Ontario's Drive Clean - Impacts On Air Pollution

Impacts On Air Pollution

Drive Clean has had little real impact on air pollution in Ontario. 2005 was Toronto's worst year on record for smog with a total of 48 smog alert days. The Ontario Medical Association estimated in 2005 that total air pollution (from all sources) would cause some 5,800 deaths and 17,000 hospital admissions that year. It also estimated that the direct health care costs of air pollution in Ontario were about $507 million, and the total economic cost of air pollution to be about $7.8 billion.

In late 2004, Norm Sterling, who served as the Environment Minister in Progressive Conservative premier Mike Harris's cabinet, stated that Drive Clean had already had its greatest impact on air pollution and had served its purpose. Mr. Sterling is often referred to as the founder of Drive Clean. Drive Clean can only address a small fraction of the total automobile emissions problem, because all internal combustion vehicles burn fuels which ultimately pollute the air (including most so-called "alternative" fuels).

Greenpeace co-founder Robert Hunter (journalist) wrote in 1999 that Drive Clean "has turned out to be an agonizing bureaucratic nightmare that hits drivers with what is basically another tax and a huge hassle, while accomplishing -- in Environmental Commissioner Eva Ligeti's assessment -- 'minimal benefits.'"

Critics of Drive Clean, who included Hunter and many other environmentalists argue that a greater long-term impact on overall air quality would result from reinvesting the same provincial resources towards encouraging low-emitter technologies, some of which offer electric power as an alternative to 100% internal combustion propulsion. There has been call for the Ontario government to admit to Drive Clean's minimal impact, and to begin promoting low-emissions vehicles such as hybrid cars, plug-in hybrid electric vehicles, zero-emission vehicles such as the ill-fated General Motors EV1, and personal transports like the Segway PT. Unlike over 40 U.S. states, the Ontario government has banned low-speed electric vehicles citing "safety concerns". On March 23, 2006, Ontario's McGuinty government doubled their former $1,000 ceiling sales tax rebate on hybrid cars such as the Toyota Prius up to a maximum of $2,000, but stopped short of making such vehicles PST-free.

Several politicians, including Norm Sterling and Howard Hampton have argued that diverting the same Provincial funds used for paying for Drive Clean towards improving existing public transit networks might have yielded a far greater overall environmental benefit. Proper funding may have also acted to reduce the well-documented disproportional fare increases seen in Toronto from the Toronto Transit Commission (TTC) in recent years. The TTC has argued in the past that with riders covering more than 80 per cent of the cost of operating the TTC, it is by far the least-funded mass transit system in North America and one of the least-funded in the world. Another lost opportunity to reduce smog was the quiet shut-down of the Hamilton Street Railway's all-electric Trolleybus routes in 1992.