The federal government has filed its proposal to scrap the Electric Vehicle Availability Standard, the rule that would have required electric vehicles to make up at least 20 per cent of new car sales in Canada this year and 100 per cent by 2035. Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney announced in February that the mandate was going, and this is the regulation that makes it official.
Automakers were responsible for meeting those sales targets or facing penalties, which is why the mandate is being removed after sustained pressure from provinces and carmakers who argued the targets were unreachable and that there were better ways to reduce emissions than penalizing manufacturers already dealing with the trade war with the United States.
Carney promised in February to replace the mandate with a stricter limit on how much carbon dioxide a vehicle can emit per mile driven, but that rule is still unwritten, with consultations only beginning this fall and draft regulations targeted for early 2027.
We have been following this story since the regulations were first finalized. For anyone weighing a vehicle purchase, the decision now rests on the same practical questions it always did, and we looked at those in January 2024 in an article on what buying an electric vehicle actually involves in Canada, covering range, the cost of installing a home charger, what happens during a power outage, and what all of it means for households outside major cities.