If you think the whole country should be moving to electric vehicles and you run the country, don’t you think you’d order the government to buy electric?
That’s probably what most people would do, but the Trudeau Liberals seem to like sizzle more than they like steak.
Yet figures released by the federal government in response to an official order paper question, and first reported on by Blacklock’s Reporter, show less than 5% of all federal vehicles obtained since Jan. 1, 2020, were electric.
In fact, of the 2,899 vehicles the federal government took possession of – not counting military or Canada Post delivery vehicles – just 137 or 4.7% were electric and 782, or 27%, were hybrids. Of the 26.2 million vehicles registered in Canada, just 152,685 – or half of one percentage point – are battery electric vehicles.
Even after adding in the 303,073 hybrid electric vehicles and 95,896 plug-in electric vehicles registered in Canada, that only amounts to 2.1% of all vehicles in Canada. Given the election promise of increasing the sale of electric vehicles to 100% by 2035, we have a long way to go.
It’s clear the federal government is buying more electric vehicles than the general Canadian population but given their push to move towards zero emission vehicles, shouldn’t they be doing better? This isn’t a column ranting against electric vehicles, that is the direction the industry is moving in, but to claim the federal government is leading would be a stretch.
The feds have the biggest government fleet in the country and even after taking out many of their purchased or leased vehicles, they are at less than 5% for their fleet.
Of course, when the man leading the charge doesn’t follow his own edicts, why should the rest of us?
As the response to the Order Paper Question shows, Environment and Climate Change Canada obtained 122 vehicles since January 2020, but none were electric. Many were regular, full-size pickup trucks and just 34 vehicles were hybrids.
At Parks Canada, a division of Environment and Climate Change Canada, 199 vehicles were purchased or leased but just 25 of them were electric.
As I reported back in November 2020, Environment and Climate Change Minister Steven Guilbeault is not against racking up the kilometres for his job. Guilbeault was driving up to three times what the average Canadian would drive and was using a gas guzzling vehicle at the time.
For April 2020 for example, Guilbeault’s odometer turned over 3,980 km in a single month.
“The number of kilometres used reflects the transportation between Montreal and the National Capital region to attend in-person Parliament sessions, cabinet meetings, announcements made in different Quebec rural regions over the summer,” his spokesperson said at the time.
He wasn’t driving an electric car at the time, not even a hybrid as far as we could tell, just a regular gas guzzler.
As I said, the industry is moving electric and so soon will all of us. The electric vehicle of 20 years ago is not what we have now, which is why gearheads are on waiting lists for vehicles like the F-150 Lightning.
Still, if the Trudeau government wants to lecture the rest of us on electric vehicles, if they want to claim they are the change we need to see in the world, then they should act like it. Right now, they are simply that guy sitting in the corner harping at the rest of us to live up to standards they won’t meet themselves.
Calling out the general public for things you won’t do simply doesn’t make the cut.
Post a Comment