The Liberals don’t like to characterize their policies as causing potentially irreparable divisions between Eastern and Western Canada. Yet nothing screams “Laurentian elite looking out for their own at the expense of everyone else” quite like the recent press conference announcing the government’s new Electric Vehicle Availability Standard.

On Tuesday, about a dozen Liberal MPs braved gridlocked traffic to make their way to George Brown College in downtown Toronto, where senior party members extolled the virtues of phasing out gas-powered vehicles by 2035.

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Have a sense of déjà vu? That’s because the Liberals already announced their plan to mandate that 20 per cent of all new vehicle sales will be electric by 2026, expanding to 60 per cent in 2030 and 100 per cent in 2035.

What was billed as “a really exciting development for the future” on Tuesday was really just the publication of the finalized standard, which isn’t a whole lot different than last year’s draft regulations.

But the Liberals are not the sort of folk who pass on an opportunity for performative pageantry. Especially when it fits with what seems like a deliberate strategy to flood the airwaves with climate announcements to make it look like the government really has this file under control.

And so, Toronto MP Julie Dabrusin, Environment Minister Steven Guilbeault, Treasury Board President Anita Anand and Filomena Tassi, the minister responsible for the Federal........

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