Electric vehicles are often buzzed as the future of vehicular transportation, but sales in Northern Ontario have yet to get up to speed with other provinces and countries.
The provincial Progressive Conservative government is pushing its critical mineral strategy to advance mining for manufacturing electric vehicle batteries, and the federal Liberal government is targeting zero-emission vehicles to become the new standard of transportation by 2035.
With gas prices skyrocketing, the allure of buying an electric car is seemingly enticing.
However, in a new report from the Northern Policy Institute, policy analyst Amelia Spacek offers insight into why Northern Ontario has dragged the brakes when it comes to buying electric vehicles.
In her report, Spacek found that electric vehicles represent 2.2 per cent of the new vehicle registrations in 2021, which places the province behind the national average. Only one in about 1,800 Northern Ontario residents has a registered electric vehicle.
Spacek suggested that people aren’t buying because the cost of owning one is too high.
“People realize you can just convince people to buy a car which that they are going to rely on every day of their life to get to work, to get to school, to do road trips to other communities in Northern Ontario,” Spacek said.
When compared to how other provinces incentivize people in transitioning from combustion engines to electric, the province has cut funding to rebate programs for both the purchase of an electric vehicle and the installation of at-home charging equipment.
According to Spacek’s study, in 2019 the federal government introduced an incentive program while British Columbia and Quebec introduced their own rebate programs for buying an electric vehicle. In those provinces, the market is increasing.
"The upfront cost of an electric vehicle is already so much higher than a gas-powered vehicle," Spacek said, "even though, in the long term, it can sometimes come out to be a less expensive option. The up-front cost kind of makes the option less attractive to buy it.”
Spacek said one way to reverse this trend is for all levels of government to commit to more public education on the benefits of electric vehicles, especially the federal government if they want to meet their expected goal.
“You hear a lot of talk about [sales] being this per cent this year and that per cent another year, but to regular people that doesn’t necessarily mean all that much when you don’t have a comparison to where we were five years ago, and where other countries were five years ago and where they are now," she said.
Spacek’s report suggested Canada could look at countries like Norway, where they cut taxes in EV markets and raised taxes for gas to make the option of buying an electric vehicle more desirable.
In Norway, customers pay less than 50 per cent of the taxes when buying an electric vehicle than they would for a gas-powered vehicle.
“I think seeing a big picture as to how things are changing and showing people how fast things can change and show people that EVs are working in other countries because at the end of the day selling only EVs isn’t just about selling the vehicles," Spacek said. "It’s also about making sure that the infrastructure is in place to support them everywhere. Just because you are seeing a huge increase in sales in cities, it doesn’t mean it is also happening everywhere else.”
However, this incentive would only be a beginning and not an end.
In her report, Spacek said people want to know that there are enough charging stations for them to get to where they want to go, a particular issue in northern Ontario with vast distances between communities.
“I think the biggest step is to make sure that [the government] is sharing the numbers with the public and them that there is a plan in place, and it’s not just a goal that we are setting, and hoping that it’ll magically fall into place,” said Spacek.
“We rely so much on our cars because there isn’t necessarily reliable public transit. So, to try and convince people that this new technology is going to solve all their problems, I think can be a little bit intimidating, especially if you don’t see people around you using the technology.”
