Cheap EVs can't replace Quebec's lost rebate before the year is out

We reported in May on the mechanics of the crash: Quebec's Roulez Vert rebate and the federal iZEV rebate both ended within weeks of each other in January 2025, and Quebec's zero-emission vehicle (ZEV) share fell from 40% to 13% of new registrations in a single quarter. That piece closed on an open question: would 2026 bring a genuine recovery, or another rebate-driven spike and crash? Statistics Canada's first-quarter 2026 registrations are out, and they answer it.

Quebec registered 16,420 new ZEVs in the first quarter of 2026. That's up from the 11,552 trough hit the moment Roulez Vert lapsed, but it's a third of the 49,368 quarterly pace Quebec was running at its late-2024 peak. To match 2024's full-year total of 147,757 vehicles, Quebec would need to average 43,779 registrations a quarter for the rest of 2026, a 167% jump from where it sits now.

No other part of the country is in this position. The rest of Canada needs its ZEV sales to rise just 21% over the same stretch to match its own 2024 total. The asymmetry traces directly to what each market actually lost. Right up until January 2025, a Quebec buyer could stack the federal iZEV rebate ($5,000) on top of the provincial Roulez Vert incentive, which had already been phased down from a $7,000 peak to $4,000. Call it $9,000 combined, on top of a program that started as high as $12,000. Ontario, which cancelled its own EV rebate in 2018, only ever had the federal $5,000. Quebec's market was built on the bigger subsidy, so it has the bigger hole to climb out of.

Two things are supposed to help fill that hole this year, and neither is sized for the job.

Ottawa's replacement federal rebate, the Electric Vehicle Affordability Program (EVAP), launched February 16, 2026, offering up to $5,000 on EVs priced at $50,000 or less. It's real, and it accounts for some of the national recovery. But it restores the federal floor both Quebec and Ontario already had. It does not restore the provincial top-up that was specific to Quebec and is still gone.

The other proposed fix is cheap imports. Canada swapped its 100% tariff on Chinese-made EVs for a straight quota (a 6.1% duty on the first 49,000 vehicles a year) starting January 2026. Run the most generous version of that math: if every one of those 49,000 units landed in Quebec and nowhere else in the country, it would close only about 60% of Quebec's own annual shortfall of 82,077 vehicles. In practice it will do far less than that, because Chinese brands don't have Canadian dealership networks yet. Dongfeng gave its first Canadian showcase in Montreal this past July, targeting certification for 2027. The realistic 2026 contribution from the quota is close to zero, not 49,000.

One Quebec EV number does look healthy, and it's the wrong one for this story. The registration figures above are a flow, new vehicles hitting the road each quarter, and that flow is still depressed. The Association des véhicules électriques du Québec (AVÉQ), using registration data from the Société de l'assurance automobile du Québec (SAAQ), counted 440,554 electric vehicles on Quebec roads as of December 31, 2025, up 17% from a year earlier after a fourth-quarter gain of 14,018 vehicles. That stock keeps growing every quarter, because it only adds; it never subtracts vehicles already on the road. The crash only shows up in the flow.

National Observer reported in February that the 49,000-unit quota "won't come close" to getting Canada to its national EV targets. That argument holds nationally. It holds even harder in Quebec, where the hole is deeper and the timeline is shorter: an incentive that started at $12,000 is down to a federal $5,000, and eight months are already gone from the year Quebec needs to recover in.

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