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Somebody ought to inform Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and Ontario Premier Doug Ford that making a profitable electrical automobile trade in Canada would require much more than throwing taxpayers’ cash at it.
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That’s the simple half, which Trudeau and Ford have been saying over the previous 12 months, collectively bestowing mega-billions of {dollars} in public assist for EV battery crops.
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Parliamentary Finances Officer Yves Giroux has mentioned it should take 20 years for the 2 governments to interrupt even in recovering as much as $28.2 billion in subsidies awarded to 2 corporations — $15 billion to Stellantis-LG Power Options to construct a battery manufacturing plant in Windsor and $13.2 billion to Volkswagen to do the identical in St. Thomas.
On Thursday, Trudeau and Ford introduced one other $5 billion deal in assist of a $15-billion mission by Honda to construct one other battery plant in Alliston, together with the development of different amenities to create a provide chain for EVs.
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They mentioned it should create 1,000 jobs, safe 4,200 current ones and result in spinoff employment of greater than 28,000 associated jobs.
What they didn’t say is that creating an EV provide chain from scratch entails a number of large tasks that should be concurrently developed and co-ordinated.
These embrace mining and transporting the uncooked supplies for EV batteries to manufacturing amenities, manufacturing EV batteries, manufacturing EV automobiles, cathode and anode manufacturing, and EV battery recycling.
The excellent news is Canada, has an abundance of the metals, minerals and different uncooked supplies wanted to construct EV batteries and compete with the worldwide market chief, which is China.
However getting these uncooked supplies out of the bottom would require an unprecedented mining increase in ecologically delicate components of Canada, together with Ontario’s Ring of Hearth, with governments needing to dramatically streamline their current environmental processes for getting mines and roads authorized.
Whereas some Indigenous teams favour these developments, others, who should be meaningfully consulted, are opposed.
The auto sector is significant to the Canadian financial system so it’s hardly shocking Trudeau’s Liberals and Ford’s Progressive Conservatives are boasting about their assist of it.
However we gained’t know whether or not the multi-billion-dollar public investments they’re making into Canada’s EV sector as we speak will give taxpayers good worth for cash spent, till years down the street.
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