Souris-Moose Mountain MP Robert Kitchen addressed the notion of universal electric vehicles at a coffee talk with his constituents in Estevan Wednesday morning.

Kitchen said he is not opposed to the idea, but that a lot of work would go into making it a viable option long term.

"If we're going to electrify this country and make everything electric, we've got to have certain things that we need," he said. "And number one is we need an energy source, and we need reliable energy. And that base energy is what we provide here in Estevan and the southeast corner of Saskatchewan."

"In order to electrify this country and put everyone of us here in electric vehicles that could possibly work in minus 40 degree weather...we need four times the power source that we have here today," Kitchen continued. 

He said the timeline for such a project would be long, something people often underestimate. 

"In order to build that power source, number one we need five years coming up with the idea of what we're going to build. Then we need three to four years to actually build it. And then we need another two or three years to get out all the kinks. That's 12 years from now," he said. "And that's maybe if we were to build a 100-megawatt unit. But ultimately we would need 1000 megawatts. And it's not going to happen overnight."

Kitchen said electric cars might be a great fit for some, but that they may not be practical for others.

"If somebody wants to have an electric vehicle, then I'm okay with that, and if there's avenues to do that, then that's fine, but they need to recognize where they're going to be valued," he said.

"That's one of the biggest concerns that I have, that I've learned is that people don't understand that what works in downtown Toronto doesn't necessarily work in rural Saskatchewan. And people need to understand that and recognize that."