The federal government and the province of Ontario on Monday announced they would each contribute $259 million to General Motors Co. as it moves to revitalize its auto manufacturing operations in Canada.
GM said it is investing more than $2 billion in its operations and the federal and provincial money will support its assembly plant in Ingersoll, in southwest Ontario, where later this year it will start producing electric commercial vans, known as the BrightDrop.
https://www.theglobeandmail.com/
Canada’s automotive industry is no longer facing an existential threat from the transition to electric vehicles, as it was just a year or two ago. Wednesday’s announcement that the automaker Stellantis NV will partner with South Korea’s LG Energy Solution to build a $5-billion EV battery-assembly plant in Windsor, Ont., is proof enough of the sector’s resilience.
Billed as the single largest investment in Canadian automaking since the 1980s, if not ever, it should not only provide an estimated 2,500 jobs at that new facility but help protect many existing ones, including in parts manufacturing and at Stellantis’s existing vehicle-assembly plants in Ontario.
https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/toronto/
Ontario’s steel industry is aiming for a dramatic reduction in its greenhouse gas emissions, a move that will help Premier Doug Ford’s government get closer to achieving its climate-change targets.
The three biggest industrial emitters of CO2 in Ontario are all steel plants. Steel production alone accounts for more than 40 per cent of all industrial greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions in the province, more than the refinery, forestry, mining and chemical sectors combined.
The recent blockades of Canada-U.S. border crossings by radical libertarians, in support of fellow travellers who occupied Ottawa, are thought by many Canadian business leaders and economists to have caused permanent damage to our economy. A Canada heavily reliant on trade now suffers the reputation of being an unreliable supplier, they say.
That isn’t true.
There is no denying that the brief disruption in the daily $1.7-billion worth of trade by truck between Canada and the U.S. was alarming. And that it is cause for a rethink of how to better ensure uninterrupted safe passage of people and goods between our two countries.
https://www.cbc.ca/news/business/
Goods worth $300M pass over bridge every day, about one-quarter of Canadian trade with U.S.
The Ambassador Bridge that connects Windsor, Ont., with the United States is a crucial trade link between the two countries, so its blockade has the potential to affect businesses and consumers across the country, experts say.
The bridge sees about one-quarter of all the goods that go between the two countries every day, according to Statistics Canada, with roughly $300 million worth of goods passing over it under normal circumstances.
TORONTO — Doug Ford is pitching Ontario as the next electric vehicle manufacturing powerhouse, seemingly a far cry from the premier who three years ago cancelled incentives for people to buy them.
Where some see contradiction, others see calculated election strategy. Shortly after coming to power in 2018, Ford’s government scrapped Ontario’s cap-and-trade system, and with it the electric vehicle rebates funded by that program.
Dimitry Anastakis is Professor and LR Wilson/RJ Currie Chair in Canadian Business History, University of Toronto.
The news that Tesla recently reached the extraordinary valuation of US$1 trillion shows yet again that the automobile industry remains a huge economic force shaping the planet.
Tesla’s growth also reflects how the transition to electric vehicles (EVs) marks the fifth great wave of automotive investment since 1900. Despite not owning any car companies, Canada has benefited immensely from every previous wave thanks to shrewd policy-makers who used every tool possible to gain a fair share of the auto market.
https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/sudbury/
Premier Doug Ford promised resource revenue sharing during 2018 election campaign
The Ontario government has fulfilled a campaign promise by returning some mining and forest revenue to towns and cities in the north, but some municipal leaders say it isn’t enough.
The new Northern Ontario Resource Development Support Fund will split $15 million among the 144 cities and towns and townships of the north every year for the next five years.
For report: https://bit.ly/3l6vkNO
Northern College has released an in-depth economic study outlining key barriers to economic expansion and recovery in Northern Ontario following the COVID-19 pandemic.
The 24-page study, entitled Coming Back From Covid: A Plan to Rebuild Northern Ontario, was created in partnership with The StrategyCorp Institute of Public Policy and Economy, and was designed to provide an overview of past, current and future economic issues being faced by Ontario’s north.
Here is a perfect symmetry. Trudeau wants to kill the oil and gas industry. Biden wants to kill our auto industry. Simpatico. They are twins
The Three Amigos? I beg your pardon. Is that an appropriate nomenclature for a conclave of the three finest minds in the statesmanship of our present-day world? What ugly slur next — the Sombrero Summit? Enough of these careless and undignified representations.
Surely a meeting between leaders of the intellectual stamina of Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador, and particularly that giant of international understanding and competence — a Churchill for our time — U.S. President Joseph Robinette Biden Jr., calls for a more dignified, respectful designation than a play on some fifth-rate movie. Shame on the news wires and networks.
Northern Ontario has become an integral part of the auto supply chain, says Nipissing MPP Vic Fedeli. The industry, mostly centralized in southern Ontario, is moving north thanks to the increase in production of electric cars.
The provincial government released the next phase of its auto strategy Wednesday that is expected to secure production mandates for hybrid and electric vehicles, to create a domestic battery ecosystem, and position Ontario as a North American automotive innovation hub.
https://www.theglobeandmail.com/
Ontario Premier Doug Ford has unveiled an electric vehicle strategy that aims to have the province produce 400,000 electric cars and trucks a year by 2030 and attract two or three battery plants.
The plan, released on Wednesday at a campaign-style event at auto parts maker Linamar in Guelph, Ont., about 100 kilometres west of Toronto, says the province will partner with the industry to prepare it to make the “car of the future” and “establish and support a battery chain ecosystem” using the mineral wealth in Northern Ontario.
Let’s examine how Canada’s most successful project to reduce greenhouse gas emissions would never have happened if the climate protesters marching on the streets at the UN climate summit in Glasgow had their way.
Between 2003 and 2014, the Liberal government of Ontario under premier Dalton McGuinty eliminated the use of coal to produce 25% of its electricity. As the Liberals noted, this was single largest reduction of greenhouse gas emissions in North America at the time.
The Ford government is reaching out to top American politicians in the hopes of thwarting the latest protectionist measure coming from Washington. A proposed tax rebate on electric cars currently before the U.S. Congress could have a devastating impact on the future of Ontario’s auto industry.
The rebate, part of the Build Back Better budget bill, would offer American consumers a rebate of up to $12,500 for purchasing an electric vehicle but only if the car is assembled in the United States with 50% American parts and an American made battery.
https://www.thesudburystar.com/
Joe Biden’s pledge to support all things made in America could end up costing thousands of Canadian jobs in the auto industry. Budget legislation moving through the American Congress contains tax breaks for electric cars that could pretty much rule out future investments by automakers in Canada and cost tens of thousands of jobs.
The legislation would increase the incentive for buying an electric vehicle to $12,500 but only if the vehicle, and the battery that is in the vehicle, are both made in the United States.
