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Most Canadians define themselves primarily as "Not Americans". Think about it. Once you boil away the bizarre obsession with the mediocre offerings at Tim Horton's, the love of all things hockey and the regional slangs, you get generally overweight folks who go to Blockbuster on Friday, Costco or Wal-Mart on Saturday and wherever the game is playing on Sunday. It's fitting that on the heels of the U.S. Congress' recent adoption of the 35 mpg by 2020 legislation, Canadian transport Minister Lawrence Cannon fired off (geddit?) a proposal for new Canadian fuel efficiency standards for… 2020. "Now, we welcome the U.S. goal," he graciously opined (via CTV). "But we are committed to developing a made-in-Canada standard that achieves, at minimum, that target benchmarked against a stringent dominant North American standard." Though Cannon calls it a "Made in Canada" solution, the proposal follows a long-established trend of Canadian pols waiting for America (California?) to do something, and then outright copying it– once America has forced everyone to adapt and the legislation has become moot anyway. To wit, earlier this year, the province of Québec announced it was considering adopting California's emission standards. It's the right thing to do, eh?27 Comments on “Canada: 35mpg by 2020– or Better!...”
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Meh. As far as my experiences go in Quebec, Canadians tend to buy much more efficient cars though. Toyota Yaris, Smart Cars, etc. are all over the place in Montreal. I don’t know if that applies to the rest of the country. That fact should make fleet averages much easier to reach, without all the SUV loopholes we have.
35 mpg in Canadian is 7 litres per 100 KLM I think.Somebody do the math and tell me how close that is.
Along with better and cheaper coffee,Star Bucks !
vs A Timmy ex large double double? Samir!dude get a grip.Anyway, we drive at least 20% faster isn’t that gonn’a kick the crap out’a 35 mpg?
Canadians do tend to buy smaller vehicles due to less disposable income, higher prices and cultural differences.
However, I would say Quebec the contrast is exceptional compared to the rest of the country. It seems that sub-compacts lead the market in that province.
That said, I hate when the Canadian government introduces different standards from the US just to make a point. It gives manufacturers another excuse to charge higher prices for their Canadian models.
Having lived in Canada, I can tell you that their environmentalism is not so sincere. They buy cheap cars, not efficient ones, because of taxes.
They get most of their income from stripping the earth of its resources. Given the choice, they would likely be more environmentally friendly, but they deny themselves the choice at the voting booth. They do recycle more than we do, but that’s about it.
Canada could be a better, though smaller country than the US, but they are trapped in sick dependency on government.
We currently have a conservative government who doesn’t do much other than echo US conservatives and cross out the USA part of made in USA solutions and replace it with Canada for their cribbed speeches. So this is a yawnfest of a non-surprise.
We already have a more efficient fleet here, since we drive about one size down. Where the most popular cars in the USA are Camry/Accord, they are Civic/Corolla here. More manual trannies etc..
Essentially we are a cross between USA/Europe but because USA drives the North American market, we usually don’t get to choose those high mileage Euro hatches either. (though we have had “smart cars” for a while.).
These 2020 35mpg targets are just pointless rhetoric at this point. By then fuel prices may be so high that most people will be buy 40mpg+ euro style hatches anyway.
Converting from miles per gallon to liters per 100 KLM [Royal Dutch Airlines] is easy: subtract 32 and multiply the result by five-ninths. Or is that for furlongs per hogshead?
Personally, I think any country that loves doughnuts so much has to be a pretty decent place. But when I spent a day in London, Ontario I discovered one weird thing: you had to go to the government beer store to buy a six-pack.
Coupdetat:
There are noticeably more small cars in Quebec (I travel to Montreal about six times per year from Toronto). The main reason I think is the higher gasoline taxes which are roughly 10 cents per litre or more than Ontario. It’s now routine, the last stop just before the Quebec border to fill up. Again, there are proportionately more compact cars in Canada generally due to higher gas taxes than the U.S. not to mention the higher car prices which are more pronounced on expensive vehicles when compared with compacts.
Mikey:
35 mpg is roughly 8 litres per 100 km. Conversion is 282.48 / mpg (imp. gallons).
50merc:
Don’t get me started on beer/wine and the LCBO. Beer is usually sold through the imaginatively named “Beer Store” which isn’t government owned. It’s a private monopoly (set up or mandated by the government) owned by the two largest brewers (I believe with certain minority holdings by various local microbrewers). You typically get the service monopolies are famous for. The government owned LCBO (Liquor Control Board of Ontario) also sells some beer with more of an emphasis on premium and imported beers. I seem to remember Pennsylvania had a similar system for wine and liquor sales.
In Quebec, one can buy beer and limited selection of wine in grocery stores. Imagine that. Last stop in Quebec befoe returning to Ontario is the local Costco where I buy Stella Artois about 1/3 less than Ontario.
The Canadian market is about 10% the size of the US market, so there is no way Canada will ever be able to go its own way on mileage. It’s important here that politicians at least appear to be independent of the US, so this will cause some extra rhetoric about a “made in Canada” solution that means nothing. We simply take the US standard, fix the spelling and grammatical errors, change the units of measurement and rearrange the paragraphs – voila – a made in Canada solution.
You’re absolutely right, Crackers. The Canadian government always tends to ape the US government in terms of automotive standards then tack on extra bullshit to make it appear more “Canadian”.
I wish they would just admit that and stop pissing in my ears.
If they’re using imperial gallons like most of the advertising car dealers, 29mpg doesn’t sound so unobtainable.
Once you boil away the bizarre obsession with the mediocre offerings at Tim Horton’s
It’s not an obsession really, more like a reference standard for almost everything!
We can measure distance in Tim Hortons.
We can measure time in ‘time for Timmy’s’.
We can give directions in Tim Hortons.
We can gauge the relative importance of a place in ‘Tim Hortons per square Kilometer’.
The importance of a street by ‘linear Tim hortons’
We can measure Volumn in term of units of ‘Double-doubles’
And we can gauge the type of people in a place by the number of cars in a TH drive through.
So you see how important Tim Hortons is. The next time you visit Hortonsland (aka Canada), drive along The QEW for 20 Tim Hortons until the time is ‘time for Timmy’s’. You should be near Toronto which is an important place rated at 5 TH/sq.Km and increasing all the time but followed very closely by Barrie, Orillia and Oshawa. Stop and suck back a few Double-doubles and TimBits. You’ll feel all the better for it.
Apparently we really are just copying the American standards. The CTV article says “35 miles per gallon, or 6.7 litres per 100 kilometres,” but with Canadian gallons, 35 MPG should 8 L/100km. I’m assuming that they really did mean 6.7 L/100km, so that should properly be called 42 MPG up here.
Now you see why I gave up on MPG and trained myself to think in L/100km :-)
100 km = 62.14 mi.
62.14 mi/35 MPG = 1.78 gal.
1.78 gal*3.79 liter/gal = 6.75 l/100km
A Canadian gallon (“imperial gallon”) is bigger than a US gallon. Our gallons are 4.546L. US gallons are 3.785L. This means that miles per gallon numbers will be different.
Is that supposed to be “imperial” gallons?
Then it would be:
1.78 imp gal*4.55 liter/imp gal = 8.1 l/100km
which would be 29 us gal/mi.
Actually if they are cloning US standard it should be miles per/US gallon. Imperial gallons are irrelevant anyway, since gas is sold in liters.
Isn’t Canada the big state up north that speaks French?
Here’s a useful fuel consumption converter which caters for Imperial and US Gallons…
http://www.euronet.nl/users/grantm/frans/fuel.html
re: oboylepr
Brilliant post btw, but I think London may be catching up on the Timmy’s per square kilometer. At least UWO must be a VERY important place, since on campus alone there are something like 16 Timmy’s ! :)
We have Tim Hortons in Lansing, Mich. now. Good coffee.
The donughts are good too; Better than Krispy Kreme, which are just little rings of fried sugar.
My E-28 obsession takes me on an annual trip to Missisauga ON. The local E-28ers have some really sharp cars. They are are great bunch and treat me like visiting royalty. I stopped at a Beer Store and bought a few 6packs of great beer that isnt available locally. Not impressed with Tim Horton’s though. Seems on par with Dunkin Donuts, only weaker.
One thing Canada is unlikely to have is a E85 loophole.
Corn just isn’t a cash crop up here. Now, if they could get ethanol out of maple syrup, maybe…
As insane as it is. Canada’s rebate program gives an incentive to cars with good economy OR e85 cars. :-(
The dodge Avenger gets a rebate for E85 despite getting about 14mpg or something horrendous while burning E85.
The reason why Tim Hortons is so endeared with Canadians was because it was the first chain to sell quality coffee before Starbuck’s, Blenz, etc… I can’t attest to Dunkin’ Donuts coffee as I haven’t tried it but from what I’ve heard, it used to be on par with Folgers and Maxwell House (ie: shit). That said, the donuts at Tim’s are crap.
I’m slightly embarassed for my fellow Canadians, because Tim Horton’s coffee is utter garbage. The fact they’ve attained near-religious status in my country (more so the farther east you travel) speaks poorly of us.
I’ve heard that their coffee is quite good with cream and sugar, but since I drink coffee and not merely a vessel for other ingredients, I can’t stomach the swill.
Storminvormin: your theory doesn’t wash in Vancouver, where Tim’s was an utter non-entity until long after Starbucks had brought coffee culture to the masses. They have since become sickeningly popular.
A correction to Dean’s comment about Tim’s being good with cream and sugar. It is barely tolerable with double cream and double sugar (hence the term double- double). Awful stuff, just awful.
I can think of many other differences about Canadians, other than those mentioned by Samir.
– Toronto is the fourth largest city in North America, and over 50 percent of its population was born outside of Canada.
-18 year olds can order a beer.
-Higher education is much more affordable
-You don’t have to wait 20 hours to be seen by an ER room doctor if you’ve had a heart attack
-They didn’t elect G.W.Bush, twice!
-You can smoke a joint in a B.C. bar and not get busted
-In Quebec, they like to drive around with a dead moose on their car, to show off.
-Maple syrup is real.
-They may or may not be more overweight than people in the U.S., but they appear to have a longer, healthier life.
-It is pretty safe in most places.
-They have some great writers and musicians.