We Canadians love to say we care about the environment. We recycle and sip fair-trade coffee and apologize for everything. But most of us can’t afford to buy a quality electric car. The average EV price in Canada is above $60,000, which isn’t exactly “working class family” territory. The Tesla Model 3, the so-called “affordable” EV, starts at $55K.

Meanwhile, across the Atlantic, drivers in the UK are picking up sleek and reliable electric cars for under £25,000, or just over $40,000 CAD. The catch? Those cars are made by BYD, China’s premier automaker that has quietly become the largest EV manufacturer in the world. The BYD Dolphin hatchback costs less than a base model Toyota Corolla. It’s not a luxury toy. It’s an everyman’s EV.

But you can’t buy one if you’re Canadian, because our own government won’t let you.

When the U.S. hit Chinese electric vehicles with tariffs as high as 100 percent last year, Canada’s government under Justin Trudeau followed suit like a well-trained golden retriever. Ottawa slapped massive duties on Chinese EVs, batteries and chips. Basically everything you need to build or import a cheap electric car. The move was meant to “protect Canadian jobs” and align with our allies. But our so-called allies turned on us anyways, the auto jobs are going away as Trump’s tariffs force American manufacturers to move south, and the only thing we Canadians got out of it was ridiculously high prices for all vehicles.

Now I’m not blind to the political logic. Canada is throwing billions at domestic EV manufacturing, like Volkswagen’s PowerCo plant in St.Thomas, Stellantis-LGES in Windsor, and Northvolt in Quebec. Those massive projects backed by corporate welfare are supposed to turn us into a clean-tech powerhouse. The last thing Ottawa wants is to pour billions into those factories only for BYD to swoop in and sell cars for half the price.

But here’s the rub: Canada didn’t have a single Chinese EV on the road before the tariffs. Zero. And none of those plants we’ve poured billions into have produced a single battery, let alone a car. So we’re not protecting an existing industry. We’re simply giving big corporations billions in free money while hamstringing our own people.

Then there’s the world’s ultimate free-trader: the United Kingdom. They decided not to build those walls and BYD entered the market in late 2023. It is now the UK’s fastest-growing auto brand, with around 3.6 percent of sales as of this fall. They’re flooding England’s roads with affordable electric cars and British buyers are eating them up.

It’s a glimpse of what Canada could have: a real EV market with options for regular people. Rather than the closed ecosystem we’ve built, where “green” means “luxury” and the taxpayer foots the bill for corporate greed, we could be cruising around in decent EVs and saving billions on gas.

But it gets worse. Even with tariffs, we’re still tangled up with China. All those massive plants we’ve funded still rely on supply chains that run straight through the Middle Kingdom. The minerals, cells and components that go into “Canadian” EV batteries often come from Chinese sources with Chinese ownership.

And while Canada locks the doors to affordable EVs, Chinese automakers are racing ahead on autonomy and driver-assistance tech. Their ADAS systems (those are the ones that help cars park, steer and brake) are already far ahead of anything else in the world and they’re more affordable, too. European regulators are already testing them. If Canada ever opens the doors to imported software stacks, we’ll end up with the same Chinese tech in our cars anyway, but without the affordability.

Ottawa’s problem isn’t that it wants to protect jobs. It’s that it’s protecting the wrong ones. We can’t compete with China on mass-market EVs. We can, however, build niche, high-value systems such as advanced batteries, sensors, safety software and green mining. That’s where Canadian innovation actually wins. Beijing is building the future while Canada is trying to be Detroit in 1955.

Standing tough on China is a short-term political win for politicians but it leaves Canadians stuck with unaffordable and second-rate cars while the rest of the world is leaping ahead. The irony is we aren’t even close to meeting our greenhouse emissions goals, and we never will be while we stay addicted to carbon-spewing ICE vehicles from American manufacturers.

This isn’t about letting China win. It’s about letting Canadians drive, and thankfully there’s some hope. That tariff wall is already cracking. China retaliated by slapping massive tariffs on Canada’s canola industry, and China was one of the largest clients of Canadian canola oil. There’s been talk from within Carney’s government of lifting the tariffs. Nothing concrete has been said, but whispers from deep within the halls of Parliament Hill have leaked out over the summer.

A real green future could be possible for Canada. We just need to get affordable, reliable electric cars into people’s driveways. That car exists right now. It’s just not for sale here.

Microsoft has been warning users for two years that support for Windows 10 was coming to end. Well, that moment is finally upon us. If you’re one of those people who refuses to upgrade to Windows 11, or you’re out of the loop and this is the first you’re hearing about it, there’s a way to keep using Windows 10.

You can fork up $30 a year for extended security support, meaning Microsoft will make sure your operating system stays up to date with all the latest security patches. Or you can sign up for free to Windows Backup, meaning you have to stay logged in to your Microsoft account to use Windows 10.

No matter what you choose, you’ll lose built-in Windows functionality like OneDrive sync beginning October 14.

Alarm bells are ringing after digital sleuths investigating the US Navy strike against a Venezuelan fishing boat that killed several civilians discovered Canadian drone technology helped with the attack.

A US military report says Canadian L3HARRIS WESCAM LX-series tracking and digital surveillance drone technology was used to locate, track, and guide the missiles onto the fishing boat. CBC reached out to Prime-Minister Mark Carney and Global Affairs Canada, but the government has only responded with a generic “We are monitoring the situation” reply.

The Toronto S&P/TSX index surged to its highest level ever thanks to a boom in Canadian technology, which saw gains as high as 1.4 percent. Energy rose 1.2 percent and transportation rose 1 percent.