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The reborn federal electric vehicle (EV) rebate program launches today, but some auto dealers in Canada say they’re still out tens of thousands dollars from the last one.
Canadians can now access up to $5,000 in government rebates toward the purchase of EVs that cost under $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 of them have their guard up because the government’s portal to submit reimbursement claims won’t be launched until April.
“It’s a little worrisome,” said Dean Woods, sales manager at a Kia dealership in Grimsby, Ont. “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.”
Woods said 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 the federal department refused because the program had ended a year ago.
Canada’s auto industry is betting the government’s EV rebate revival will help accelerate slow electric vehicle sales, though some consumers still worry about limited range and charging infrastructure.
After Woods pressed Transport Canada further and provided documentation to support the claims, it 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 that 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, resubmission 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 send a claim in to the government for reimbursement.
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 now that the government has reintroduced an incentive program and set aside $2.3 billion for it, Transport Canada should reimburse those 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.”
The first EV rebate program ran between 2019 and 2025. The government paused it in January 2025 when funding ran out.
In a statement, Transport Canada said it temporarily reopened the rebate program for a month last summer to allow dealerships to submit claims that 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.
