Who in the Manitoba government decided to exclude Tesla from the province’s electric vehicle rebate program, and why, is still unclear following a court hearing on the decision, the company’s lawyers argued in court Monday.
Lawyers for Tesla Motors Canada asked a Manitoba Court of King’s Bench judge to overturn the NDP government’s decision to exclude the company from electric vehicle rebates in the province in 2025 and 2026.
That move was unreasonable and unfair, and lacked transparency, the lawyers argued.
Manitoba’s EV rebate program, which rolled out in 2024, entitled Manitobans to a $4,000 rebate on some new electric or hybrid plug-in vehicles, or $2,500 on used vehicles.
But in its spring 2025 budget, released just after the trade war began between the U.S. and Canada, the provincial government cut Tesla out of the rebate program. Chinese EVs were also excluded.
Manitoba’s cut followed similar moves in B.C. and in Ontario, where Tesla won a 2018 legal case against the provincial government over its exclusion. Nova Scotia and Prince Edward Island also announced Tesla exclusions from rebate programs the same month Manitoba did.
Tesla filed a judicial review application over the Manitoba exclusion earlier this year, naming the province, Manitoba Public Insurance and the ministers of finance, the environment and justice as respondents.
Manitoba budget targets Tesla, U.S. contractor in midst of trade war
The company argued its exclusion must be invalidated, since it’s not clear which of the respondents made the decision or whether any of them were legally allowed to do so.
Michael Parrish, a lawyer for Tesla, called the province’s decision to exclude Tesla “incredibly unfair.”
A slim stack of documents provided by the province to show how it made the decision did not shed light on how a “still unidentified group of people” decided to exclude the company from the program, he told Justice Elissa Neville.
“What is at issue in this proceeding is the actual decision,” he said. “We don’t know why Tesla Canada was excluded, we don’t know what information or documents were considered.”
Tesla asks court to overturn exclusion from Manitoba EV rebate program
Tesla says it was not consulted before the exclusion and received no rationale from the province, aside from reading media reports that the decision was “made in order to be ‘elbows up’ in relation to the United States of America,” the application says.
In court Monday, Parrish pointed to comments made by Premier Wab Kinew shortly after the company threatened legal action last May, in which the premier said Tesla CEO Elon Musk — a onetime ally of the U.S. president — should “get Donald Trump to stop the tariffs, and then we can talk about the EV rebate.”
Based on those comments, Parrish argued that Tesla Canada was excluded from the EV rebate for “seemingly political reasons.”
Tesla also argued the exclusion runs counter to the rebate program’s objectives of making EVs more affordable for Manitobans.
Joseph Langan, a lawyer for the Manitoba government, said the decision to exclude Tesla was made as part of the provincial budget and is therefore unreviewable by the courts.
“This doesn’t belong in a judicial review. This is a policy decision. This is a budgetary decision,” he said.
“This was ultimately a funding decision … of the government.”
Parrish argued that a government decision made for an improper purpose will always be under the court’s purview.
Langan also said the slim stack of documents that informed the province’s decision was all the government provided.
“We went to the people who decide what the budget will be, and we said, ‘We need the decision on excluding Tesla vehicles,’ and the documents provided are what’s before you now, and you can see that there’s very little there,” he said.
“Sometimes there is little record.”
Justice Neville reserved her decision until a later date.
