You’ve probably seen the posters all over town: A shiny blue Toyota Yaris Hatchback with the title “Good Carma.” The ad refers to the Conservatives’ bold promise in March of this year that they would give eco-rebates to the buyers of cars with ultra low emissions. The $1,000 and $2,000 rebates would be dependent on the level of emission reduction and the price of the car, so a new Toyota Yaris would qualify for a $1,000 rebate, while a new Toyota Prius would qualify for $2,000. This rebate offer is part of a the ecoACTION program that is designed to encourage Canadians to make greener choices through financial incentives. An excellent idea…if it was actually in practice. As of today, not a single cent has been paid out to new car owners and there is no set launch date.

When my brother-in-law traded in his poor excuse for a car for a shiny new Toyota Yaris Hatchback in May, the salesman told him to contact ecoACTION “in a few weeks” to get his rebate. He did as he was told and called to inquire about how to get his $1,000 rebate three weeks later. The answer was puzzling: “The program has not begun yet, but call back in two weeks time and we will have more info.” This, in spite of the much publicized launch back in March. Three weeks later I called them, more out of curiosity than anything else, to find out what the holdup was. The answer was even more evading this time: “Please check the website for updates. The program should start within the next month or so.” That was mid-June. When I checked the ecoACTION website today, it still displayed the exact same message it did back then:

The rebate program will be put in place in the coming months.

Five months after the announcement of the program, no one has seen any money and there isn’t even a process in place to submit your application. Not surprisingly, neither the general public nor the car dealerships are very impressed by this. The owners feel they have been cheated by the government and tricked into going green, while the dealerships are fending off accusations that they have been lying to their customers. The whole program is turning into a major headache for the government: Not only have they not been able to get the program up and running, but the eligibility lists for 2008 models, which are currently hitting the showroom floors, has not been published, making it impossible for consumers to know if the cars they are buying will receive the rebates or not. The guideline for 2007 is set at 6.5 liters per 100 kilometers, but no one knows if this will be carried into 2008.

This whole mess reeks of policy pandering and lofty promises. Stephen Harper was a known climate change denier up until this spring when his views were challenged not just by the scientists but also opposition parties and the general public. The ecoACTION program appears to be a knee-jerk reaction to silence the critics, but it is quite obvious it was not well planned nor thought through. Not only is the program non-functional; it is also unfair. The eco rebate for cars only applies to cars bought after March of 2007 with the highest rebates for hybrid cars like the Toyota Prius. But the current Prius has remained unchanged since 2003. The engine and drive train – what gives the Prius the label “Ultra Low Emission Vehicle” – are the same in the 2004 model as in one fresh off the lot today. Yet those of us who pioneered this brave new world of transportation are given a cold shoulder. I would have been fine with it had the car evolved since 2004, but considering there is no change whatsoever, it seems hugely unfair that the government should subsidize my neighbour’s car but not mine when I was the one that helped make it popular. Not that it surprises me in the least little bit. It seems they are already trying to sneak away from their responsibilities of paying new car owners for their commitment, so I guess it would be naïve to expect them to reward those who lowered their emissions years ago.

Appendix:

As Angela mentioned in her Thursday posting, we bought a Toyota Prius in 2004, trading in an old gas guzzler for an ultra efficient high-tech vehicle. Back then, we got a dismal $150 in Provincial tax rebates but the comfort of knowing that we cut our gas consumption and pollution by two thirds was enough. When we bought the car, we were met with a wall of questions and the misconceptions were mind boggling: Do you need a special license to drive it? Isn’t it dangerous? What happens when the battery dies? Do you have to plug it in? Can it go up steep hills? It quickly dawned on us that people knew nothing about the technology. Surprisingly, several people also openly criticized us for the purchase. Their claim was that the car was actually more polluting than a normal gas powered one because the battery was toxic. A simple search on Google shows that this issue is severely exaggerated. The battery – which is designed to last for 8 years or 160,000 km – is far less polluting than the thousands of tons of CO2 and other pollutants a similar gas-only car would spew out in the same time span. The auto and battery industries are also constantly working on ways to recycle old batteries and designing newer, cleaner technologies. The batteries in the original 2001 Prius hybrids are set to start dying in 2009 so we’ll have to wait ’till then to see if the estimates of battery life are accurate or not, but this argument, like so many others in the climate debate, is a diversion from a simple fact: Hybrids are the first step towards our independence from oil.

The Prius has paved the way for a whole new line of cars. Almost all auto manufacturers are now rolling out hybrid vehicles of different sorts. Citroen in France is even working on a diesel hybrid which will make the Prius look like a gas guzzler. And several countries are looking at banning gas-only cars outright in the next ten years.