British Columbia Turns Its Back On Tesla & Musk

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Last Updated on: 19th March 2025, 06:15 pm

Canada is similar to the US in many respects. Politically, it is fairly left of center in the east and the west while being pretty much right of center in between. Right now, it is fair to say that Canadians are quite pissed off with the so-called US president, who is thundering vague threats about annexing Canada and making it the 51st US state. They also are none too pleased with Obergrupenführer Elon Musk, who is the president’s primary enabler and promoter of fascist policies, or Tesla, the EV company he controls. All in all, it is like the humorous 1995 movie Canadian Bacon starring Alan Alda and John Candy brought to life, but with a new script straight out of the Mad Max genre made famous by Mel Gibson.

Lloyd Alter lives in Toronto, where he teaches sustainable architecture and writes a blog on Substack called Carbon Upfront. For more than a decade, he was the principal writer for Treehugger, where he contributed more than 15,000 articles. It is fair to say Alter is a social liberal. Recently has has written about the consequences for Canadians of the policies put in place by the Moron of Mar-A-Loco. In a recent post, he wrote,

“Canadians are very serious; some are not buying products made in Canada for US companies, and are even trying to avoid Google…..I am looking at Rebel and Hushmail to replace Gmail, and Sync for cloud storage, but search alternatives are limited.

“Some industries are getting a boost from all this; I have never seen so many full-page newspaper ads promoting Canadian products and services. Everyone is hopping into the buy Canadian canoe. Many are quitting Amazon Prime. Forgive me for writing about this so much, but we are all rather preoccupied. Readers in the USA continue to tell me that I am over-reacting, it is all just negotiation or the phantom fentanyl. But I do not think the new Liberal leader and next Prime Minister, Mark Carney, is the over-reacting type. I will let him have the last words, from his acceptance speech Sunday night, ‘I know that these are dark days, dark days brought on by a country we can no longer trust. We are getting over the shock, but let us never forget the lessons. We have to look after ourselves and we have to look out for each other. We need to pull together in the tough days ahead.’”

A few days earlier, Alter quoted from a piece written by Dan Gardner that explores what may lie ahead for Canada even if the annexation nonsense is just the ravings of an idiot.

“The shakedowns would be relentless. And we would have no choice but to hand over whatever was demanded. There would be no other option. Oil, critical minerals, Arctic shipping, fresh water. Whatever they want. Picture pipelines siphoning Lake Superior and Lake Ontario to fill swimming pools in Las Vegas and Phoenix and irrigate crops in central California. We would have no choice but to say yes.

“We could become, in reality if not law, a resource colony of the United States. A land of nothing more than extraction and American military bases. A land with modest control of its domestic affairs, little control over foreign policy, and little or no voice in the Washington halls of power where the most important decisions determining Canada’s fate are made. Think Guam but bigger and colder. I think that is the worst-case scenario.”

British Columbia Lashes Out At Tesla

Last week, British Columbia, Canada’s westernmost province, moved to exclude government subsidies for people who want to install a Tesla EV charger and residential storage batteries at their homes. As of March 12, 2025, Tesla EV chargers, residential storage batteries, and inverters are no longer eligible for rebates the province’s utility company BC Hydro said in a notice on its website. “The Government of BC and BC Hydro are taking action to preference Canadian goods in our rebate programs going forward and to exclude, where practicable, US produced goods,” the notice said. Products from other US brands like Ford still appeared to be eligible, Bloomberg said.

The move is targeted at Tesla’s chief executive officer, top shareholder, and key Trump backer, Elon Musk, according to BC Premier David Eby. “It’s just for Tesla, and it’s because of Elon Musk,” Eby said at a press conference. “I think that if British Columbians heard that C$10,000 of taxpayer money was going to Elon Musk, they’d want to throw up, so we removed them from the program.” Those rebates can cover as much as 50% of the cost of purchase and installation of a home charger, according to the BC Hydro page. Tesla cars were not eligible for the province’s rebates for electric vehicles because they are too expensive, Eby said.

No Vancouver Auto Show For You!

To add insult to injury, CTV News reports that Tesla has been summarily removed from the list of exhibitors at the Vancouver Auto Show just days before the event was scheduled to take place this year. Tesla will no longer have a display at the show and all references to it have been removed from the show’s website, a move that comes as the billionaire faces backlash for his alliance with President Donald Trump amid a trade war between Canada and the US.

“The Vancouver International Auto Show has removed Tesla as a participant in this week’s event, after the automaker was provided multiple opportunities to voluntarily withdraw,” said Eric Nicholl, the show’s executive director, in a statement. “The Vancouver Auto Show’s primary concern is the safety of attendees, exhibitors, and staff. This decision will ensure all attendees can be solely focused on enjoying the many positive elements of the event.” The annual show will open on Wednesday, March 19, 2025 and continue through the weekend.

CTV News says Musk has been a cheerleader for Trump’s threats to annex Canada, writing on his social media platform X that Canada is “not a real country.” A petition to revoke Musk’s Canadian citizenship on the grounds that he has “engaged in activities that go against the national interest of Canada” and “attacked Canadian sovereignty” has amassed hundreds of thousands of signatures.

Nicholl has reason to be concerned about the safety of those who attend this year’s show. Last weekend, protests were staged at Tesla dealerships in B.C. and beyond. Meanwhile, dealerships in the U.S. have been vandalized, with vehicles set on fire in some cases. Musk posted on his personal antisocial media platform Tuesday to denounce the vandalism as “domestic terrorism” and to decry the “evil attacks” on his company. In a now deleted post he said, “My companies make great products that people love and I’ve never physically hurt anyone. So why the hate and violence against me? Because I am a deadly threat to the woke mind parasite and the humans it controls.” Way to fan the flames, Elon. Perhaps you don’t know that the US Constitution was written by people afflicted with the very same woke mind  virus. Such comments merely cement his position as the world’s wealthiest jackass.