The Liberals have approved another one-year extension of an order that has kept Canada’s emission standards for truck trailers on paper, and never on the road, since 2019.

Cabinet signed off on the order on Oct. 23, on the recommendation of Environment Minister Julie Dabrusin, who made it on Oct. 13. The text of the order has yet to appear in the Canada Gazette, so the only public record is a two-sentence notice, an Order in Council, saying the minister changed the rules and cabinet agreed.

The order replaces the previous one, made by Dabrusin on Nov. 24, 2025 and approved by cabinet on Dec. 5. It was published in the Canada Gazette on Dec. 13, with an explanatory note and the text of the order.

It did three things:

• Declared that the heavy-duty vehicle greenhouse gas regulations “do not apply” to trailers manufactured on or after Jan. 1, 2020.
• Updated a plug-in hybrid reference in the passenger vehicle rules.
• Raised the weight cut-off in the definitions of “automobile” and “work truck” from 4,536 kg to 6,350 kg, and changed the definition of a medium-duty passenger vehicle.

Under the law, an interim order dies after one year unless the regulations are amended to match, so the November 2025 order runs out on Nov. 24. The October order is its replacement.

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Ottawa added trailer standards to the heavy-duty regulations in 2018, to start with trailers built in 2020. They were suspended by interim order in May 2019, before they applied to a single trailer. The December 2025 explanatory note counts six such orders between 2019 and early 2025, a seventh made Jan. 31, 2025, and then the November 2025 order.

By Rebel News’ count, the Oct. 13 order is the ninth.

Ottawa’s own estimate is that each year of delay for 2027 model-year trailers means about 0.7 megatonnes less greenhouse gas reductions over the life of those trailers, and about 3.8 megatonnes for 2020 to 2027 trailers combined over 2020 to 2050. The government has been promising and deferring those reductions, by order, for seven years.

Canada’s vehicle emission rules have historically been aligned with those of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, and the law behind these orders lets the minister keep them in step with Washington’s.

But that rationale is wearing thin, as the EPA published a final rule on Feb. 18 rescinding its greenhouse gas endangerment finding, and repealed its vehicle emission standards, effective April 20.

In August, Ottawa published proposed amendments that would repeal the federal electric vehicle sales mandate, which requires 20 per cent of 2026 models to be zero-emission, rising to 100 per cent in 2035.

The government’s own cost-benefit analysis puts the net cost of scrapping the mandate at $90.3 billion. That counts $57.6 billion in avoided vehicle and charger costs against $94.2 billion in forgone emission reductions and $53.8 billion in forgone fuel savings. Rebel News reported on the analysis at the time.

The proposal was open for comment for 75 days and has not been finalized.

In the meantime, the vehicle rules that bind Canadian manufacturers are being held together by one-year ministerial orders, approved by cabinet, with the text published weeks later.