The federal government is giving $92 million to a Toronto-based environmental organization to help get older vehicles off the road.
Environment Minister John Baird announced the long-delayed program on Wednesday, saying it will give drivers incentives to get older, polluting vehicles out of operation.
The national vehicle "scrappage" program will be managed by the Clean Air Foundation, who will receive the allocated funding over the next four years. The foundation already runs the "Car Heaven" program, which will be expanded with the new federal money.
Incentives will include rebates on new vehicles, free transit passes, bicycles, membership in ride-sharing programs and cash payments of $300.
Car Heaven sends the aging gas guzzlers to scrapyards, where they will be recycled according to provincial standards.
Vehicle models earlier than 1996 are eligible for the program, which currently gets much of its funding from General Motors and Imperial Oil. Drivers who send their old cars to the scrapyard are offered $750 toward a new GM vehicle.
According to government estimates, about five million vehicles that predate emission standards set in 1996 were on the roads last year. Such vehicles comprise just a fraction of the estimated 18 million being driven in Canada, but produce up to two-thirds of the smog-causing pollution.
The expanded national program is expected to be running by January 2009. In the meantime, Ottawa plans to give $3.4 million to seven regional scrapping groups that have received federal funding in the past.
Ersilia Serafini of the Clean Air Foundation says she'd like to bring those regional programs under the Car Heaven umbrella with launch of the national program.
"We hope to work and talk with them over the next couple of months and integrate them into the national delivery network of our national program,'' she told The Canadian Press.
Serafini expects the regional programs to adopt the Car Heaven Brand but that doesn't sit well with Scott Gillard, the co-ordinator of one of the groups that previously received funding.
He said his group, the Halifax-based Ecology Action Centre's Steer Clean program, doesn't want to join forces with an operation that promotes purchasing new vehicles.
"This was probably my greatest fear scenario,'' he said. "The idea of re-branding, basically starting from scratch -- and with a program that's very different philosophically from what we were doing -- doesn't seem very likely to me.''
Although the announcement came on Wednesday, many were aware it was on its way. The government set aside federal money for two years worth of scrapping programs in last year's budget and a recent Environment Canada planning report set aside $90 million for scrappage over the next three years.
With files from The Canadian Press
