The reborn federal electric vehicle rebate program is set to launch today — but some of Canada's auto dealers say they're still out tens of thousands dollars from the last one.
Starting today, Canadians can access up to $5,000 in government rebates toward the purchase of new electric vehicles that cost less than $50,000. Plug-in hybrids will be eligible for $2,500 in subsidies.
The return of the popular program is being welcomed by car dealerships. But some dealerships have their guard up because the government's portal to submit reimbursement claims won't be launched until April.
"It's a little worrisome. Obviously my antlers are a little bit more raised with what's going on, and I'm going to be on top of every claim. Just because I don't trust the system anymore," said Dean Woods, sales manager at a Kia dealership in Grimsby, Ont.
Woods told The Canadian Press his dealership is out $20,000 from the old program after Transport Canada refused to reimburse it for rebates applied to EVs it sold.
The cars were sold in 2024 but the dealership's office manager didn't notice they hadn't been reimbursed by the government until a month ago. Woods wrote to Transport Canada asking to be reimbursed but Transport Canada refused because the program had ended a year ago.
After Woods pressed the department further and provided documentation to support the claims, Transport Canada chalked it up to an error in the submission form.
"Therefore, you never received the claim number confirmations for these four submissions, and it was never received by the iZEV Program," a Transport Canada official said in a letter to Woods last month, which he shared with The Canadian Press.
"If the program was still active, you could have resubmitted the claims, however since the program is now closed, re-submission or reimbursement is no longer possible."
Under both the old and new EV incentives program, dealerships are supposed to apply the $5,000 rebate directly at the point of purchase, then apply to the government to be reimbursed.
Huw Williams, a spokesperson for the Canadian Automobile Dealers Association, said the process amounts to dealerships having to "front the money on behalf of the federal government, which has an enormous treasury."
"Dealers are small, independent businesses. And when there's been historic problems, Transport Canada has not always shown flexibility to solve the problem," he added.
Williams couldn't say exactly how many other dealerships are still waiting on reimbursements from the federal government.
"We have some dealers who have brought us cases to look at and submit to Transport Canada, which we've done, and after they've been rejected, we've then been rejected," he said.
"And we have others who have spoken to us and are unsure that they're even going to submit, feeling that there's not a hope for them getting paid."
Williams said that, now that the government has reintroduced an incentive program and set aside $2.3 billion for it, Transport Canada should reimburse those who are still waiting to be made whole.
"Let's start it in good faith. Get people, dealers — who had fronted money to consumers — paid, and let's charge forward together to get EVs across the country," he said.
The first EV rebate program ran for five years between 2019 and 2025. The government paused it in January 2025 when its funding ran out.
In a statement to The Canadian Press, Transport Canada said it temporarily reopened the rebate program for a month last summer to allow dealerships to submit claims which had not yet been paid.
"All eligible claims for reimbursement that were submitted to Transport Canada — either before the program pause or during the temporary administrative window last summer — have been paid," said department spokesperson Flavio Nienow.
The department did not immediately respond to a followup question about cases where submission forms had errors preventing a claim from being submitted.
