget Office, the total these three governments have bet on EVs replacing internal combustions engines is in excess of $52 billion.

That’s just the tax money pledged to EV makers. It doesn’t include billions more for subsidies to consumers to encourage them to buy EVs or to develop a network of charging stations across this vast land mass.

If Canada were to achieve the federal mandate that all new cars and light-duty trucks sold in the country be EVs by 2035, the cost of manufacturing plants, battery plants, subsidies to buyers and charging infrastructure could easier soar to $200 billion, about 75 per cent of which would come from taxpayers.

The whole scheme is a fake market with phoney stimulus largely created by government command, not consumer demand.

That’s also just the price of this one slice of the politicians’ “green” transition. Let’s not even bring up the cost of making Canada’s entire power grid net zero at a time when government actions will be doubling the demand for electricity to charge EVs, heat homes without using natural gas, oil or coal, and build giant computing centres for the coming AI revolution.

Given all those potential gigantic problems from the political rush to save the planet with net-zero cars and power generation, maybe I shouldn’t focus on the federal Liberals’ announcement over the weekend that they will be bringing back Ottawa’s $5,000 per vehicle “incentive” to buyers of EVs.

Make no mistake, this is largely a government goodie for the upper-middle class. The typical EV buyer makes in excess of $90,000 a year and is buying the EV as a second or even third car.

However, if Ottawa, Ontario and Quebec are going to maintain the fantasy that Canadian drivers can all be switched over to the electric vehicles that will be built in the mega-factories those governments have committed taxpayer billions to, then these subsidies have to be reinstated so that sales of EVs can be made to look, artificially, as though they are strong, when in fact they are not.

After the federal incentive program ran out of cash in January, EVs sales across Canada fell 41 per cent in February and 45 per cent in March, versus those same months a year earlier.

You will often hear “green” politicians, bureaucrats and environmentalists claim the market for EVs is growing rapidly. They’re not. The second governments stopped fanning the fire with generous subsidies, the flames burned down.

Also, despite the tens of billions given by governments to auto manufacturers, in the last six months Honda, Ford, General Motors, Stellantis (Chrysler) and Toyota have all suspended plans to construct EV plants.

My favourite was Ford’s decision to switch a planned EV plant to production of its F-250 Super Duty pickup. Take that, EV promoters.

On top of the big names, Lion Electric, a Quebec-based maker of electric transport trucks, tried to switch from trucks to buses last year to find investors. It is now in creditor protection.

The future in Canada of Swedish battery maker Northvolt — and the $7 billion given to it by the feds and the Quebec government — remains unclear, too.

At present, of the over $50 billion committed to EV manufacturing by the federal government, Ontario and Quebec, about 70 per cent is delayed, in trouble or in default.

Politicians allowed themselves to get swept up in the EV euphoria. Unfortunately, they dragged Canadians and their tax money along for the ride.