Speaking to electric-vehicle advocates in September in Toronto, the federal minister of environment and climate change, Steven Guilbeault, said it “baffles” him that the Ontario government refuses to offer rebates for EVs.
Ontario being too early an adopter on the last big clean-technology transition is no small part of why the PCs swept to power in 2018. Compounding the injury, the feed-in tariff program that set fixed prices for clean power became a major contributor to Ontario electricity prices ballooning throughout the 2010s. An oft-cited 2015 auditor-general report found that renewables procured under the program cost Ontarians $9.2 billion more than they would have under previous purchasing regimes.