Canada

I used to be a contractor as an av installer here in Australia Very few people here in Australia with large trucks need them, and those that do are the people who are useless onsite, especially because they're too large to park in busy areas, and they cost a lot to run (so you know the person doesn't do much and gets paid a lot). They're totally inefficient with productivity.

In fact, you'll never see couriers use them either because they don't do anything well (even for cable deliveries).

Here in Australia, there is talk about introducing a new license for them, and it's well deserved. The kind of people attracted to emotional support vehicles don't put in effort at all into parking, and they should require extra training and more restrictions . They boast about towing capacity too, so they should be required to train for those capacities

Also, those kind of cars don't handle driving well either honestly lol, because they're so heavy. They have more clearance, that's it. I don't live there, but I seriously doubt your roads are so bad you need a 4wd and high clearance to get around. Here in Australia, such cars are always perfectly clean and definitely aren't needed 99% of the time. In fact, the only people whining about roads here in Australia tend to be people justifying their large car, or people with impractical sports cars, and I'm willing to bet it's an exaggeration there too

There are contractors that should have one, but they're extremely limited. Either get something for transporting people, or cargo

I think most reasonable people don't actually think there needs to be a full ban on these trucks. I do think that most people would agree that there needs to be some restriction/enforcement on where they can park. The picture at the top of the article is a good example, they don't fit in lots of the angle parking spots right downtown. There are small car spots, there are micro car/motorcycle spots, maybe we need standard sized car spots. Big trucks can park in lots where they do fit or on the edge of downtown (I do that in my normal sized car if I can anyways because who wants to pay for parking?). As for your second to last point, no one's going to drive 3+ hours from the north Island to Victoria to get groceries especially not in these trucks for $150+ of gas. No one would even drive from Saanich to get groceries in Victoria.

I do agree about the transit though, it's insane that travelling from Nanaimo to Victoria takes an entire day by public transport and anything north of that is simply impossible.

Your view of all these problems is too myopic and binary to ever come to a reasonable conclusion on any of these topics.