better yet, lets rebuild any factories to produce parts and vehicles for a nationalised electric vehicle company, to produce entry level electric vehicles so people can actually afford these fucking things.
How about we don't waste all of that money and resources and invest in mass public nation wide transit instead.
to produce entry level electric vehicles so people can actually afford these fucking things.
The problem is that supporting car infrastructure always results in a loss for society. Building more roads for cars, wider roads for cars (i.e. more lanes), more parking for cars... is such a drain on funding that you never catch up.
If you live in a municipality that doesn't have enough money for basic services, it's because of the money needed to support car infrastructure. Sounds crazy, but it's true.
As a country, we should de-prioritize cars as a means of transportation, but also as an industry that we rely too heavily on.
If Canadian manufacturing could diversify into other areas of transportation (i.e. affordable, Made in Canada e-bikes and e-cargo bikes) or putting our manufacturing efforts into building trains and public transportation vehicles... we would strengthen our economy while helping people, and it wouldn't be at a loss!
Just because one step doesn't get you to your destination, doesn't mean you shouldn't take that first step.
Bikes aren't practical in a large number of Canadian cities, especially ones with -30 degree seasons. They aren't practical for disabled people. They aren't practical for families with young children.
A lack of road infrastructure also hobbles emergency services such as ambulances. It reduces the ability of trucks to deliver goods to stores. It reduces the ability for utility crews to service utilities such as power lines and sewers.
There are a lot of potential issues with aggressively pursuing what you envision. At the very least you'd need to massively re-work city design and zoning, rebuild a ton of stuff. That will take time. Shifting to electric cars will take less time, and be a net 'win' for the environment, generally speaking. I see no issue with the first persons response saying we should try to make evs in country.
Just because one step doesn’t get you to your destination, doesn’t mean you shouldn’t take that first step.
But the first step shouldn't be to focus on car manufacturing... again.
Bikes aren’t practical in a large number of Canadian cities, especially ones with -30 degree seasons. They aren’t practical for disabled people. They aren’t practical for families with young children.
Says who? With the appropriate infrastructure (i.e. like what you see in Montreal), you can have cycling year-round. Hell, I'm not from Montreal, and have used my bike all winter for errands.
And last summer, I was hauling two grandkids around by bike. It's not hard.
Cars are unaffordable, and will continue to be for most people. Even families who can "afford" a car, are being hurt by their dependency.
And taxpayers all lose when cars are the focus of our transportation network.
A lack of road infrastructure also hobbles emergency services such as ambulances. It reduces the ability of trucks to deliver goods to stores. It reduces the ability for utility crews to service utilities such as power lines and sewers.
I didn't say we should reduce our roads to dirt paths and let it all crumble. But we don't need 18 lane highways or 2 lanes of parking on a four lane road... we are building too much to support gridlock by inducing demand.
Emergency vehicles and delivery trucks benefit by having FEWER drivers on the road. This is a fact.
There are a lot of potential issues with aggressively pursuing what you envision. At the very least you’d need to massively re-work city design and zoning, rebuild a ton of stuff. That will take time.
No, it really doesn't. What takes time (and money) is road widening, constant road repair, figuring out what homes to demolish to make room for another road we don't need to build.
Cities and countries that have de-prioritized cars have done so very quickly and with massive benefits to their communities. See Montreal, Paris, any city in the Netherlands, Vancouver, Columbia (the country!), etc.
It costs much less to build out cycling and public transportation, and it can be done much faster than building out infrastructure just for cars.
Shifting to electric cars will take less time, and be a net ‘win’ for the environment, generally speaking. I see no issue with the first persons response saying we should try to make evs in country.
That's not true at all. We don't need or want people making short trips in an EV. It still puts the community at risk (crashes), it still degrades the road surface, it contributes MORE to "tire dust", still keeps people inactive, still keeps the poor at a disadvantage, still removed "community" from our communities. It's just not a path forward.
I'm not saying we need an all-or-nothing solution. We need to rebalance our transportation network and make transportation more equitable and easier to access. There's no reason why the majority of Canadians can't walk, bike, or bus their way around town for the majority of their errands.
Europe has shown cars and pedestrians can co-exist peacefully, it's all about planning. Major arteries can still be made for cars, while capillaries are made for foot. Residential roads can be closed off to cars except with special license eg ambulance deliveries, you DO need cars, nobody denying that.
There's a lot of wasted space by making every house have their direct access to the road, their own parking. Sure, Canada has lots of space, but eventually we'll run out. It's not done with any future planning, the government is not thinking at all of how to connect cities by transit, or how cities could be accessible inside. It's just a lack of political will, and a lack of imagination, it's like the government has already resigned to mediocrity.
I play Cities Skylines and personally see how traffic flows better when i use a "lung" road system, with residental areas as isolated cells, rather than a grid system. We DON'T need high-throughput roads everywhere, and have to stop every 50 meters at intersections. We can do better, i'm sure we have very smart road engineers.
Yes, but don't let perfect be the enemy of good.
Edit: oops, replied to something else.
I agree that we should still be making as much as we can here, even if they are cars. But lets not make the same mistake we already have... by putting all our eggs into the automotive basket. Cars and car infrastructure are hurting this country.
The problem is our cities. I know everyone says look at what x European country does. But our cities are far to spread out and densely populated to even compare fairly. We need to stop the endless spread and start infilling our cities.
For sure, we need to work on that. But most people aren't travelling across their province, or even between cities on a regular basis.
They drive their cars around their community. Down the street to the grocery store. Up the road to visit a friend. They might work within 5km of their home and take a large SUV.
That's the reason we have massive parking lots taking up ungodly amount of space, or on street parking instead of bike lanes, or noise and air pollutions near residential areas.
Those personal choices can be modified today, even with whatever infrastructure is present.
And most people don't realize that if we weren't spending so much money on car infrastructure, we'd have more than enough to put towards other forms of transportation - at a benefit to society, which also reduces costs in other areas like healthcare.
Affordable EVs already exist.
They're called e-bikes and they cost less to purchase than car insurance for a year.
That's all well and good if you only have to transport yourself, and only have to go a few kilometres. Being a smug prick because you don't have any place to be or anyone else to bring with you does absolutely nothing to promote your cause to others.
Not OP - their smugness didn't help and you can use whatever means of transport you prefer. But to be fair, I do know people who have kids and use a cargo bike to do everything. This is a viable option for many city-dwellers. Sadly, we are still very car dependant in Canada for longer trips since rail between cities has been underinvested in and suburban sprawl is out of control.
Almost every trip inside cities, between cities, and even to some rural places could be done with alternatives to cars.
I know it can be hard to imagine a world where cars get minimized to filling a small niche role in a broader transportation system, especially when today most people in Canada and the US think cars are synonymous with mobility. Other countries have shown that car lite/free lifestyles are not only be possible with today’s technology, but desirable.
The alternatives are more space efficient - meaning less traffic congestion, they’re better for the environment, and people’s health and wellbeing.
Even if you’re one of the few who insists on keeping your car, wouldn’t it be nice to give safe, viable, and reliable alternatives to everyone else who doesn’t want to drive so they can get out of your way on the roads?
Don't give them ideas they might try to socialize or worse... procreate
That and I'm still not convinced the cold doesn't ruin the batteries on these things. I keep my e-scooter indoors until the temperature is consistently above zero, which sucks in Canada.
I've been riding my e-scooter all winter and haven't had any noticeable issues with battery life or health, if that means anything. Ninebot Kickscooter E2 if you're wondering.
I'm just doing it out of precaution, I know most electronics and especially batteries don't like the cold. I had an iphone that was never the same after it shut down on me in really cold weather so its more of a precaution.
Yeah, that's fair.
My e-scooter loses a lot of range even in single digit positive numbers. I can't imagine using it in sub-zero weather and I need my range to get to work and back without bringing my charger with me.
They also existed before that. They were called trams and nearly every city had them.
Facts, interesting histories in how those came to and passed in North America.
But then the government would be forced to backtrack on the multi billion dollar investment it made in big auto companies to keep manufacturing jobs from flocking to the US (nationalizing would cause us to compete with them and undermine the support provided).
I still think this choice was a mistake, but voters gonna voter on single issue politics.
Manufacturing is not coming back to the west. Capitalism will always seek for cheaper labor and more lax environmental regulations. We have outsourced manufacturing and pollution to developing countries while charging as much as possible to their customers.
This is why when people discuss this subject, and use terms like "we need to", a big part of me knows it's just that they "want to". A huge chunk of what we feel is necessity is, at best, "comfort subsidies" for our cushy lifestyles (and lest I be accused of tone deafness, I mean cushy in comparison to those in the developing countries you mentioned. "Less polluted and oppressed for the comfort of others" cushy). While it's true that too much change too soon means lots of people starve, I don't really think we actually know what we need.
Let's start small. Have the federal government remove the twitter/x link for contacting the federal government on the federal government website.
Well, besides the moral obligations to stop fascism right now, at least reconsider whether such unsafe vehicles should be allowed on the roads. Them lobbying against it should not work anymore.
Canada is all but officially at war with the States, it's time to think about what are acts of treason. Muskrat acts with more authority than even the VP.
Canada is all but officially at war with the States
Let me know when there's a single casualty. Otherwise, maybe don't trivialize war as an economic pissing contest.
According to Warren Buffet, these tarriffs are an act of war. I think i'll take his opinion over yours.
Seize the property and transfer it to Canada National Electric Vehicle Company. Then convert the facilities to build High Speed Rail instead of clunky individualist electric vehicles. Finally, build a rail artery all the way from Vancover to Quebec and bill yourself as a low-cost high-speed transit route that bypasses the United States.
Quebec
Halifax.
Build it and they will come. You don't build a bridge based on how many people are swimming across the river.
You don't have to do that. Remove tariffs on Chinese EVs, and the market will ruin Tesla on its own.
Wow, no kidding, we have 100% tarrifs on chinese EV and 25% chinese aluminium.
https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/canada-china-electric-vehicles-1.7486204
If it comes to it, Canadians might have to seek alliance with China, and that's something neither americans nor canadians really want.
Yea let’s not do what we always do by switching from one bad thing to the thing we know is worse because “change” while better solutions exist. China also threatens sovereignty, supplies Russia, and even works with North Korea. They have even worse labour issues than the US does, though oddly they seem to do alright with trans rights. The concentration camps for Uyghurs does offset that last bit, though.
I wish we had more brains than “frying pan hot, must jump into fire”.
switching from one bad thing to the thing we know is worse
How is an EV worse because of its nation of origin?
China also threatens sovereignty, supplies Russia, and even works with North Korea.
China is in no way impugning on Canadian sovereignty. They're doing business with Russia just like every single other Asiatic Nation, from South Korea to India to Turkyie - none of which are undergoing comparable sanctions.
Which is particularly galling, given that South Korean President Yoon Suk Yeol used "Secret North Korean election interference" as his excuse to launch a coup on Parliament just a couple of months ago.
China also has detained Canadian citizens several times in the past and it has been major issues trying to get them back here. That alone probably isn’t enough to warrant such extreme sanctions, but their disregard for many human rights is a problem we all face unless we’re shitty, selfish, nationalist assholes at which point that opinion ceases to hold much weight.
South Korea showed us that when someone in power tries to do a crazy thing the country as a wholw will actually do something to stop them. Yoon Suk Yeol was impeached and that whole thing is still ongoing, with the court to rule on that on Friday so I’m not sure why you think that’s a gotcha.
I would think that freeing up trade policies would certainly help relationships between countries.
Yeah, unfortunately we're investing tens of billions into EV manufacturing. Another major investment from Siemens was announced just this morning. If we drop those very justified tariffs, we won't have an EV industry in Canada anymore. As long as the Chinese government is heavily subsidizing BYD research and production, tariffs are appropriate to balance the playing field. Otherwise our nacent industry will get smothered in the crib.
no tariffs are justified. If that industry gets smothered it just makes it better for some other industry. National protectionism makes the whole world hungry.
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