How China will Cubanize Canada's roads
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Summary
Dan McTeague, President of Canadians for Affordable Energy, joins me on the show to talk about the government's plan to mandate only electric cars be sold in Canada after 2035, and the implications for the auto dealer industry.
Transcript
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Good evening, Western Standard viewers, and welcome to Hannaford, the Western Standard's
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weekly politics show. It is Thursday, September the 11th. The federal liberals have a dream that
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Canada will one day run on electricity, not fossil fuels, and they have bent their whole
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approach to government in that direction, first under Justin Trudeau, and now under his former
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mentor, the present Prime Minister, Mark Carney. They want net zero carbon emissions by 2035,
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which is highly unlikely, and in particular it is demanding that only electric cars be sold
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after 2035. But what a lot of people don't realize is that they're phasing this in early
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until Mr. Carney announced a 12-month delay last week. Auto dealers were expecting to be required
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by law in less than four months to make one-fifth of all passenger car sales electric. The ratio
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was to grow to 60% in 2030. As a result of the Prime Minister's delay, the program now launches
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January 1, 2027. But this all seems like craziness. What is the poor old dealer to do if nobody wants
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an electric vehicle? With me today to talk about is Dan McTeague, no stranger to the Western
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standard mr mcteague is president of canadians for affordable energy he used to be a liberal i
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saw it on his facebook page once i don't know whether that's still there dan but welcome back
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to the show good to be here mr hannaford nigel it's great to uh have a chance to uh once again
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visit and speak and discuss the matters of great importance for all of us here at the western
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standard. So Dan, what are the dealers supposed to do if they're selling cars and nobody wants to
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buy them? Well, I've spoken to many. In fact, I did. I guess I was one of those many Canadians
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who went out and purchased a vehicle back about a month ago. So the second quarter of 2025 was
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very strong for internal combustion engines, ICE vehicles, sales versus the electric vehicle
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purchases, which dropped 40 full percent comparing to last year's second quarter. So
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what dealers are supposed to do is what many had expressed to me is that they're
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faced with an absolute certainty of bankruptcy, or at least laying off or funding themselves out
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of work, should it come to that. And of course, we hear from the Mark Carney government, they are
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going to pause this. I don't think there's any sense in pausing it. They should have scrapped it
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made a decision to get rid of it once and for all. But such is the affinity, the tenacity of the
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climate cult liberals who hold fast to the idea that, you know, an inert product, an inert gas
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like CO2, one of the three elements necessary for survival of life on this planet, water and oxygen
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being the other, holding fast the idea that we should demonize one is well worth putting
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economic distortions in place that would create not only car dealers going out of business and
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no one wanted to buy these things, but no market forward in the United States now that the Trump
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administration, first act of its government, rightly got rid of the Inflation Reduction Act,
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the so-called IRA. I don't know why I call it that. Nevertheless, it's kind of strange that
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no one picked up on that back in November. And now here we are today dealing with a full broad
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spectrum of dealers going out of business and auto manufacturers especially here in Ontario
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which I work for one possibly leaving the country or shutting down as well because there's no way
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imposed mandates like this can be can be realistically made in an environment where
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no one wants these things well okay so I thought that the Canadian auto industry was always based
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on exporting to the united states and uh if now that they want to make electric cars there's no
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way that the canadian market would ever be able to sustain uh demand for that many vehicles that
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would make manufacturing them economic so are you saying that the auto industry is sunset industry
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in Ontario? It is as long as it pursued this reckless and not well thought out short-sighted
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policy. Now, Nigel, I am not unversed in this industry. Prior to being elected in 1993, I served
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as media relations officer for a little tiny company that happens to be today's number one
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manufacturer in the world and number one in Canada, Toyota Canada. And with two or three
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manufacturers here in Ontario, many of them built since the late 1980s. At risk and at play are those
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kind of plants that are going to be forced to say, hey, follow the mandate. You have to sell only
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electric vehicles. You can only offer electric vehicles. They're not going that route. That's
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a company that basically put a line in the sand some time ago and said, yeah, we'll take the
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government grift. In other words, we'll take the mooch, we'll take the money, we'll take the public's
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money much of it borrowed uh in in terms of debt but we're not going down that road the rest of
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the world is not therefore we're not practically speaking you shouldn't either there's other
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technologies out there that are just as good uh you know maybe solid state batteries if we're
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going to go that route or more efficiency out of internal combustion engines melding that with
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hybrids the last cut line i did when i worked at toyota was for a little vehicle called um the
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tsunami at later risk it was a high it was a two-door prototype which is really the basis for
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something called the Prius and it's that model the idea of hybrids with the engines that is now
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going to be the mainstay for that company at least for the next 20 to 30 years now we can continue
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to roll against the current and deny reality but for our friends in Ottawa who've never worked in
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the Ottawa sector never worked in the energy sector obviously have never worked in the private
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sector saving except those who can walk around saying well I work for you know a certain funds
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company, as the Prime Minister does, reality is biting the federal liberals and their friends
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in the bloc and the NDP reheart. No one wants these things. They're too expensive. They're
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impractical. And we don't have the money to build the infrastructure.
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Well, I think a lot of us have responded to this whole news, either by thinking it won't happen in
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the end. And certainly the fact that it's been pushed back a year sort of plays into that
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comfortable narrative and the other is well you won't be able to buy a new gas vehicle but you'll
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still be able to you know in 20 in the last month of 2035 when i'm still able to buy or the 2034
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when i'm still able to buy a gas powered car that's when i'm going to get my dream car
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i'm sort of whatever age i am now and i'm going to make it last for 25 years now a lot could change
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in government policy, and in fact, governments themselves could change between now and 2035.
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But on the basis of what you know now, is that realistic thinking? Are you going to still be
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able to run your gas job in 2035? Are they going to take all those gas pumps away?
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Well, it seems that's what they want to do. One of the things with the second carbon tax,
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we were never eliminated, we call it the second carbon tax back in 2019, 2020, it was proposed.
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government try to suggest it was good there's a benefit a cost benefit analysis our good friend
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economist a well-noted economist ross mckittrick did a study for campaigns for affordable energy
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in which he pointed out that for every dollar of benefit there was six dollars in cost including
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a one percent drop in gdp an average cost or hit about twelve to thirteen hundred dollars and that's
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tax that refiners have to pay in other words they have to go to the carbon credit market
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in order to uh offset uh the uh the requirement they drop emissions by thirty percent why well
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because the technology doesn't exist for that, nor does it exist anywhere else in the world.
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So we're superimposing on Canada, not only that which is unreal, but we're actually violating
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the law of thermodynamics. We're violating any principles of science, let alone any breakthroughs
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in technology. So, you know, I've said this before and I've felt too many people, it's cool to be
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trendy. But when it comes to the cost, the cost of the Canadian economy, our prosperity, our future,
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our industry our manufacturing sector our resource sector if you want to throw those all out and
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cast them to the wind that's fine but how are you going to make the payments at the end of the week
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how are you going to pay not only the massive debt the country has incurred how are people going to
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have jobs when they've got nothing to offer the rest of the world is not invested in the rest of
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canada don't take my word for it it takes 139 pennies to buy a u.s dollar you realize that
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costs you and i 24 25 cents a liter for gasoline our lack of purchase power because of these bad
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policies is having a cataclysmic effect. It's cascading into other areas of the economy,
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including high food prices, high energy prices, and really lower paychecks for most Canadians.
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So Dan, last week you placed an article in the Western Standard. You said this,
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our country is lacking the charging infrastructure to support an entirely electric fleet of vehicles,
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and we aren't building chargers anywhere near fast enough to close that gap.
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We're also in a period of serious electric grid insecurity.
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Even if you have the generators, you can't move the power.
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And this insecurity is largely the result of the net zero nuttiness
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and anti-oil and gas policies enacted by our ruling class
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Where exactly do they think they're going to get the electricity
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which I think we're going to find a lot more about
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Either way, we're in a massive debt and deficit situation.
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But, you know, I go back to some of my early works.
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I worked for a little in a writing called Pickering in Scarborough East.
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Here's a little symbol of that nuclear reactor that was built in 1965.
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How do you have the money to build reactors, much less the infrastructure to get energy from those reactors to the point, those terminals where people need them, and then set up those terminals so people can plug them in?
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The demand would be three times what we have now.
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The Royal Bank of Canada in 2023 put out a report in terms of electrification of the country.
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I don't know if it does. That's more than 100% of the GDP of our entire Canadian economy.
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So, again, people bandy these things out as if, you know, because it's a great idea, we can do it.
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But, you know, I'd like to have a million bucks in my bank account.
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I can't just magically go and wave a magic wand and say, yeah, I got a million bucks,
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although the federal government believes it does because that's the way it's spending money it doesn't have.
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The reality, I think, for many of us is that the infrastructure is one question that cannot be resolved.
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We just don't have the equipment, the financing, nor do we have the wherewithal.
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We don't have enough minerals to be able to mine and to bring out the copper and to provide all of what's required to make sure that there's 100% servicing of a 100% vehicle fleet in this country.
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It is delusional beyond any discussion for anybody to believe that in nine short years you can have this done.
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Even Norway knows they can't do it because at night they tell people to stop.
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Don't plug in your vehicles, especially during the winter.
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No, I think we need a bit of a dose of reality.
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Unfortunately, the only way that's going to come about is for those pink slips to be hit.
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A lot more Canadians because of the bad policies of government, not because of orange haired men bad south of the border,
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but because of our own narrow, narrow sidedness and our short sidedness in terms of these policies,
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which have no basis in fact, nor do they have any impact in terms of reducing so-called emissions.
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Now, it is always difficult to get inside the head of somebody else.
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And Mr. Carney is the person I'm thinking of here.
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He obviously cannot be unaware of anything that you have just said.
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He knows better than any of us, I guess, how little money there is and how much debt there is.
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And that's probably why there's no liberty-ship crash-building program for generation and distribution.
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But I am suspicious that he may be okay with that.
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And I'm going to ask you whether you have the same job getting inside his head as I do.
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but I am suspicious that his green anti-carbon sentiments might be quite comfortable with an
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outcome where a lot less Canadians are a lot less mobile. Am I starting to lose my grip on
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reality here, going over the nut edge? Well, I can tell you what will change Mr. Carney very
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quickly is that the moment the country can no longer supply and afford and maintain a decent
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level of living for most Canadians and starts to whittle down prosperity and our credit gets
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downgraded. And yes, provinces like Quebec and Ontario, Manitoba and the eastern provinces like
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in Atlantic Canada wind up seeing their equalization payments cut back. I think that's
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going to be a very hard reality for many of these regions and many of these posers who for the past
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10 years have offered us, you know, what amounts to shenanigan type politics that have
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no basis in economic reality or financial reality. Look, Mr. Carney's company said it all for me.
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Before he became prime minister, it moved to the United States. It bought the largest pipeline
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in the United States in the world, the colonial pipeline. It bought into future nuclear with
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respects to Brookfield's purchases of the once viable Westinghouse to get its nuclear division.
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it's purchased very heavily into heat pumps there's no doubt in my mind that there many
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people may believe very much in the fairy tale nonsense that we're killing ourselves with co2
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but for people like mark carney it's one step above that it's how much money they can make
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out of it so creating a carbon credit market unregulated based on nothing based on absolute
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thin air if we can even call it that and which they're able to make riches enormous riches by
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penalizing those who don't conform with their idea that you have to cut back co2 look i i don't want
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to be pedantical i certainly don't want to be rude about this but people that concern about co2 that
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damn well stop exhaling and i've said this many times if you think it's that problem that much
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of a problem and you're part of that problem maybe it's time that you stop exhaling that we can make
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the point really salient that all of the policies mr carney is advocating that he's written about
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his book values which he seems not to be adhering to these days sooner or later the real mark carney
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is going to have to show up. And we have the two
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faces of Janus with Mr. Carney, like it or not.
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I think Canadians are going to start to see the real
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he's back in the House of Commons, he's going to hold
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American market for them will dry it up. So I'm wondering whether that is ever going to happen.
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So Mr. Carney has strong ties, business ties with China, and we've also got a hundred percent
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tariff on Chinese electric vehicles and an inconvenient retaliatory tariff on Canadian
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Do you see sort of a quid pro quo coming around here
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where we end up with a market flooded by Chinese electric vehicles?
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because the Chinese know how to play the game as well,
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and their hit to the Canadian economy is significant
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and far more damaging than what the Americans are doing with their tariffs.
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I mean, at the end of the day, we're still dealing 95% of our goods with the United States, not just the automotive.
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But if we think we can create a brand new industry, a battery industry, we need 15 years to catch up.
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In the late 2005, 2008 period, they decided they couldn't beat the West, including Canada, the United States and Europe, when it came to internal combustion engines and the ever-improving technology that brought emissions down.
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They brought, you know, fuel efficiency to levels that we had never seen.
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So the Chinese basically gave up on it and said, we can't replicate what they're doing.
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You know, golf carts would be a great point where I would say, hey, they do great on a golf course.
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They do great in downtown cities, perhaps, when you have to go from point A to point B.
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We spend billions of dollars on that every year.
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but they sure as heck cannot replace the efficiency the reliability the durability
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and the economics of the internal combustion engine like it or not some people just think
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it's an old-fashioned idea I heard Flavio Volpe's father I knew quite well sat with him in the house
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of commons on my side many years auto parts guy came in you would only say the CBC the only people
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who want to not have EVs are people I think he referred to them as you know people who want to
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have pickup trucks and dinosaurs. If that's the kind of mentality that still pervades the
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automotive sector and the power levers and institutions that make decisions in this country,
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then I think we are definitely going to see an auto sector doomed to its own failure. While
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companies like Toyota and Stellantis and Ford and Volkswagen and others are simply going to pack up
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and go south of the border. And Canadians will have a choice. Yeah, they'll have their internal
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combustion engines but there won't be one you know one scintilla of canadian content any of that
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stuff that's because we've backed the wrong horse and we continue still back that wrong horse and
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by a delay we continue to say maybe there's a hope there's no hope this thing is gone it's done
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it's history it's toast people need to really wake up and smell their coffee and maybe get
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their elbows down and start thinking for once well so so a lot of us are thinking about what is the
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last gasoline-powered car that we're going to buy um well no i i mean if you if you like if you like
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your gas car then that is certainly something that you're thinking about oh the cubanation of
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canada wonderful no i think it's going to be rough for a long time people buy them from elsewhere
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even their friends in quebec they're not stupid the number one per capita purchasers of pickup
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trucks is in alberta and saskatchewan it's quebec and so you know uh these guys can continue to be
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trendy and cool and row against the current pretend they have support for these things
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the public really knows where to go on this and they've made it very very clear they did so this
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just the report this week alone nigel said everything internal combustion engine vehicle
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sales up 18 compared to the second quarter last year evs down 40 and the only reason they're kept
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up is that because they're asking people who can't afford who have to pay their taxes so these people
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can have a subsidy if you have to subsidize the building of these things you have to subsidize
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the infrastructure of these things and you have to subsidize the purchase this makes no economic
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sense it sure as heck doesn't make any fiscal sense so at the end of the day uh i'm saying
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this whole vehicle ev mandate fantasy a branch and extension of net zero needs to be lined up
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on the 30 yard line and punted right through the end zone the sooner the better so dan for so far
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well I think Mr. Carney is going to have to have a
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thing that it appears to be. The United States administration has just included several top
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scientists and economists who've said this fear-mongering that has been the basis by which
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we have spent trillions of dollars trying to introduce renewables to make our energy availability
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vulnerable and unaffordable is not working. It's not working in Europe. It's certainly not going
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to be tried in China and it's not going to be worked out in the United States. So there can be
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a little mix of that but not the tens of trillions of dollars that have had to be committed that some
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are pretending we can commit to uh in the next few weeks nigel here in canada then that the argument
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is going to be he has to present a budget when that's over 100 billion dollars in deficit added
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to the 1.4 trillion already that's only federal remember the provinces are almost two trillion
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dollars in debt collectively at a subsovereign level i think the gig will be up uh the bond
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rating agencies are going to look at that say credit downgrade and by the way that means higher
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interest rates that means less investment in the country that means we're back to where we were in
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1981 or worse speculation dear god people ask me if this is part of a grander plan conceived at a
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higher level of international intrigue this is the last question i don't know what to tell them but
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i do see the same kind of pressures to go electric in europe and of course before president trump in
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the United States. Is there a grander plan that we are aware of here in Canada? Oh there has to be
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but Canada is susceptible to it because it's basically had a leadership that said basically
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anything that goes whether it be Davos or whether that be the United Nations we're going to sign up
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to something that is scientifically and intellectually questionable at best. I say to
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people you know they say well you're not a climate scientist well neither are they but we have a lot
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of political scientists that think they are and that's the problem is that we have a policy that's
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made and derived in another part of the world it's hurting out of the world Europe is on its knees
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Europe doesn't have natural gas it's got tons under its ground it has to rely on the United
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States for LNG now that they you had the blowing up of the of the Nord Stream pipeline and Russia
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of course invading ukraine that aside in the geopolitical conflict uh confrontation um you
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now have a circumstance where europe is on its knees manufacturing is stalling uh the quality
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of life is certainly in decline people are having trouble nigel you know this perhaps better than i
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do elderly are finding it difficult to stay warm in the middle winter in uh in in uh in the uk it's
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It's not a matter that gives us any comfort to say, hey, we're in Canada, we have lots
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But the fact that we have turned our idea away from being able to sell the world the
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rest of our great resources, not just talking oil and gas or agriculture or mining, is a
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And whether that's the World Economic Forum pushing us on this net zero nonsense, which
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it is and the scam or whether it is flooding the country with migration and going well beyond even
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our own advisors in our public service who said this is not the way to go however we want to
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conduct it it certainly isn't something the public wants now the public can be very ignorant in many
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of these cases but the public did not sign up these programs and I think we need a clear definition
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election on net zero which has led to significant decline or standard living and an era of
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Talk to anyone who's shopping at the grocery stores
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we appreciate your insights dan and thanks for being on the show today
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great to be here thanks for having me nigel for the western standard i'm nigel hanaford