Madam Speaker, I will be splitting my time with the member for Miramichi—Grand Lake.

I rise today to speak for the people the Liberal government has forgotten or maybe never understood to begin with: the people who make this country run. They are up before the sun, coffee in hand, long before the world starts moving. They drive into town for feed, parts and mail. There is no home delivery here. They are starting a frozen tractor at -20°C to feed cattle that we depend on as much as the cattle depend on us. They are planting the first seeds of spring, carrying the quiet hope of harvest months away. They are checking cows in the dead of night, calving by flashlight and welcoming new life into a hard world.

Then there is harvest, the golden hour. Farmers use a combine just before sunset, when the beauty hides the urgency, the sweat and the push to beat the frost. It is not just in the fields. It is someone crawling under a frozen truck to fix a brake line, welding pipe in a -30°C wind or scaling a rig tank in the dark, soaked in grease and grit, because the world does not stop just because it is hard.

These people feed this country. They fuel the economy. They do the work that does not make headlines but keeps the lights on. They are farmers, ranchers, rig hands, truck drivers, mechanics, welders, electricians and diesel technicians. They are the kinds of people this country was built on and still depends on every single day.

These are not folks sitting on panels at the World Economic Forum. They do not fly business class to climate conferences. They do not pretend to save the world one virtue signal at a time. They get up before sunrise. They get their hands dirty. They produce something real. Today, those Canadians are under attack by a government that seems more interested in scolding them than serving them.

Let us talk about the EV mandate, this Trudeau-era fantasy still being pushed forward by the Liberals. Under this policy, the sale of new gas-powered vehicles will be banned by 2035. Starting in 2026, just months from now, manufacturers will be forced to meet EV sales quotas or pay penalties of up to $20,000 per vehicle that does not comply with the mandate. Who pays for that? It will not be the Prime Minister; he does not even buy his own groceries. It will be working Canadians, the people who need their vehicles for work, not for show, and the people who drive F-350s, not Teslas.

Let me walk everyone through what that means on a farm. Grain elevators used to be 12 miles apart because that is how far a horse and wagon could travel in a day. Today, grain has to be trucked 30 miles, 60 miles, 100 miles or more because local rail lines have been torn up or left to rot. The only way to move that grain now is by truck and trailer, and not the kind that we plug into a wall outlet.

Let us look at some numbers: $130,000 for a service truck, $350,000 for a basic tractor, over $1 million for a four-wheel-drive tractor, $1.3 million for a combine, and these are just the base models. There is no electric replacement for that equipment, none. However, the government wants to regulate it out of existence. One regulation can make that entire fleet obsolete overnight. That is not policy; that is economic destruction.

Every part of life on the land depends on engine-driven machinery. That is what took farming from a family feeding a few dozen people to that same farmer today feeding hundreds of thousands. That is the scale we are talking about, and now the government wants to pretend we can swap out a diesel-powered combine for an electric toy with a three-hour charge time and pray it does not die before the frost hits.

Let me tell people something about real farming. We do not get to pause and recharge when it is -20°C and the cows need to be fed. We do not get a do-over if we miss the seeding window or cannot finish harvest before the first snow. We refuel in 10 minutes, not three hours, because out here, range anxiety is not an inconvenience; it is survival.

The Liberals will say not to worry because they will build a charging network. Really? They had better start fast because their own report says they will need 679,000 charging ports by 2040, and right now they have 30,000. They are already 95% behind schedule, and the policy has not even kicked in yet.

On top of that, we would need to double the grid capacity, a 30-year project at best estimates. What about cost? Natural Resources Canada says it will take over $300 billion to prepare for this so-called gas-free future. That is roughly $11,500 per vehicle on the road today, a hidden tax on every Canadian driver on top of the $20,000 coercion fine.

While the government pushes its fantasy, EV sales are collapsing. After federal and Quebec subsidies were paused, EV registrations dropped by over 40% in early 2025. Auto trader and dealership groups have reported declining interest for years, while inventories pile up and sales slow down. What is the plan? It is to force EV quotas, slap $20,000 on car companies and then pretend there is a consumer demand while prices skyrocket and unsold stock collects dust on the lot.

GM and Ford are begging the government to scrap the mandate. Toyota is warning that people do not want to buy what the Liberals are forcing them to buy. Even Europe, where green ideology runs deepest, is hitting the brakes. Germany and Italy are demanding carve-outs. Farmers are protesting by the thousands. In the United States, several states are already delaying or scaling back their mandates. However, in Canada, we are going full speed off the cliff because ideology matters more to the Prime Minister than the people who actually keep this country alive.

Let me be very clear and dispel a myth held by many of my Liberal friends across the aisle. I support innovation. I support energy alternatives, and I support real choice in the market. The agriculture and energy industries have been some of the earliest adopters of new technology: GPS-guided equipment operating down to the millimetre; precision ag that conserves water, fertilizer and pesticide; daily satellite imaging to monitor field health; and automated drilling rigs powered by AI. However, that is only when it actually makes sense. I should know as I was in the middle of it. The people I am speaking about do not need government to force them into the future. They pull this technology into their businesses at the right time and in the right way, with no mandate, no federal handouts and no Liberal intervention required.

There is nothing green about wrecking Canadian agriculture. There is nothing progressive about taking away the tools that build this country, and there is nothing just about a transition that bankrupts farmers and truckers just to hit a government quota. This is not a climate plan. It is a “government knows best” plan, a central planning fantasy dreamed up by people who have never seen a -30°C morning or changed a set of hydraulic hoses in the dark.

We are witnessing a deliberate dismantling of the Canadian economy dressed up as environmental virtue, and I will not stand for it. I will fight this EV mandate. I will fight for the people who get up before dawn and keep working long after the sun goes down. I will fight for Alberta. I will fight for common sense, because if we lose this battle, if we let them take the diesel out of our fields, the gas out of our trucks and the independence out of our lives, we will not be a free country anymore. We will be an experiment. I did not come to this chamber to watch Canada become a failed one.

David Bexte

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