Why America's rush to EVs might kill the entire Canadian auto parts business

Ron in Regina

"Voice of the West" Party
Apr 9, 2008
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“This discriminatory action” could be the “death knell” of the Canadian auto industry. So says Flavio Volpe, and he should know, since he’s the president of the Auto Parts Manufacturers’ Association of Canada, the organization tasked with, amongst other things, enticing automakers and their associated suppliers to build their production plants here in the Great White North.

And if he says something could adversely affect the Canadian auto manufacturing business — which employs some 135,000 Canadians directly and another 400,000 in related industries — we should all be concerned.

(Strangely, almost identical or at least extremely similar to the employment numbers for the oil & gas industries in Saskatchewan & Alberta, so hopefully Justin Trudeau actually wants to NOT kill the Canadian Auto industry unlike what we’re experiencing out West)


The discriminatory action in question is the United States’ proposed Build Back Better program, a surprisingly (???) protectionist policy (only slightly) disguised as pandemic relief. More specifically, its incentive programs so completely favour American-built BEVs that it would almost completely shut down all Canadian exports of electric vehicles. Indeed, electric vehicles built in any country other than the U.S. would be so disadvantaged that automobile exports — at least moderately priced models powered by batteries — to the United States would virtually stop.

Too extreme a prognostication for you? Well, here’s how the program is supposed to work. Decide for yourself how it will affect the Canadian manufacturing industry. The rest at the LINK above:
 
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Ron in Regina

"Voice of the West" Party
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Yeah, it does. It’s only in the East (I live less than 10 blocks away from Regina’s old GMC Plant, that folded when all the auto manufacturing was relocated East 80 years ago) but it’s a thing that exists.
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It’s not a lucrative as the Canadian oil & gas industry that Trudeau is trying to kill with a lot of help from some select others & their useful rubes…but it’s significant.
 
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Ron in Regina

"Voice of the West" Party
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Sort of. If the logic is that Canada has oil in surplus which it does….. does it have the capacity to increase its exports to the US with the current infrastructure (?) or is it more politically expedient to focus on OPEC+ who has little to no interest in increasing production??

If the focus is on OPEC & OPEC+, then there’s no inconvenient questions about KeystoneXL…which Biden killed his first day in office (Whoopsie!!). “Loo

Hydrocarbons today produce some 80 per cent of global primary energy, the same as 30 years ago. After decades of preferential policies and trillions of dollars in subsidy-driven investment, wind and solar are stuck at single digits and global battery capacity amounts to a rounding error.

That’s because hydrocarbons are nature’s most efficient and affordable form of primary energy, while so-called renewables are the polar opposite: expensive, inefficient and unreliable dead-end technologies with a massive, unsustainable environmental impact, incapable by orders of magnitude of ever bridging a net-zero energy transition.

On an energy-in-versus-energy-out basis, renewables’ overall inefficiencies are such that the total input energy required to manufacture them from zero exceeds their lifetime output. Put differently, the electricity derived from any combination of wind, solar and batteries could not duplicate itself from zero. Ergo, absent uninterrupted hydrocarbon input energy: no renewables or electric vehicles.

But Wait…there’s more!!

Anyway, this thread is about the 135,000 jobs in jeopardy in Eastern Canada from auto manufacturing (that would be a bad thing) as opposed to the 135,000 jobs in jeopardy from Trudeau’s woke posturing to divide Canada and stick it to the West with killing (or sure trying to) the oil & gas industry.
 
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Ron in Regina

"Voice of the West" Party
Apr 9, 2008
23,217
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Regina, Saskatchewan
Here’s some irony. Looking at the below list, the oil & gas industry in Canada is worth more in exports than cars, car parts & accessories, gold, medications, & the aircraft and spacecraft (I’m looking at you Bombardier) COMBINED…with Canada having the 4th largest reserves on the planet….so yeah, let’s hamstring it and then shut it down ‘cuz wokeness?
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No wonder we’re hearing the beginning of Quebec making plans for after the financial teat of Equalization running dry in the years to come.
 
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taxslave

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Nov 25, 2008
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In Other Much more important news the Pulp mill in Powell River is shutting down for good. At one time this was the largest integrated forest products mill in the world. The last 200 good paying jobs are now gone. There was over a thousand employees in the 70s.