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As Canadians start to take their summer vacation, Canada’s NDP is calling on Premier Ford and Prime Minister Trudeau to ensure electric vehicle (EV) chargers are available and reliable across Northern Ontario and Canada, as promised in the federal government’s Zero Emission Vehicle Infrastructure Program. The call comes in response to reports of chargers across Northern Ontario, specifically Marathon, White River and Wawa, being out of service, leaving drivers stranded along the highway.
“It’s absurd to think that drivers would be stranded without access to a recharging station for a month,” said NDP MP Carol Hughes, (Algoma-Manitoulin-Kapuskasing). “In one case, in White River, the issue was due to a damaged transformer, which is an unfortunate but reasonable issue; however the fact that this EV charger has been out of service since April is unreasonable. As for the chargers at the Petro-Canada stations in Marathon and Wawa that were down, the company has not provided any reasons as to why they weren’t in service.”
In 2018, Ford scrapped provincial rebates for EV charging stations, as well as removed many across the province. The federal government continues to provide subsidies to private companies to install EV charging stations, requiring a reliability guarantee to be eligible for the subsidy. To date, companies with broken stations have not been held accountable.
“This has been a failure of both the provincial and federal governments. The electric vehicle economy Trudeau loves to talk about won’t take off without the infrastructure there,” said NDP MP Charlie Angus (Timmins-James Bay). “Time and time again, we’ve heard promises from this Liberal government on their commitment to a clean energy transition, but fail to provide the infrastructure and reliability needed for people to go out and buy electric vehicles. Trudeau and Ford need to step up and take this seriously. The country and our planet can’t wait any longer.”
