Is the zero-emission vehicle mandate dead or merely sleeping?

Mark Carney's announcement on Friday that implementation of the federal government's zero-emission vehicle mandate will be delayed by at least a year can be read as another retreat on climate policy from the new prime minister.

It can also be read as a small victory for Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre, who had been calling on the government to abandon the policy.

That was certainly Poilievre's own reading of events.

"Today he's flip-flopped.… He's finally admitted that the Conservatives were right, just like we were right on the carbon tax," Poilievre told reporters on Parliament Hill.

But, the Conservative leader lamented, it was a "clumsy retreat," because the prime minister was merely promising to "delay" the mandate.

"Mark Carney can't even get his flip-flops right," Poilievre said.

In fact, Carney says the ZEV sales mandate will be subject to a 60-day review. And so, for now, it's not clear whether the mandate — a major policy meant to drive down greenhouse gas emissions from the transportation sector — is actually dead or merely sleeping.

But deliberations on the mandate, Carney said, will be part of a larger review aimed at designing a new "climate competitiveness" strategy — upon which a lot, both politically and practically is now riding.

The electric vehicle availability standard — what has come to be known as the ZEV mandate — sets out a series of escalating sales targets for automakers in Canada. For next year, the target would have been 20 per cent.

As with the federal carbon tax that he scrapped in March, Carney could plead that he inherited a troubled policy. Under the previous prime minister, the federal government allowed its EV consumer rebate to expire in January and that likely contributed to a significant drop in sales. Environment Minister Julie Dabrusin said in June that the government was working on a new rebate program, but that may have only further dissuaded potential consumers from making immediate purchases.

American tariffs on the automotive sector then gave the industry another reason to ask for relief.

WATCH | Carney says automakers have 'enough on their plate':

Prime Minister Mark Carney said Friday that 2026 models would be waived from the EV sales mandate. Carney said the auto industry is struggling due to the trade war, and that his government is rolling out measures to help

It's also fair to note that Canada is not the only country where a new government has decided to fiddle with its existing ZEV mandate — in the United Kingdom, a Labour government recently amended a mandate that was originally introduced by a Conservative government.

But the British government did still keep a mandate in place. Asked on Friday whether he would consider fully repealing Canada's ZEV mandate, Carney did not offer a categorical answer.

"We're using this as an opportunity, as part of a broader strategy on climate competitiveness, to look at all our measures to help get greenhouse gases down," he said. "And we'll look at the interactions between the EV mandate, our clean fuel standards, our investment tax credits, our trade policy — all of those elements — because what this government is focused on is absolutely results."

There may be paths to amending the mandate without abandoning it.

"Today's announcement of a delay in application by one year and a broader review of the policy can be an opportunity to better meet its most important objectives: giving consumers choice and getting EVs into the hands of those who want them," Clean Energy Canada's Joanna Kyriazis said in a statement on Friday.

If a lack of incentives or charging infrastructure is part of what's standing in the way of Canada keeping pace with other countries — EVs accounted for 21 per cent of new car sales in the European Union last year — that might be all the more reason for the federal government to double-down on such efforts.

WATCH | Carney says Canadian auto sector at the start of a 'restructuring':

Prime Minister Mark Carney said his government is taking a series of measures to increase Canada's 'climate competitiveness' across the economy, and that includes a broad 'restructuring' of the auto sector. He said it's too early to say if tariffs on Chinese EVs would be removed.

Clean Energy Canada has a number of other suggestions: giving carmakers credit for either selling vehicles below $40,000 or offering zero-interest financing, adopting European safety standards to allow for the sale of a great variety of vehicles or, perhaps most controversially, lowering tariffs on Chinese-made EVs.

The Pembina Institute similarly said the government's options include "extending credits for plug-in hybrid vehicle and charging infrastructure, modestly adjusting targets or re-evaluating tariffs on Chinese-made EVs."

In his remarks on Friday, Carney said the government would "advance new options to bring more and more affordable electric vehicles to Canadians." But he declined to speculate on whether that might include reducing tariffs on Chinese EVs.

On Parliament Hill, Poilievre said he disagreed with Saskatchewan Premier Scott Moe, who has called for Canada to drop those tariffs (retaliatory tariffs by China are punishing Saskatchewan's canola industry).

But while attacking the ZEV mandate, the Conservative leader didn't say how he would reduce emissions from Canada's transportation sector. Asked directly on Friday what he would do, Poilievre answered by saying he would aim to help other countries reduce their emissions.

Carney came to politics with a reputation for — and a track record of — putting his energy and time toward the cause of combatting climate change. Until January, he was the UN's special envoy on climate action and finance. In his book, Value(s), he wrote extensively about the challenge and on Friday he said combatting climate change was both a "moral obligation" and an imperative for global competitiveness.

But his first act as prime minister was to repeal the consumer carbon tax. The ZEV mandate is now officially under review. And the future of the proposed cap on emissions from the oil and gas sector is also uncertain.

"More than four months after its election, and in the wake of a destructive summer of climate change-driven drought, wildfires and smoke affecting millions of Canadians, the federal government has provided limited information about its intentions on climate policy," Rick Smith, president of the Canadian Climate Institute, said in a statement on Friday.

It was implausible that the implementation of climate policy in Canada was ever going to be perfectly straightforward or without revision. And it is still possible to knit together an ambitious climate agenda without policies like a carbon tax or a cap on oil and gas emissions.

Carney has said he would maintain and enhance the carbon-pricing benchmarks for industrial emissions and one of the criteria guiding the government's selection of "nation-building" infrastructure projects is "contribut[ing] to clean growth and to meeting Canada's objectives with respect to climate change."

But the formation of an "environment caucus" within the Liberal parliamentary caucus might be a hint of the pressure that could be building on Carney to indicate not just which Trudeau-era policies he wants to adjust, but what kind of climate policies are going to define his own government.