Canadian transportation policy is now operating under a Zero Emissions Vehicle (ZEV) mandate that will soon have a binding effect as Canadians try to purchase their next vehicle, particularly light trucks.
A ZEV mandate requires sellers of light vehicles to sell a certain minimum of ZEVs (in effect, electric vehicles or EVs) in a year. The theory is that this minimum requirement will guarantee a market for ZEVs and thus encourage construction of ZEV manufacturing facilities and phase-out of internal combustion engine (ICE) vehicles.
The federal ZEV mandate proposed last December states that sales of light vehicles (passenger cars and light trucks) must be at least 20 per cent ZEVs in 2026, 60 per cent in 2030 and…
It has been 15 years since the $100,000 deposit insurance limit for eligible deposits at the Big Six banks and a host of other smaller federally-regulated deposit-taking institutions came into force. Inflation since then suggests the time has come to raise it. But we may want to think about other changes, too.
Canada has a fragmented deposit insurance system. In addition to the federal system managed by the Canada Deposit Insurance Corp.(CDIC), deposits of provincially incorporated institutions, like most credit unions and caisses populaires, are backed by their respective provincial deposit insurance corporations. Coverage limits in those systems range from $100,000 in Quebec to full coverage in the four western…
As governments subsidize ever-expanding decarbonization measures, including Volkswagen’s St. Thomas, Ont., battery plant that got $13 billion from Canada, there are clouds gathering on the trade horizon.
Canada had matched what Volkswagen would have gotten under similar, American subsidies. Many of these national measures to aid the transition to net-zero emissions, even if based on the Kyoto Protocol and the Paris climate-change agreement, may run headlong against trade rules that prohibit both the subsidization of goods that enter international markets as well as local content requirements that discriminate against imports.
Governments have to find accommodation or the world could be in store for a…
