Making Transportation More Affordable for British Columbians

Getting around is one of the most significant costs facing British Columbians.

For hundreds of thousands of people across the province, a vehicle isn’t a luxury. It is how they get to work, take their children to school, attend medical appointments, operate a business and participate in their communities. Yet transportation affordability is rarely considered as a whole.

Vehicle taxes are considered separately from fuel taxes. Electric-vehicle policies are developed separately from charging infrastructure. Transit funding is considered separately from the costs imposed on motorists. New taxes, fees and road-use charges can be contemplated without fully considering their cumulative impact on households and businesses.

B.C.’s New Car Dealers believe it is time for a more coordinated approach.

We are calling on the next provincial government to develop a Transportation Affordability Strategy that considers the total cost of mobility and puts affordability at the centre of transportation decision-making.

The objective should be straightforward: British Columbia needs to achieve its transportation, infrastructure and environmental goals while ensuring people can still afford to get where they need to go.

A practical approach to transportation affordability

A Transportation Affordability Strategy should look across government and consider how individual policies interact.

It should examine the cumulative taxes and charges associated with vehicle ownership, modernize outdated tax policies, consider affordability as part of environmental policy, support reliable charging infrastructure, prepare the automotive workforce for technological change, and establish clear principles for any future road-use or mobility charges.

Most importantly, major transportation decisions should begin with a simple question: What will this mean for the British Columbian household or business paying the bill?

1. Modernize B.C.’s Luxury Vehicle Tax

B.C.’s Luxury Vehicle Tax begins applying at $55,000—a threshold that increasingly captures vehicles such as vans, pickups and mini vans that many British Columbians would not consider luxury purchases.

Today’s vehicles include increasingly sophisticated safety, emissions and other technologies, while electrification has further changed vehicle costs.

B.C. should eliminate the tax or substantially increase and modernize the threshold, so it once again distinguishes between genuinely high-end purchases and the increasingly high cost of ordinary transportation.

Transportation affordability begins with ensuring our tax system reflects today’s vehicle market — not the market of years ago.

2. Make the transition to lower-emission transportation affordable and achievable

B.C.’s New Car Dealers support the transition toward lower-emission transportation.

But a successful transition depends on consumers being able to afford the vehicles available to them and having confidence those vehicles will work for their lives.

B.C. should align its zero-emission vehicle policy with the federal government’s more flexible, emissions-based approach, recognizing consumer demand, vehicle availability, affordability and the availability of charging infrastructure.

Environmental objectives and affordability should reinforce one another, rather than compete.

3. Build reliable charging infrastructure across B.C.

Buying an electric vehicle is only part of the ownership experience.

British Columbians also need confidence that they can reliably charge it—whether they live in a condominium, drive long distances for work, travel between communities or live in rural, northern or remote BC.

With more than 220,000 electric vehicles already on BC roads, the province needs a reliable and regionally distributed network of public DC fast chargers.

Charging infrastructure must keep pace with vehicle adoption if British Columbians are going to have meaningful transportation choices.

4. Prepare B.C.’s automotive workforce for the future

Transportation affordability also depends on having the skilled workers needed to maintain and repair increasingly sophisticated vehicles.

B.C. should expand automotive trades programs and post-secondary training spaces, including EV-specific technician training, and work with industry to address the shortage of qualified automotive technicians.

As vehicle technology changes, training capacity needs to keep pace.

A strong automotive workforce supports consumers, dealerships and communities while helping ensure B.C. is prepared for the transportation technologies of the future.

5. Don’t add new costs without considering what motorists already pay

As vehicles become more efficient and more drivers move away from gasoline, traditional transportation revenues such as fuel taxes will face increasing pressure.

Governments will need to address that challenge. But solving one transportation problem should not create another affordability problem.

Before consideration of mobility pricing, road-use charges or other new transportation fees, government should undertake full public and industry consultation.

British Columbians deserve clear answers about what is being considered, who would pay, where charges would apply, how much they could cost, how revenues would be used and  importantly, whether a new charge would replace an existing tax or simply be added to what motorists already pay.

These considerations are particularly important for families, tradespeople, shift workers, small businesses and people living in communities where public transit is not a practical alternative.

6. Avoid adding unnecessary costs to BC businesses and consumers

Transportation affordability is also affected by the cost of doing business.

The proposed expansion of the Provincial Sales Tax to professional and other services used by businesses would increase operating and investment costs, that can ultimately be reflected in the prices consumers pay.

The temporary pause on that proposed expansion should be made permanent.

Businesses need certainty, and government should consider how taxes imposed throughout the supply chain ultimately affect the affordability of goods and services for British Columbians.

Transportation is a system

For too long, transportation decisions have too often been considered one at a time. A tax here. A mandate there. A new incentive, fee or infrastructure program somewhere else. Each decision may have its own rationale. What matters to British Columbians is their combined impact.

A provincial Transportation Affordability Strategy would provide a framework for looking at the whole picture, and ensuring affordability is considered alongside revenue, infrastructure, environmental and transportation objectives.

That strategy should:

• examine the cumulative taxes, fees and charges associated with vehicle ownership and mobility;
• modernize outdated vehicle tax thresholds;
• make affordability a consideration in environmental and zero-emission vehicle policy;
• accelerate reliable charging infrastructure throughout the province;
• strengthen automotive trades and EV training capacity;
• establish clear principles for any future mobility pricing or road-use charges; and
• assess new taxes and transportation policies based on their cumulative impact on households and businesses.

British Columbia has spent considerable time thinking about how we will move people in the future.

It’s time to give equal attention to whether British Columbians will be able to afford to get there.

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