Inflation and the budgetary reframing that it imposes on governments have just claimed a new victim: the Quebec Roulez vert program. The incentive to purchase electric vehicles is being stopped, under the pretext that its increasing cost is not worth the climate benefit. A short-sighted brake on the long unfinished road of the energy transition, and which the government of François Legault nevertheless prescribes with a completely different urgency in the field of industrial development.
Falling under the ax of optimization of Quebec state spending, the Roulez vert discount will be gradually abolished within three years. The supply of new electric or hybrid vehicles is already insufficient to meet market demand, and any new automobile order takes months, or even a year or two, to be delivered, the incentive to purchase is thus already saying almost a thing of the past.
The program could obviously be improved: the rebate is not modulated according to the income of the buyer of vehicles more expensive than an entry-level combustion model; it encourages automobile transport rather than a shift towards public transport; and batteries are not without environmental impact either.
However, François Legault’s government has not announced an overhaul of Roulez vert. Nor another path that would have allowed Quebec to continue the momentum that has made it one of the greenest provinces in Canada. Nearly 20% of new zero-emission vehicle registrations recorded there were in Quebec last year.
Which makes the Minister of the Environment, Benoît Charette, say to justify the hasty abandonment of Roulez vert, that the transition to electric cars is already well underway. However, in Ontario, sales of electric vehicles fell by half in the year following the abandonment of a comparable rebate.
The minister further argues that the cost of the program is expensive paid per tonne of greenhouse gas (GHG) reduction. A report commissioned by its own ministry, however, assessed that Roulez vert “has the lowest unit cost among the programs specifically aimed at passenger transport” and that it had “permitted, absolutely, the largest cumulative reductions in GHGs.” “. Between April 2023 and January 2024, Roulez vert enabled the purchase of nearly 62,000 electric or plug-in hybrid vehicles.
It is blatant inconsistency.
Faced with a record deficit, François Legault cuts an incentive for the green transition of 410 million dollars, from an expenditure budget of 157 billion. While garnering a surplus of $1.7 billion in its Electrification and Climate Change Fund, as well as record revenues on the carbon market (200 million more than the $1.3 billion anticipated). The economic slowdown is sparing the coffers of the Environment, which could have financed an eco-fiscal successor to Roulez vert.
The CAQ government has not yet announced anything of the sort. Its investments for public transport have on the contrary only increased by 0.3% in the budget… The gap between the financing of road and public transport infrastructure remains untenable (71% against 29%, respectively, far from the objective of 50%-50%).
Also at the Canadian level, the challenges posed by the rising cost of living have eclipsed, in the eyes of governments, those of the fight against global warming. Justin Trudeau’s unpopular carbon pricing (which does not apply to Quebec) now faces fierce opposition from seven of the eight provinces subject to it, which are imploring his government to cancel the increase planned for 1er April of 3 cents per liter of fuel.
Even the Liberal Andrew Furey, from Newfoundland and Labrador – until now an ally of Mr. Trudeau, whom the latter cannot accuse of being right-wing – joined in, deploring the effect of “persistent and penalizing inflation” on his fellow citizens. Saskatchewan has completely stopped collecting it for residential gas heating, although federal law requires it to do so. It must be said that the Trudeau government itself opened the breach which the provinces have since seized by exempting from its carbon tax, for these same economic reasons, oil heating, proportionally more widespread in the Atlantic.
The climate targets of Quebec and Canada are closer than they appear. And the challenge of achieving them, just as great as it seems, GHGs having started to rise again and temperatures continuing to break records.
Financial anxiety caused by inflation and economic gloom cannot justify blocking the path to urgent climate action.