As Kent Heinrich motors along the Yellowhead Highway in Manitoba, he’s part-tourist, part-evangelist.
His goal is to get to a family gathering in Saskatchewan. His mission is to spread the word of the power of electric vehicles.
Heinrich had just left his home north of Winnipeg a couple of hours earlier. As his partner, Cindy McKay, steers their battery-powered Hyundai Ioniq 6 west, Heinrich talks from the passenger seat about the increasing ease of electric-powered travel in Canada.
First stop will be in Neepawa where a 20-minute charge will last them the rest of the way to Crystal Lake, a hamlet in Saskatchewan about 340 kilometres away.
He’s packed a modestly powered charger, which he’ll plug in at his brother’s lakeside camper. That should keep the car powered up enough to start the return trip, but the pair could stop in Yorkton, Sask., or in any of a handful of Prairie communities — Whitewood, Virden, Portage La Prairie — and “fill up” on battery power in less than half an hour.
Heinrich is an eager early adopter. He’s spent much of his career working in the clean energy and technology industries, and over the last year he’s been working to spread the word about electric vehicles in communities across northern Manitoba and Ontario — especially outside of major centres.
“East-west transportation in Canada with an EV is manageable now,” Heinrich says. “It’s a 15- minute, 20-minute stop. It’s a washroom break, grab a coffee, stretch your legs and carry on.”
But Heinrich’s focus isn’t on Canada’s southern highway corridors. Access to quick and easy charging changes significantly, he says, when you start looking north.
“North of the Perimeter [Highway, in Winnipeg], there’s basically nothing of any significance,” he says.
Without reliable charging, it’s difficult to drum up confidence in electric cars.
The federal government expects all new light-duty vehicle sales to produce zero emissions by 2035. So far, Canada appears on track: the number of battery electric and plug-in hybrid vehicles on the road has increased tenfold since 2017.
But Manitoba is behind the curve. Just one per cent of all new cars registered in the province since 2017 have been zero-emission vehicles — about 4,000 in all.
The recently elected New Democratic government has promised to triple that figure by 2026, but the lack of chargers outside urban centres still presents a significant challenge for many would-be converts.
“There is a transition happening, and if the charging infrastructure is not there, if it’s not reliable, that will impact businesses, job opportunities, people connecting with family, food; it will impact just about anything you use your vehicle for,” says Jessica Tait, sustainable transportation manager at Indigenous Clean Energy, a national non-profit that supports Indigenous communities developing clean energy projects.
Indigenous communities in particular are keen to join the electric transportation transition, Tait says, but many rural and remote residents face unique infrastructure challenges that Manitoba — and Canada’s — electric-vehicle incentive programs have yet to address.
“The reality is, you need that infrastructure in place for people to feel confident about investing in EVs. Until it’s in place, people are going to have hesitations,” Tait adds.
Across Canada, First Nations have historically dealt with stark and devastating infrastructure inequality.
“Unlike most Canadian towns and cities, many First Nations communities lack modern and acceptable roads, plumbing, clean water and housing infrastructure,” according to the Assembly of First Nations, which says nearly $5 billion in federally funded assets on-reserve are rated as in “poor condition” and points out there are currently 31 long-term drinking water advisories in First Nations communities.
“Not only is the current First Nations infrastructure gap unacceptable, but it is likely to become even more severe in [the] future,” reads a 2022 report from the the First Nations Financial Management Board, adding “the infrastructure gap is the result of government programs and policies failing to recognize and respond to the infrastructure needs of Indigenous communities.”
Indigenous communities in Manitoba are no stranger to these deficiencies: dozens of First Nations are only accessible by plane or winter road, for example, four are isolated from the provincial hydroelectric grid while several others are left navigating limited and unreliable power services. But these challenges have not stopped communities like Peguis and St. Theresa Point from forging ahead with innovative clean energy plans including independent solar grids, battery storage systems and electric trucks, buses and cars.
Though these communities strive to be at the forefront of the emerging energy transition, they will need support to overcome the infrastructure hurdles in their path.
If Canada hopes to meet its electric-vehicle targets, clean energy advocates like Tait and Heinrich say all levels of government will need to break down barriers for rural and remote residents — especially First Nations.
Urban centres lead the electric car revolution, the north is left behind
Zero-emission vehicle sales are on the rise in Canada. As of 2023, there were more than 500,000 battery-electric and plug-in hybrid cars on the road, according to Statistics Canada, and those zero-emission options represented 11 per cent of all new car registrations last year.
But those cars are concentrated in the country’s major urban centres: Toronto, Vancouver and Montreal accounted for more than half of the electric vehicles registered in 2023. The Prairies and Atlantic provinces represented less than 10 per cent.
Hesitations about purchasing electric vehicles exist no matter where you live. The still-evolving technology comes with higher up-front costs and limited model availability. There’s also the range anxiety: concern about whether the batteries can hold enough charge to last in cold weather or on longer road trips.
For rural and remote communities, there are other concerns, too. Many communities are located hundreds of kilometres from the nearest urban centre — distances that can be difficult to reach on a single charge. Remote communities can also have fragile power grids that are more susceptible to outages owing to limited capacity or aging infrastructure. More than 200 communities in Canada — home to around 200,000 people — are not connected to the national electricity grid and instead rely on diesel for power and heat. Charging infrastructure in these communities — including four in Manitoba — could add to greenhouse gas emissions.
Harsh winters are also a serious factor in northern communities, where an extreme and long-lasting deep freeze is more common. Under ideal conditions (that is, temperatures between 10 and 30 C ), electric batteries can power a car for 300 to 500 kilometres of driving. Any hotter or cooler, and the vehicle’s range — how far it can travel on a single charge — starts to suffer. Below -20 C, range can be cut in half.
Many electric car owners are able to plug in at home and have enough charge to handle in-city trips. For longer drives or colder days, public charging stations are a necessity. And so far, they’re mostly located in the cities.
“There’s such a big difference between the public charging infrastructure that’s available in places like Toronto and Vancouver and when you get farther away from the southern border,” Tait says.
In 2016 and 2017, the federal government committed $88.5 million over six years to fund charging infrastructure along core highways. In 2019, the government introduced the now- $680-million Zero Emission Vehicle Infrastructure Program to install chargers at public places, workplaces, parking lots and multi-unit residential buildings.
A 2023 auditor general review of the program found the number of chargers nationwide had increased, but the federal government did not plan for equitable delivery and had no targets to ensure underserved, remote, rural and low-income communities had access to charging infrastructure.
“Many areas of the country still lacked access to public charging stations,” the auditor general found. “The location of and access to charging stations with operational ports directly affects whether Canadians have the confidence to buy electric vehicles.”
Of Manitoba’s 250 charging stations, about two-thirds are located in the two biggest cities, Winnipeg and Brandon. There are just five in northern Manitoba: three in The Pas and two in Thompson.
Manitoba Environment and Climate Change Minister Tracy Schmidt says the province is hopeful the rebate program — which provides $4,000 or $2,500 toward the purchase of new and used zero-emission cars respectively — will help break down cost barriers, but acknowledged the availability of public charging infrastructure may still be a concern for Manitobans.
“The vast majority of electric vehicle charging happens in the home,” Schmidt says, adding the rebate can support Manitobans upgrading their home electricity system to support vehicle charging.
But the province has yet to flush out a plan to expand public charging infrastructure, or to address specific barriers for Indigenous communities. Schmidt says the province is keen to work with partners, including the federal government and non-profit organizations, to increase charger availability.
Last year, Manitoba’s then-Progressive Conservative government provided a $150,000-grant to local green infrastructure non-profit Eco-West to install charging stations in eight rural locations, including Thompson and The Pas.
Establishing a link to Manitoba’s north for electric vehicles
“If you’re not leaving the city limits of your hometown, EVs are fabulous, there’s no downside to them,” Heinrich says.
“If your house has enough power to bake a cake or dry a load of clothes, it has enough power to easily support an EV.”
The challenge comes with intra-community travel. Conservatively, any drive longer than 200 kilometres during a Manitoba winter will require a charging stop. A dearth of charging infrastructure in northern Manitoba can leave drivers stranded.
Heinrich is on a mission to close the gaps.
Working with his long-time friend and collaborator, St. Theresa Point’s Chief Raymond Flett, Heinrich secured federal funding in 2023 to launch the Manitoba-Ontario Free Ride electric vehicle education program.
They’ve developed a digital hub to help First Nations access information about funding opportunities for electric cars and infrastructure, designed Indigenous-language EV teaching materials for elementary school-aged children — including an electric car colouring book written in Cree, Dakota, Anishininew and Ojibwe — and provided administrative support with complex funding applications.
“If we [installed chargers at] 27 First Nation communities, it would open up the entire province,” Heinrich says.
The first priority would be to install chargers along the 760-kilometre corridor from Winnipeg to northern Manitoba’s population and industry hub in Thompson. Heinrich has a vision for three rapid-charging locations spaced about 200 kilometres apart along a major north-south highway: one in Fairford, the next in Grand Rapids and another in Wabowden.
“The beauty of it is: once the roadway has charging ability, then people within the communities north, east and west of the highway within a certain range can now take part in the provincial rebate program,” Heinrich says.
It’s easier said than done.
“There’s a big asterisk that the power has to be right in each community,” Heinrich says.
Electric-vehicle chargers can be plugged into almost any kind of outlet, but not all can deliver a charge quickly. Standard 120-volt power outlets (level-one chargers) can take up to 30 hours hours to charge a battery-electric car; level-two chargers, which use the same type of 240-volt plug as dryers and ovens, can take up to ten hours. The fastest way to charge an EV on the go is with a level three, also called a fast charger. Those require sophisticated wiring capable of delivering direct current power (something that can’t be installed at home) and an abundance of grid capacity — both of which can be complicating factors for rural and remote communities. To date, Manitoba has 55 stations capable of delivering a rapid charge, about half of which are in Winnipeg and Brandon. There’s only one up north.
“Many communities are considering their grid limitations, they may be at or near capacity for their grids. That’s a big safety and security concern that might not be a consideration to somebody living in an urban centre,” Tait, who works on charging infrastructure projects across the country as the coordinator of Indigenous Clean Energy’s Charge Up program, says.
While provincial and federal funding and incentive programs have gone some way to making electric cars and associated infrastructure more accessible, Tait says there’s room to improve when it comes to taking these complicating factors into account. Federal programs (which the Charge Up program helps distribute) cover up to 75 per cent of installation costs for Indigenous communities — but there’s a maximum to how much the government will pay out, which, for expensive projects, means communities with limited budgets are left to cover a significant portion of the bill.
She suggests more collaboration across municipal, provincial and federal programs to ensure infrastructure needs are being met holistically (i.e. upgrading power infrastructure to support charging, or upgrading internet and cellular networks for more reliability), as well as more flexible funding opportunities that account for the extra expenses — and time — it takes to install infrastructure in remote or fly-in communities.
St. Theresa Point First Nation eyes an electric vehicle fleet
Though there are challenges getting electric cars into the north, it’s not all doom and gloom.
“The beauty of electric vehicles in remote communities like these is that these communities are small,” Heinrich says. “You can drive around town for several weeks before you need a charge. The range anxiety isn’t there that you have for southern communities.”
For communities like St. Theresa Point, electric vehicles can also play a role in solving broader infrastructure challenges.
The fly-in only community has been plagued by power outages in recent years, sometimes as often as every couple of weeks. The outages inspired Flett to invest in solar panels for the local school that would offset peak electricity use and allow the community to sell some power back to the Manitoba Hydro grid. (Heinrich and Flett met in the early days of that solar project, when Heinrich still worked at the company commissioned to develop the panels.)
But because the panels are integrated with the hydroelectric grid, they too cut out during an outage. Now, Heinrich says, the community is looking to create a “micro-grid” — a local, independent energy system — that incorporates solar panels, a battery storage system and electric vehicles to keep the lights, heat, stoves and medical equipment running in an emergency.
St. Theresa Point is in the process of applying for a handful of community-owned electric vehicles: a mid-sized van and a Ford 150 Lightning pickup truck, which will be used to provide on-demand transit for community members; a larger truck from Canadian manufacturers Lion Electric, used for water and waste hauling, road work and other heavy jobs and a Lion Electric school bus.
The electric vehicles will be supported by one fast charger and one level-two charger, both of which will have what’s called “two-way” or “vehicle to grid” capabilities. Put simply, if and when the power goes out, those electric vehicles can be used as backup batteries, supplying power to the grid.
“It’s going to provide a battery backup as well as fuel-free transportation,” Heinrich says.
As an added bonus, an electric fleet will reduce reliance on standard fuels, which the community has to import all at once during each year’s brief and unpredictable winter road season.
Despite the extra complications brought on by infrastructure limitations, cold weather, tight budgets and even distance from the nearest EV-trained mechanic, sustainable transportation is a natural extension of many First Nations’ work on clean energy projects, Tait says.
“I think in many ways EVs align with many different Indigenous groups’ cultural values: stewardship of the land, water and air,” she says.
“When they can access their own clean energy, there’s energy sovereignty there.”
Education, awareness and curiosity about electric vehicles in Peguis First Nation
Kinnan Stevenson-French, environmental lead for Peguis Consultation and Special Projects, can see a similar vision for Peguis First Nation, his home community and Manitoba’s largest First Nation, spread across 300 square kilometres between the province’s two largest lakes.
While working on a feasibility study for an independent solar power project in Peguis, he noticed the community spent a lot of money powering large buildings (namely the local schools, multiplex and band office) and fuelling its vehicle fleet. About half of Peguis’s annual federal transfer funds were being spent on electricity. And the grid was starting to run out of power.
By switching to electric vehicles, the community could save money on fuel and use the high-power car batteries to back up other renewable power infrastructure.
There’s a catch: with limited grid capacity, Peguis would need to upgrade its aging power infrastructure before adding rapid chargers.
“Peguis has also been through a lot of climate events, so you have to look at putting infrastructure in place that’s not going to get impacted by, say, flooding,” Stevenson-French says.
Peguis has repeatedly faced severe floods since the community was forcibly moved to its current location in a low-lying interlake basin more than a century ago. Five major floods in the last 20 years have exacerbated a long-standing housing crisis as the aging, overcrowded dwellings are lost to mould and water damage. The latest flood, in 2022, destroyed more than 300 homes and caused some $300 million in damage to critical infrastructure.
“Once you start looking at that, you start realizing [EV] infrastructure becomes really expensive,” Stevenson-French adds.
Like many communities, Peguis operates within a tight budget dictated by federal funds. Many existing grant programs for electric-vehicle infrastructure only offer money through reimbursement, which can put First Nations without budget flexibility “back at square one,” according to Stevenson-French.
“There’s a lot of First Nations, like mine, that don’t necessarily have the economic standing to be able to afford something that they may not see benefit from for the next five to ten years,” he says.
New technologies and infrastructure could help the community cut costs, but those new technologies require investments many communities don’t have the budget for.
“It’s like this endless loop,” Stevenson-French says.
Instead, Stevenson-French is starting small. Peguis was granted $113,000 in federal funding to run an education and awareness program to help prepare the community for the transition to electric vehicles.
He’s held community meetings, encouraged members to fill out forms laying out their electric car questions or concerns and has partnered with Red River Polytechnic — a Winnipeg technical college — to develop an electric-vehicle training program for local mechanics.
“There’s definitely skepticism,” he says of the community’s stance toward the new technology. “Even myself, I’m definitely skeptical because I understand the needs of living in a rural setting when it comes to having a vehicle.”
He’s tossed around the idea of swapping his truck out for an electric alternative, but isn’t yet sure whether they could handle the heavy loads, muddy roads and steep hills in the interlake region, or whether he’d be stranded by range limits.
But Stevenson-French considers his skepticism an asset. His job is to solve the problems associated with EV adoption in his community; it helps him understand the problems and anxieties others will be facing.
In time, he hopes to develop an electric-powered local transit system, shuttling residents around town or to Winnipeg. The community has several school buses with damaged engines but intact frames that he believes — through partnerships with Red River Polytechnic — can be converted to electric power.
“You start off with these smaller projects, build up awareness, build up the community’s knowledge not just of the technology but what’s required to run these things,” Stevenson-French says.
In working with Indigenous communities across the country, Tait has seen a lot of interest in the limitations, opportunities and applications that come along with new electric-vehicle technology.
“Depending on where groups are located, some people may not have ever driven an EV, might not know anybody who owns an EV, so curiosity is a big part of it, and wanting to make sure that whatever choices are made are good choices,” she says.
At the end of the day, Tait says, adoption is going to take time. The work has already started, but “these things don’t happen overnight” and many communities are navigating competing demands for time, energy and funds.
Stevenson-French hopes Peguis can one day be a proving ground for other First Nations getting curious about electric cars as the federal government’s goal to eliminate new fossil fuel-powered light-duty vehicles by 2035 marches ever closer.
“I’m trying to use my community as a testing ground for EVs,” he says. “It’s not that far away.”
