B.C. Energy and Climate Solutions Minister Adrian Dix has introduced promised legislation to amend the province’s electric vehicle mandates to align with recent federal changes.
The new rules would keep sales quotas but reduce the target for 100 per cent electric-vehicle adoption by 2035 to 75 per cent. The quotas require new car dealers to meet sales targets, buy credits from other manufacturers or face a $20,000-per-vehicle penalty.
This legislation would remove the planned ban on internal-combustion vehicle sales after Jan. 1, 2035, while amending the government’s ability to shift benchmark targets in the years between now and then. Targets for 2026 and 2027 will remain at 26 per cent, but future targets will be based on federal emissions standards to be released later this year.
Under Dix’s bill, these adjustments will be allowed through regulations enacted by cabinet order, rather than requiring new legislation.
“Moving the targets with regulations creates more flexibility,” he said.
This new legislation was introduced in the legislature on Wednesday, April 2, and still must pass through several more stages before becoming law.
Blair Qualey of the New Car Dealers Association released a statement saying that targets are difficult to meet due to vehicle availability and affordability. But he still welcomed the relaxation of targets as a “step in the right direction.”
“For some time, we have been highlighting the growing gap between policy ambition and market reality,” Qualey said in a news release. “These changes reflect an important recognition that flexibility matters and that policy must evolve alongside consumers, not ahead of them.”
The federal government did away with sales targets in favour of greenhouse gas emissions standards that will effectively put Canada on a path to 75-per-cent electric vehicle adoption by 2035. Dix had pledged to adjust B.C.’s rules to match in early February when Prime Minister Mark Carney announced the changes.
Despite B.C. backing down from its 100 per cent mandate — the province was the first in the world to implement such a mandate — Dix says the system is working.
“This is a successful program that has us leading the country in EV sales,” he said. “It has 229,000 EVs on the road.”