All new cars and light-duty trucks in Canada will be required to be zero-emissions by 2035, Transport Minister Omar Alghabra announced Tuesday, moving up the timeline for eliminating vehicle pollution.
"Today, I'm announcing that we are accelerating our zero emission vehicles goal. By 2035, all new cars and light duty trucks sold in Canada will be zero emission vehicles -- 100 percent of them," Alghabra told a news conference.
"This is five years sooner than our previous goal," he said.
The regulatory move, he said, will help Canada to meet its overall net-zero carbon emissions target for the economy by mid-century.
Alghabra noted that his country is one of the few in the world with domestic access to all of the key resources for producing electric vehicle (EV) batteries, and praised General Motors, Ford and other automakers for opening EV assembly plants in Canada.
But despite government incentives to defray the relatively higher prices of EVs, purchases have been slow to take off.
According to government data, battery electric vehicles and plug-in hybrids accounted for less than four percent of the 25 million passenger cars and trucks registered in Canada last year- up from about two percent in 2019.
