Quebec Premier Francois Legault unveiled a $6.7 billion plan to help reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 2030 by putting 1.5 million zero-emission vehicles (ZEVs) on Quebec roads by that date, boosting the number of electric taxis, school buses, and public transport buses (among other things), and banning the sale of new gasoline-engine passenger cars from 2035.
“There are two ways to put incentives: you can put a positive incentive for people making the right choices, or you can put a negative incentive for the ones not respecting the objectives,” said Legault in an announcement posted on YouTube. “We decided to choose the first way.”
According to Global News, the policy will help Quebec meet its goal of reducing emissions by 37.5 per cent over 1990 levels by 2030, while the overall measures will push the province 42 per cent closer to its main goal.
“The Liberal government had in 2009 put the target of a reduction of 20 per cent for 2020. Unfortunately, they never tabled a plan with figures, with an analysis of the means and their impact (on) greenhouse gas (emissions),” said Legault. So what we saw (based) on the last information we (had) for 2017, we had a reduction of only 8.7 per cent.
In the last three years (2015-2017), he said there was an even greater increase in greenhouse gases, and that Quebec is investing double the money a year than what was invested by the Liberal government. Legault also said they have a detailed plan, with figures, that they intend to follow every year.
“The objective is going from 42 per cent to 50 per cent to 60 per cent with the innovation (technology) to add to the measures every year (over) the next ten years,” said Legault.
