Rob Breakenridge
Rob Breakenridge Show
Rob Breakenridge Show Ep. 17: Measuring the costs of Ottawa's EV mandate; What next for CBC funding and Ottawa's media bailouts?
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Rob Breakenridge Show Ep. 17: Measuring the costs of Ottawa's EV mandate; What next for CBC funding and Ottawa's media bailouts?

In this episode, conversations with economist Ross McKitrick and media analyst Peter Menzies, plus updates on trade talks and the voting age debate

Welcome to this episode of the Rob Breakenridge Show - plenty of ground to cover.

First, we’ll look at the growing concern and looming deadline around Ottawa’s electric vehicle mandate. Starting next year, 20 per cent of new vehicles sold in Canada must be zero-emission vehicles (ZEV). That threshold grows to 100 per cent by 2035. Earlier this month, representatives from the Canadian Vehicle Manufacturers, Ford, Stellantis, and GM met with the prime minister to urge him to amend or back down from the mandate. A recent poll shows that about two-thirds of Canadians oppose the government’s approach on this issue. We’ll hear from Ross McKitrick is a professor of economics at the University of Guelph and a senior fellow at the Fraser Institute. He recently published a paper in the peer-reviewed Canadian Journal of Economics examining how costly this could be for the auto sector.

We’ll also talk about Canada’s media landscape as we have a conversation with Peter Menzies - he’s a former publisher of the Calgary Herald and a former CRTC vice-chair. He’s now a senior fellow at the Macdonald-Laurier Institute, co-host of Full Press at thehub.ca, and publishes his own Substack (The Rewrite). We’ll talk the fallout from the departure of a high profile CBC news personality and a renewed debate over bias at the public broadcaster. We’ll also examine the broader question of reforming the mandate of the CBC and whether Ottawa may now be looking at cuts. Plus, what happens now with the various media subsidies and bailouts that originated under Justin Trudeau?

A couple of other issues we touch on: where do things stand on Canada-US trade talks and is the prime minister starting to lower our collective expectations for getting out from under US tariffs? And with the UK lowering its voting age, what next for the voting age debate here in Canada?

Don’t forget, you can follow our work and subscribe here at our Substack page (robbreakenridge.ca), which is where the podcast is hosted. You can also listen and subscribe on Spotify, Amazon Music, Apple Podcasts and other podcast platforms. Check out our YouTube channel, as well.

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