The way I see it, Canada's decision to drop its electric vehicle (EV) mandate, widely expected to be announced in the next day or two, in favour of a new, less aggressive system of fuel efficiency standards and credits, represents a failure on the part of the Canadian auto industry - at the production, wholesale and retail levels - as well as, to some extent, the Canadian public.
It's not that the Trudeau-era policy is inherently a bad one, as Pierre Polievre and the CEOs of multiple automotive companies would have us think. Mark Carney would have supported it wholeheartedly at one time, just as he was a very vocal apologist of carbon taxes at one time. But Carney is pragmatic to a fault, and not fond of grand gestures and statements of principle (in the way that Trudeau was fond of them, to a fault).
But our automotive industry just did not put much effort into actively pursuing the policy. It just sat back and hoped it would happen of its own accord. And, while some members of the public (like me!) did the right thing - i.e. go electric - for its own sake, most others also sat back and waited for everybody else to do the right thing, which is never going to work. Then, when the Trudeau government started sending mixed messages on its environmental commitments, and when EV rebates were withdrawn, the driving public just threw up its hands and said, "well, what can we do?"
Carney, once a staunch environmentalist, has gradually dismantled (or at least scaled back) most of the progressive environmental initiatives of the previous administration. Scrapping the EV mandate is just another such, although one welcomed by the lazy domestic auto sector. Relying on tailpipe standards would be a return to the pre-EV mandate, pre-carbon tax status quo, which, you might remember, was not particularly effective in reducing our carbon emissions. There is talk of bringing back some EV rebates, but we must wait to see what that entails, just as we need to wait to see how stringent the tailpipe emission regulations will be. (We don't have a progressive US model to follow this time.)
Frankly, I'm not holding my breath.
UPDATE
The new Liberal EV policy, as expected, has scrapped a firm EV sales mandate, although it did restate non-enforceable (and still rather improbable) "goals" of 75% EVs by 2035 and 90% by 2040. This is still much more modest than the Trudeau-era goal of 100% by 2035.
To that end, the announcement details a return of incentive rebates of $5,000 for full battery EVs and $2,500 for plug-in hybrid EVs, although even that modest rebate is set to reduce each year until it reaches $2,000 for full EVs by 2030. The rebates also only apply to EVs with a sales value of below $50,000, unless it is a model that is made in Canada (which I guess is fair enough), and only for imports from a country with which Canada has a free-trade agreement, which disqualifies those 49,000 Chinese EVs a year that Canada recently agreed to. So, pretty carefully-worded.
The package also includes $1.5 billion towards improving the country's EV fast-charging network, given that range anxiety is still perceived as a major barrier to consumers looking to switch to an electric vehicle.
It also installs new supports for Canadian auto workers as the transtion ramps up, including a "work-sharing grant" and a "workforce alliance", as well as committing $3 billion from the existing Strategic Response Fund and $100 million from the Regional Tariff Response Inititative to help accelerate investment in Canada's auto sector.
The auto sector has been generally welcoming of the new policy, although - shock horror! - the opposition Conservatives appear to disagree with pretty much everything in it.