John Bolton - December 16, 2025


Cold Weather + Electric Buses = Surprise Disaster (Not Really) - Billions wasted


Episode Stats


Length

8 minutes

Words per minute

179.72946

Word count

1,528

Sentence count

128

Harmful content

Hate speech

1

sentences flagged


Summary

Summaries generated with gmurro/bart-large-finetuned-filtered-spotify-podcast-summ .

Regina, Canada is going all-in on electric buses and the federal government is footing the bill for $26 million worth of electric buses. What kind of boondoggle is this? And why should you be mad about it?

Transcript

Transcript generated with Whisper (turbo).
Hate speech classifications generated with facebook/roberta-hate-speech-dynabench-r4-target .
00:00:00.000 Hi, it's John and welcome to the channel. It is Tuesday, December the 14th. I hope you're
00:00:07.620 having a great start to your Tuesday morning, 4.13am with the big blue mug of coffee. Thank
00:00:13.640 you so much for being part of this channel. Nine sleeps until Christmas. Merry Christmas
00:00:18.440 to you. I want you to know, regardless of where you live in Canada, even if I don't
00:00:27.460 mention the name of your city in this video, there's a saying, there's only one taxpayer
00:00:33.640 and you're on the hook for part of this boondoggle and you should be mad about it. And I'm mad
00:00:38.820 about it because I live in one of the cities that are going to be mentioned here. And we're
00:00:42.860 talking about hundreds of millions of dollars in taxpayer spending. And again, you're on
00:00:49.500 the hook for part of it because you're one of the taxpayers. It's a strange place where
00:00:54.620 we live in Canada. We have this thing called weather. Very odd. You think about it. It
00:01:01.740 can be plus 30 degrees in the summertime in Canada and minus 30 in the wintertime or even
00:01:06.860 colder, but that's a 60 degree swing. Here in Calgary alone, yesterday it was 10 degrees.
00:01:13.640 It'll be minus 18 next Monday. So think about that. So this is a totally predictable boondoggle
00:01:19.620 boondoggle I'm going to talk about here. And I'm talking about electric vehicles because
00:01:24.900 when it gets cold, electric vehicles don't work as good because, well, it's cold. I saw
00:01:30.480 this article on the Daily Mail yesterday, just to give you a little bit of a point of reference
00:01:35.580 here. Ford's electric hopes unravel as it pulls the plug on battery powered F-150 after
00:01:42.340 a $19.5 billion loss. I used to have a web page under my own name and I had a segment called
00:01:51.380 the Mad Rush to be Green. And the greenies are trying to get us to move on to electric
00:01:56.100 vehicles. Up until just recently, Canada had an electric vehicle mandate. It was supposed
00:01:59.720 to really kick in for the first part of it, well, in about 16 days. But it was delayed for
00:02:07.200 a period so the government could study it. We haven't heard what's happened with that
00:02:11.660 study, but I'm fully expecting the liberals will bring back the EV mandate. Maybe just
00:02:16.240 push it a year or two down the road. But this is a boondoggle of epic proportions because
00:02:21.160 I want to talk about electric buses. Now, what I'm going to do here is I'm going to show you
00:02:25.800 these articles in reverse order. So this is an article from earlier this year, April 25th,
00:02:30.460 electric buses take to Regina's streets next week. Seven zero emission buses earlier this
00:02:38.200 year in Regina. And we'll go down here. The seven buses were bought for $1.37 million each.
00:02:44.480 The city of Regina split the bill with the government of Canada. So that's why I'm saying
00:02:48.480 you're on the hook for this, folks. And they're expecting 13 more buses, bumping the electric
00:02:54.120 fleet to 20. Now, going back a little bit. January 24th, 2024, Regina Transit signs deal to buy 20
00:03:02.040 electric buses. And note the name of the company that they're buying the buses from. Nova Bus. This
00:03:08.260 is important. We're going to come back to it in just a moment. Then we move back in time a little
00:03:12.820 further. Back to March the 15th. Oh, the Ides of March again. 2023. Talking Mayor Sandra Masters here.
00:03:21.200 We have a $52 million project. We asked the federal government for 50% under one of their funding
00:03:27.800 buckets. And we were successful. So you, the taxpayer of Canada, are on the hook for $26 million just for
00:03:34.460 Regina. Keep in mind, a lot of city are buying buses. And this just on X. Reload here. This just on X.
00:03:46.240 What? Yesterday? The president of the transit union, Sukwinder Singh, told Regina's mayor
00:03:53.560 and council that the city's brand new $2 million electric buses are only drivable for 1.5 to 3
00:04:01.320 hours in the winter before their battery dies. Regina currently has seven electric buses in its
00:04:07.160 fleet with 13 more planned for delivery in 2026 as part of the city's climate change action plan.
00:04:13.340 They had a combined cost of $50 million, which was split between the city and the federal
00:04:18.640 government. Now this is just Regina. But again, this money affects you regardless of where you
00:04:24.420 live. And I live in Calgary. Let's find out where Calgary's buses were purchased and how much they're
00:04:30.040 paying. But before we get to that, let's hear from Mr. Singh. If you're asking me, I'm not in favor of
00:04:35.260 electric buses at all. It's not for the Saskatchewan weather. For the winter, their battery dies very
00:04:39.640 quickly and they can just run for two, three hours. That's all. That's very interesting. If we cut
00:04:43.160 electric buses, got rid of that fleet to maintain services, would you be happy with that from the
00:04:46.900 union president? I will be happy with that. Before we were happy with the electric buses also when we
00:04:49.520 haven't seen them on the road there because it will save some fuel, we were thinking, and it's going
00:04:52.700 with the environment there. We're happy with that. But now when we see after two hours of drive,
00:04:56.460 their battery comes to 15%. Oh wow. Didn't even know that. It's on Facebook everywhere last Friday.
00:05:00.320 There was four buses. Four buses we have to change off with a 15% battery. I think with a one charge,
00:05:04.600 the maximum how many? 200 kilometers they can go with one charge, full charge. So we are spending money on
00:05:08.280 electricity there too, right? If you're saving on fuel, we're spending on electricity and we can't
00:05:11.360 rely on them. Whether diesel buses, we have a sign, we know that it will go this long.
00:05:15.080 Electric buses, no. And especially in winter, a big no. So these buses are virtually useless when it
00:05:20.380 gets cold outside. I've read that an electric bus loses 40% of its range when it hits minus seven.
00:05:27.680 I wonder what happens when it hits minus 27, which happens regularly where I live.
00:05:31.780 And you're on the hook for $26 million of federal taxpayer money to pay for buses that don't work
00:05:39.680 properly in Regina. But hold on to your hats, folks, because there are a lot bigger cities in
00:05:44.200 this country using Nova buses than just Regina. And one of them is Calgary, where I live. And holy
00:05:50.240 crap, we're going to be getting into the billions of dollars pretty soon. 40-foot electric buses. This is
00:05:54.800 Calgary Transit. What's the latest update on Calgary Transit's 40-foot battery electric buses?
00:06:01.400 On July 24, 2025, we awarded longtime Canadian supplier Nova Bus, part of the Volvo Group,
00:06:09.060 as a successful vendor for the purchase of 120 zero-emission, 40-foot battery electric buses to
00:06:14.800 replace end-of-life diesel buses. How much money are you on the hook for our buses here in Calgary?
00:06:19.540 Really? Funding includes grant funding from Infrastructure Canada's zero-emission transit
00:06:27.020 fund. Your money, up to $220 million. Canada Infrastructure Bank financing, $123 million.
00:06:35.100 And me right here in Calgary city funding, $100 million. Do the math. By the way, just to give
00:06:42.820 you an idea of what your bus looks like, these are the buses you're buying for me here in Calgary
00:06:46.920 that don't work properly when the temperature drops below zero.
00:06:52.280 Now hold on to your hats, because a lot of cities across this country are buying Nova buses that don't
00:06:57.540 work in the cold. Many Canadian centers, including Toronto, Ottawa, Vancouver, Saskatoon, and Banff,
00:07:03.940 and let's go down here, there's a lot more. Toronto, Brampton, Durham, Waterloo, Guelph, Oakville,
00:07:10.340 York Region, Longay, Quebec City, Gatineau, Sherbrick, Trois-Rivières, all buying Nova buses. You can go over
00:07:16.900 to Google. Google it. Here's some of the highlights. There's the $120 for Calgary Transit. You're buying
00:07:22.920 $541 of these duds for the TTC in Toronto, $339 for Quebec Transit. Do the math. This amounts to
00:07:30.420 billions and billions of wasted taxpayer dollars, your money. And this doesn't even include all the
00:07:37.140 infrastructure for these things. I bet you they didn't calculate all the extra charging of these
00:07:42.400 buses if they only work for an hour and a half to three hours a day. And we have problems here in
00:07:46.920 Alberta, a province that has more energy than freaking God, with brownouts in the middle of 1.00
00:07:53.240 the wintertime because we don't have enough energy here. How is this going to tax our system? And who's
00:07:58.280 paying for all the electricity to charge these stupid things? And what happens if they break down?
00:08:02.920 Or the company goes out of business, which happens. Or a battery goes, which probably costs a million
00:08:08.220 dollars to replace. The mad rush to be green. It ends up costing you a lot of your green.
00:08:16.800 Thanks for watching. If you liked the video, which you probably didn't, considering the subject matter.
00:08:24.220 If you liked the video, give it a thumbs up. Subscribe to the channel. Ring the bell for notifications.
00:08:28.180 I'll see you in the next one.