Article content continued

Tesla makes three expensive electric-car models and only its bottom-end Model 3 was eligible for the rebate, which covered cars that cost $75,000 or less. Tesla had about 600 of the $46,000 Model 3s on order in Ontario when the Tories killed the rebate.

When the Tories scrapped the rebates on July 11, they gave other dealers two months to get cars from manufacturers and deliver them to customers who’d already ordered them and the buyers would still be eligible for their subsidies. But the government kept Tesla out of the extension.

Photo by AP Photo/Justin Pritchard, File

Why? The official reason was that Tesla doesn’t have dealerships in Ontario. Except it does: U.S.-based Tesla has a Canadian arm that is a registered car dealer in Ontario. It isn’t set up like other carmakers, whose dealers are typically separate franchisees, but if the government thought Tesla’s customers bought directly from the manufacturer, that’s technically not right. It might have checked.

The judge’s ruling went on to take down the poor bureaucrat the government sent in to justify its treatment of Tesla, an acting manager of policy and programs in the Ministry of Transportation whose background is in designing anti-climate-change programs, not dismantling them.

Vrinda Vaidyanathan testified that the point of extending the rebates was just to protect small “independently owned, franchised dealerships.” The thing is, the judge found that was the first time anybody mentioned the importance of independent ownership for the car dealers still benefiting from rebates — in court. There’s no sign that detail came up when the government made its decisions in July.