Juno News - Does the Canadian auto sector have a future？

00:00:00.000 I'm Kris Sims. I'm the Alberta Director for the Canadian Taxpayers Federation filling in today.

00:00:07.860 Thank you so much for making us a part of your day. If you haven't done so yet,

00:00:11.940 remember to like this video, subscribe to Do No News, and most importantly,

00:00:16.440 share this with your friends who need to know. Okay, lots to talk about. Unfortunately,

00:00:21.780 we've got thousands of families in Southern Ontario who are being affected by the latest

00:00:26.880 move from US President Donald Trump, who is basically saying, yeah, how about all the auto

00:00:33.360 manufacturers come on over to this side of the border where we don't have an industrial carbon tax,

00:00:38.400 and if not, I'm going to put tariffs on the vehicles that are coming across the border from Canada.

00:00:44.160 So as you can imagine, this is causing a massive disruption, especially in the province of Ontario.

00:00:51.120 What I found a little bit frustrating here is that we have Ontario Premier Doug Ford,

00:00:57.920 who is big into some theatrics. So we remember him dumping out the bottle of Crown Royal,

00:01:04.320 even though Crown Royal is literally manufactured in Gimli, Manitoba. And now we've got this news

00:01:10.480 coming from the United States that's going to deeply affect the auto manufacturing sector.

00:01:15.120 And the response from Ford towards Trump was not quite measured in his language. Let's listen to

00:01:22.640 this. My number one job is make sure we protect the people of Ontario. I need to protect the communities

00:01:29.760 against that tyrant south of the border, which drives me absolutely nuts. That guy, President Trump,

00:01:35.360 he's a real piece of work. You know something? What my message to the Prime Minister when I meet him on

00:01:40.400 Thursday is if you can't get a deal, let's start hitting him back. Let's start hitting the US back

00:01:46.640 hard. So there's a few things there. One, the emotionalism is understandable because people are

00:01:54.240 upset. People are getting laid off. People are losing jobs. Families are deeply affected by that. But

00:02:00.160 at the end of the day, you have to step back and look at the big picture and realize what kind of fight

00:02:05.760 you're in. So if Premier Ford is talking about fighting back and hitting back with bigger and

00:02:12.240 stronger tariffs or something like that, all that's doing is if you're in the middle of a fight,

00:02:18.080 okay, and the guy's way bigger than you, the United States, and you know you're about to start throwing

00:02:23.760 fists, having big tariffs, retaliatory tariffs, that's like punching yourself in the face first.

00:02:32.080 Because tariffs are just trade taxes. They hurt people on both sides of the border. As the radio

00:02:39.760 and TV ad that Ford is spending, I think, $70 million playing, as the radio and TV ad said,

00:02:47.440 using the late US President Ronald Reagan's words, tariffs are generally a bad thing. Okay,

00:02:53.520 they're just trade taxes. In order to get a deal with the United States, Canada should be wiser,

00:03:01.680 smarter, and of cooler heads. Interestingly, Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney clearly heard

00:03:10.640 how Ford reacted there. And he was asked about it. Let's listen to Carney.

00:03:15.440 Prime Minister, you've been meeting with Premier Ford later this afternoon. He's already come out and

00:03:19.840 said he'd like to see you hit back, retaliate against new US tariffs. So what's your message to him

00:03:25.600 this afternoon? And does it include a new package of retaliatory action and trade action against the

00:03:31.920 Trump administration? Well, we start from a position where we have a better deal than any other country

00:03:38.640 in the world with the United States. 85% of our trade is free. So we're starting from this stronger

00:03:45.840 position. But we're also very acutely aware and very focused on the fact that we can make it better.

00:03:55.360 And so we will do everything we can to make it better. There's times to hit back and there's times

00:04:00.800 to talk and right now is the time to talk. Very different tone from what former Prime Minister

00:04:06.160 Justin Trudeau likely would have said, right? Hear what he said there. That's what was very important,

00:04:12.160 was that number that Carney just used there. He said that 85% of our trade with the United States is

00:04:19.120 free trade. This is again why it's super important for people to understand this of the billions and

00:04:27.760 billions and billions of dollars worth of trade that goes across that Canada-US border. And why,

00:04:34.160 when you're in the middle of a trade dispute and you're trying to make a deal with the guy who likes

00:04:40.640 making deals, that's his thing, probably not a good idea to dump gasoline all over that. Okay. Very

00:04:49.360 good idea for everybody's sake, especially taxpayers on this side of the Canadian border and working

00:04:55.440 normal people on this side of the Canadian border. Much smarter idea to actually hammer out a renewed

00:05:02.320 trade deal so that we aren't waking up every Wednesday morning wondering what could possibly be

00:05:07.440 happening with new tariffs. So that kind of uncertainty is wreaking havoc on a lot of people.

00:05:12.720 That's understandable. Carney's responsibility here and his team's responsibility here is to get a new

00:05:20.640 deal with Washington. I will also point out that we pay experts within the trade department. Okay. We pay

00:05:30.400 experts who are bureaucrats. Okay. In Ottawa, hundreds of thousands of dollars a year salary to do this.

00:05:37.120 I'm not just talking about the politicians and Carney himself. There's permanent government in Ottawa,

00:05:42.960 whose job it is to hammer out deals like this, to anticipate problems like this and to deal with them

00:05:52.320 as adults. I'm going to get to a little bit more adulting here when it comes to things like the so-called

00:05:58.160 EV mandate. Remember, Ottawa is still planning to ban the sale of gasoline and diesel powered vehicles.

00:06:05.760 It's costing Canadians around $50 million in commitments so far. Let's take a look at that

00:06:12.480 in a moment. But first, let's hear a word from our sponsor.

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00:07:17.440 CandiceMalcolm.com. That's M-A-K-A-M-I. Okay, so the situation in Canada right now when it comes to

00:07:27.760 auto manufacturing, especially of electric vehicles, battery-powered vehicles is this.

00:07:35.360 Prime Minister Mark Carney has delayed the ban on the sale of gasoline and diesel-powered vehicles by one

00:07:41.440 year. Okay, so that means in one year's time, right, so not in 2026 but coming up in 2027, they're going

00:07:50.640 to start forcing car dealerships to sell a certain percentage of their new car sales as battery-powered

00:07:59.520 vehicles. On top of that, Canadian taxpayers at the federal and Ontario level have committed more than

00:08:08.800 $50 billion. Let's take a look at the stats here. This is of course from both Ottawa and

00:08:14.720 Queen's Park combined, and it's a combination of just straight up, you know, corporate welfare

00:08:20.240 and subsidies and credits and all sorts of stuff. All told, more than $50 billion worth of commitments.

00:08:26.160 So Stellantis, remember that name? LG, more than $18 billion. Volkswagen, last I checked, they weren't

00:08:33.920 hard up for money. They're a huge multinational corporation. They're in this thing for $16 billion.

00:08:39.520 Northvolt, $8 billion. Honda, $5 billion. And it goes on down the list there. So that is an enormous

00:08:46.560 cost to taxpayers. On top of that, what's very telling is that when the incentives, okay, when you

00:08:54.400 can't get the big tax credit anymore, when you buy a battery-powered vehicle, once those incentives

00:09:00.240 disappeared a little while ago, the natural demand, the natural sale of electric vehicles in Canada,

00:09:08.560 last I looked at the quarterly update, was around 8%. Eight! Single digit for natural sale and demand

00:09:17.440 of battery-powered cars in Canada. What is going on here? How can we fix this? We're in a major war of

00:09:26.720 words, especially when you consider what Doug Ford is saying at a Queen's Park. We're in a major war

00:09:31.680 of words between two personalities, like Ontario Premier Doug Ford, which has a comparatively tiny

00:09:38.400 population, compared to US President Donald Trump. How can we finally fix this? How can we get our

00:09:46.240 economy rolling again? How can we maybe make a deal with our biggest trading partner? Let's find out.

00:09:53.200 Joining me now is Professor Ian Lee. He is an associate professor with the Sprott School of

00:09:58.640 Business in Ottawa and an old friend of mine. I used to book Professor Ian Lee for Rob Snow Show back in

00:10:05.120 the day on our radio days. Professor, so nice to see and hear you again. It's good to see you and speak

00:10:10.400 with you again, Chris. So I watched your piece on CP24 and was listening to your take on what is going on

00:10:17.520 with the trade dispute between Canada and the United States, and in particular what is going on with the

00:10:23.200 auto sector. If I can just get your bird's eye view first. Sure, sure. And I think it's very important

00:10:29.360 because people are so sort of deep in the weeds, you know, they hate Trump, they don't hate Trump, and

00:10:33.280 he did, how dare he? And we got to step back. And I did a paper years ago on the auto pack, and I'm not going to

00:10:41.520 bore everybody with history. But suffice to say, way back in 1965, the auto industry in Ontario, which

00:10:47.760 is only really in southern Ontario, let's be frank, it was a little bit in Quebec, and then it died away.

00:10:52.560 So it's mostly southern Ontario from the get go, 100 years ago. And it's always struggled in Canada.

00:10:59.760 And then in 1965, it was in deep struggle, it was really having trouble. And so Lester Pearson,

00:11:06.320 the Liberal Prime Minister, negotiated with the Americans, auto pack, which basically, and I know

00:11:11.840 liberal analyses don't put it this way. But I've characterized because I speak very bluntly. And I

00:11:16.800 don't like to, you know, baffle gab and mislead auto pack was a to save the Canadian auto industry.

00:11:23.520 And the reason and I don't want people to think I'm slack, you know, attacking Canadians are saying how

00:11:30.160 bad we are not at all. They ran up against the problem we've always had in Canada.

00:11:35.200 Canada. We're a huge country with a very tiny population. Chris, I want to use a line from

00:11:41.680 Mackenzie King, of all people, it was a great line I used in class this morning. And he said,

00:11:46.160 he was talking about Europe, actually. And this was in the context of the Second World War just after.

00:11:50.160 He said, the problem with Europe is they've got way too many people and not enough geography,

00:11:54.080 meaning they're real close together. And they're always fighting each other for 2000 years.

00:11:58.320 He said, but the problem with Canada is we've got way too much geography and not enough people.

00:12:02.080 And I think that's a very funny way of putting it, a humorous way. Where I'm going with this,

00:12:07.280 we've never had the economies of scale to become a manufacturing superpower.

00:12:15.200 It has been the Laurentian, and I'm not being unkind when I say this, the Laurentian elites

00:12:19.600 from the sixties until now, both federally and provincially in Ontario, promulgating this urban

00:12:26.640 legend to Canadians, albeit with lots and lots and billions of dollars of subsidies from the

00:12:31.200 governments, that we're going to create a manufacturing superpower. For those who believe

00:12:37.120 in something I like to call arithmetic, and have studied and know a little bit about arithmetic and

00:12:43.040 accounting, manufacturing around the world is hugely capital intensive. And it's also hugely R&D

00:12:51.120 expensive. In plain English, you got to spend billions and billions. So what? Well, it means

00:12:56.960 that the unit cost of widgets, of iPhones, of laptops, whatever, is very expensive, unless you can

00:13:04.640 produce gazillions of them to get down the cost per widget. It's called economies of scale.

00:13:10.480 So it's not an accident in the world today that the three giant manufacturing superpowers,

00:13:16.720 China with 1.3 billion, Europe with over 500 million, and the United States with 340 million.

00:13:23.520 Okay, that brings us back to Canada. So what? We have never had the scale, the size to be successful,

00:13:32.080 unless one of two things. We subsidize it up the wazoo at government money. We did that. And secondly,

00:13:37.920 we could get access to the American market. We did that with Autopac. And so, and then that morphed into

00:13:44.400 NAFTA. Okay, it worked so long as the Americans let us go into their market. 0.69

00:13:51.520 Well, three or four days ago, a guy called the President of the United States said,

00:13:57.040 we're changing our policy. And that was confirmed by the Commerce Secretary. And so where I'm going

00:14:02.480 with this, it doesn't matter whether I agree with Donald Trump or not, he's not asking me what my

00:14:06.000 opinion is. And he's not asking all the angry people either. He said, we've made a decision. We want

00:14:11.760 to make all the cars. We want to assemble them. And we're going to look after your cars by putting

00:14:17.280 a great big tariff on it at the border, which will make it uneconomic to export those cars to

00:14:23.440 the States. And just so everybody's got the big picture again, we export 80% of all the cars we

00:14:29.360 make in Canada. Why do we export so much? Because our market for domestic buyers of cars is very tiny.

00:14:35.920 It's tiny. So when people say, well, we'll just go it alone, you know, what do we do by five times

00:14:40.800 as many cars as we do now? That's silly. I mean, we don't if we were if there was a demand for five

00:14:44.880 times as many cars, we would be buying them already. And so what I'm trying to suggest to you

00:14:50.720 is that this is the death knell, assuming he doesn't reverse his position. This is the death

00:14:56.640 now on the end of automatic automotive manufacturing in Canada, in my judgment.

00:15:01.680 Astonishing to really put it that way. But the math is pretty grim. It's right there. Like numbers,

00:15:08.960 what is it? Facts don't care about your feelings. The numbers are right there. I want to ask you a

00:15:13.840 couple of things. One, it's a little bit more of an intricacy. So yes, now with us trying to sell into

00:15:21.840 the United States, that will become a problem. And do you also will this also affect the cross border

00:15:27.760 production of these cars? Because my understanding is that our auto manufacturing was so integrated

00:15:35.440 that in some cases, one car part could cross that Canada US border like six or eight times

00:15:40.640 before finally landing in a vehicle to be sold. How will this change that interconnectivity?

00:15:46.560 Chris, you're absolutely right. There's two things I want to again, step back big picture.

00:15:52.000 Yeah, we make cars, and it's not that big. We've got five or six plants. And I think we make 1.2

00:15:58.400 million cars a year, which you know, on the ground, there's 75 million cars in the world,

00:16:02.800 17 million in the US, just to put into context. We also have a very vibrant auto parts sector. And

00:16:09.120 Trump explicitly said the other day, as did the commerce secretary, we're not going after your auto

00:16:14.400 parts sector. And it employs way more people than automobiles. That's the first point. So this is not

00:16:20.640 all doom and gloom that we're all going to fall over the cliff and, you know, come to an end or

00:16:23.840 something. The second point is, is that what can be put together can be taken apart. You know,

00:16:31.440 Humpty Dumpty can be fall down and be broken into pieces. And so what I'm trying to say is it's true

00:16:37.840 about the parts going back and forth because of the integration of the two. Well, what he is doing in his

00:16:43.600 brutal way, which he has become very famous for, you know, he doesn't sit around and, you know, say,

00:16:48.880 let's have some good old fashioned academic debates, you know, and he just goes in and blows them up.

00:16:54.560 I'm going to bomb the Iranians. Well, you can't do that. Oh, yes, I can. He did. And I'm not here 1.00

00:16:59.760 to defend what he's doing. I'm just saying, if he wants to blow up those and tells the auto companies,

00:17:07.360 you will not be able to import those cars from Canada, because I'm putting a great big tax on them,

00:17:13.600 tariff, then it will become an economic. And therefore the companies will then redesign and

00:17:20.640 re-engineer their value chains. Now, the interesting question for me is yet to be determined,

00:17:27.120 which is how much of that, that stuff that goes back and forth will be classified as auto parts,

00:17:33.600 as opposed to the finished car, because he said, I'm only going to put the tariff on the finished car.

00:17:39.120 He said, I'm not going to go after the auto parts. Well, remember, auto parts go back and forth

00:17:43.520 because every car is comprised, according to a fascinating book I read, not electric cars,

00:17:49.040 but gasoline cars, 17,000 parts in the average car. Now that's everything, you know, radios and

00:17:55.200 tires and, you know, everything. So whether it's 17,015, there's a lot of bits and pieces in a car.

00:18:00.880 That's fascinating, really. And so we may dodge part of the bullet by saying, okay, we'll classify

00:18:08.320 those as auto parts, which go back and forth, and we'll continue doing that. But I don't,

00:18:14.320 what I'm trying to say is this, there's only seven, I believe it's seven, I looked it up,

00:18:17.520 and there's seven auto parts factories in Canada. As these tariffs are kicking in, as the auto companies

00:18:25.280 crunch the numbers, and they figure out how it's going to affect their bottom line,

00:18:29.120 I'm making a, not a very profound statement. Auto companies like any company are not in business

00:18:33.760 to lose money. And if they determine that that plant producing those cars is losing money,

00:18:39.200 they're going to close it down. And they're going to say, we're going to relocate it just as Jeep

00:18:43.600 just did. Chrysler Jeep moved the Compass from the Brampton plant to the US. So people say, well,

00:18:49.520 it can't be done because they're all integrated. Well, my answer to those people is it just happened.

00:18:53.680 It just happened. It did. And that's what I think is going to happen. It's going to be driven by the

00:19:01.360 economics. Companies aren't in business to lose money. And so if he sets the tariffs in such a way

00:19:07.280 that to design to hit those seven plants, then they won't be exporting to the states. And if they're not

00:19:13.600 exporting to the states, the market here is vastly far too small for them to survive. And again, it's this,

00:19:20.400 and by the way, these arguments, when I hear politicians and so forth and pundits, well,

00:19:24.720 we'll develop our own manufacturing center. We'll build fire airplanes and we'll build,

00:19:28.160 you know, ice dam, ice breakers. And sell to whom? And sell to whom?

00:19:33.280 We're 40 million people. We're tiny, tiny. Somebody threw the example at me. What about Volvo in Sweden?

00:19:40.480 Yeah. Volvo exports massively to Europe. I've been to Europe many times and there's Volvo trucks and cars

00:19:46.160 all over Europe. You need a big honking market called the United States or Europe. And by the way,

00:19:53.120 in manufacturing, all three markets now protect their markets from foreigners.

00:19:57.760 We did have a big honking market to our south that we were getting along fine with, you know,

00:20:03.680 in human standards. I got to ask you, I know you're not a mind reader, but do you think this could have

00:20:10.240 been avoided? This terrible thing that we've got going on with US President Donald Trump. I've read

00:20:15.760 The Art of the Deal. I can kind of see generally what he's doing and where he's going. I think you

00:20:22.160 might've read that book as well. You're obviously got a good business brain for real. Like you teach

00:20:27.440 kids about this all the time. Could have this been avoided? I feel like it could have. Do you think this

00:20:34.480 could have been avoided? I am of the same school and I'm just saying this now to agree with you. I've been

00:20:38.720 saying this since Trump got elected. And I argued, people didn't like what I argued. The people that

00:20:45.760 heard it, you know, said, you're crazy. I said, look at that list on the United States trade rep

00:20:50.640 annual report to Congress that goes all the way back to the Clinton years, a third of a century,

00:20:55.360 that lists the irritants. And we know what they are. They are not secret. And Donald Trump's been

00:20:59.600 screaming about them for 10 years. Supply management, telecom, keeping out American telecom

00:21:05.200 companies, airlines, banking, all of our restricted. And the Fraser Institute says about a third of our

00:21:10.800 industry is protected to some degree against foreign competition, which means American mostly.

00:21:16.240 And what I argued was this, Chris, I said, if we Kearney had gone to them and said, look,

00:21:23.600 we understand this list of five or six, or maybe seven protected industries are driving you crazy.

00:21:29.520 We will get rid of them all in exchange for you. No tariffs on us whatsoever. And all our goods,

00:21:36.240 including autos move tariff free into the States. And then we could have thrown in as a,

00:21:41.600 as a sort of a bonus. We could have said, and we undertake to develop our critical minerals

00:21:48.000 and become your preferred supplier because China has you by the neck. And I think we could have done 0.97

00:21:54.800 a deal. In other words, make, you know, that a great old line from Hollywood, make him an offer.

00:21:58.560 You can't refuse. He can't refuse. And if we made an offer, he couldn't refuse. I don't think

00:22:02.800 he would have refused. We didn't make that offer. We say, oh no, we got to protect supply management.

00:22:06.880 We put through a new bill and parliament saying, oh, we can't, we can't disband supply management,

00:22:11.600 which is just absurd. It's, it's benefiting 8,000 dairy farmers to exploit 40 million Canadians with

00:22:17.040 higher dairy and poultry prices. And we know that he's keen on deals. Two more things. I got to bring

00:22:27.600 this in really quickly, just if you want to touch on it. What did you think about the waving around

00:22:34.080 the name of the Keystone XL pipeline? Because we know that that went right up to the border and then

00:22:39.200 Biden said no. And then Trudeau didn't put up any fight as soon as Biden said no to that. He's like,

00:22:44.400 oh, please knock me over with a feather. We've got two different leaders in now, 0.94

00:22:48.400 definitely a different one with Trump. Do you think that that actually could be greenlit

00:22:53.200 and start supplying more gasoline and it's a rather oil products to the States?

00:22:58.320 I do. I support Keystone at the beginning. I support if it was ever turned down. Actually,

00:23:03.520 Chris, let me step back and sort of go even more meta on this. I've been arguing that for 70 years,

00:23:09.680 the Laurentian elites have believed, they deeply believe, and I think they're profoundly wrong.

00:23:17.120 They believed in this vision for Canada that we were going, resources, they've said repeatedly for

00:23:22.480 70 years, very public, very clear, right up to Guibo, resources are dirty, they're bad, they're low tech,

00:23:29.600 they're harmful to Canadians, hewers of wood, drawers of water, and we got to turn ourselves into a

00:23:34.800 manufacturing superpower, hence Bombardier, which I predicted 20 years ago is going to fail,

00:23:39.520 not because we don't have good technicians and good engineers, but because I said Airbus and Boeing

00:23:44.240 are never in a million years going to let us go in and take some of their market share and cause them

00:23:50.000 to lay off some of their workers with our subsidized company. That was the logic. It wasn't about the

00:23:54.880 quality of the plane. Great plane. I said, little pipsqueak mouse is not going to take on the giant and,

00:24:01.440 and defeat Airbus owned by the four European countries. And so the same logic here. What I'm

00:24:07.280 arguing is the following, Chris, I'm arguing we've made a mistake for 70 years, the macro direction of

00:24:13.040 the country on betting the farm on manufacturing for Southern Ontario. What we've got to do is pivot.

00:24:19.280 We do not have, we've never ever had a comparative advantage in manufacturing in anything.

00:24:25.600 We have had a comparative advantage in resources from before Canada existed because the mountains and

00:24:30.960 the rocks and the trees and the minerals in the ground were there for millions of years.

00:24:35.920 And we have trillions. I mean trillions in the ground. I don't just mean oil. I just don't mean gas,

00:24:43.120 nuclear potash, agriculture, you name it, we've got it. And we should be saying we're going to walk away

00:24:50.960 from manufacturing like Australia did in 2017. They don't make a single car anymore. They're all imported.

00:24:57.200 And we're going to develop the resource sector. We're going to develop pipelines. We're going to

00:25:01.040 develop Churchill. We're going to develop Northern BC. We are going to become truly a world resource

00:25:08.320 superpower. And the money will flow in because there are mining companies and investors around

00:25:14.160 the world who realize the world wants our resources. And the German chancellor said,

00:25:18.080 I don't want your cars. I want your LNG. And the Japanese said the same thing. So did the South Koreans,

00:25:23.360 so did the Chinese. We have a huge advantage in resources writ large. We do not have never had an 0.90

00:25:30.320 advantage in comparative in manufacturing, which is why we've had to beg the Americans to let us sell

00:25:36.080 cars to the United States. And it was good so long as they said yes until they said no. And now this is our

00:25:42.320 a point where we can finally make the correct decision to correct the mistake of the last 70

00:25:47.920 years. Two last questions. You mentioned EVs a little bit there. And I mentioned off the top while

00:25:54.240 I was introducing you during this segment that we have poured billions and billions of dollars

00:26:00.080 of subsidies into this EV. I will call it a mess because the Taxpayers Federation, A, we're pointing out

00:26:07.200 we don't have the money for this. We don't have the energy for this. We don't have all the plug-ins

00:26:11.440 for all of our little Trudeau trolleys, as I used to call them. And also the government shouldn't tell

00:26:16.240 you what kind of vehicle you're able to purchase and to drive. So I wanted to get your take on what's

00:26:22.400 going on with the so-called EV mandate. Now we know that Carney has delayed this by a year,

00:26:27.360 but I also know he wrote an entire book about how much he loves this stuff. So where is this going

00:26:34.880 with the so-called EV mandate in Canada and how does it tie in to our current dispute

00:26:41.440 or like we're losing with the United States?

00:26:45.280 Chris, I really mean this now. I'm sort of putting on sort of a policy political hat. I think there's

00:26:51.040 two Mark Carney's. I really do. There's Mark Carney, PhD economics, who worked 10 years at Goldman Sachs,

00:26:56.960 which is a very capitalist enterprise. I worked 10 years in banking, commercial banking, BMO,

00:27:02.320 a wonderful bank, by the way, and Goldman Sachs. There's no Marxist Leninists in any of the banks,

00:27:07.840 okay? They're very, very capitalist institutions. And then, of course, he was a central banker.

00:27:12.880 That's the Mark Carney, let's call that the business Mark Carney. And then there's the Mark

00:27:17.360 Carney that wrote that book. And I thought, and maybe I don't know him, I've never been in his head,

00:27:23.120 but I thought he wrote that to appeal to all the progressives and the red liberals in the liberal

00:27:28.400 party because he knew he was going to run for the leadership. And so he wanted to make sure they

00:27:32.320 weren't going to attack him as being a, quote, banker type, you know. That's what my take was.

00:27:37.120 But I did say to everybody, in fact, in my interviews, I said, let's wait and see his

00:27:41.440 decisions and see where he goes because that's going to reveal who the real Mark Carney is.

00:27:46.720 So far, he hasn't made as much, done as much as I wanted him to, but he's done more than many

00:27:53.040 expected him to. You know, he has come out and he's even musing now. The latest musing is he might

00:27:59.440 maybe change, get rid of the tanker ban, which is a terrible act that was trying to destroy the oil

00:28:05.520 and gas industry of Alberta. And it didn't change the world global warming by one iota. And he may

00:28:13.280 change his views again on pipelines. So I think he's incrementally trying to move the country more,

00:28:18.480 if you will, to a more pro-resource situation frame. And the reason why, it's not just a value

00:28:26.960 assertion. Mark Carney, if you work in a bank, and I'm saying this as somebody who worked 10 years in

00:28:31.200 a bank, you know how to count. You know arithmetic. You know economics. And he has looked at data. He's

00:28:36.400 looked at the numbers, the same numbers I look at that anybody can look at, the macroeconomic data.

00:28:40.480 And we are in deep doo-doo. And because of many, many very destructive policies of Justin Trudeau,

00:28:46.400 our productivity is going down like a stone. I showed this morning in class because a lot of students

00:28:51.760 say, you know, we're the same as the Americans. GDP per capita, which is one of the major

00:28:56.400 indicators of how wealthy a country is. This is average income per person. 56,000 for CAD,

00:29:01.920 expressed in US dollars. US, 89. They're 50% wealthier per human being. And this isn't to say

00:29:10.960 we're bad. It's just because we have so much protectionism and so much of the anti-resource

00:29:14.960 development and anti-business and anti-foreign investment policies of the last many years,

00:29:20.640 that it's reduced and driven down our productivity. And we are paying a huge price. Mark Carney knows

00:29:26.640 this. There's all kinds of reports out there from David Dodge, the former central bank governor and

00:29:31.120 other people showing the C.D. Howell Research Institute, the Fraser. And so I think he knows

00:29:36.800 that. He's too, he's way too smart to deny this, you know. And so I think he realizes, look, the only

00:29:42.480 way out of this conundrum, this decline in our long-term decline in our prosperity, is to pivot

00:29:48.080 towards resources because the whole world needs them. They're very valuable and they're only going

00:29:52.720 up. Gold's going up, not going down. Lithium's going up, not down. And so on. So I think he

00:29:58.320 realizes that, but he also realized there's a great deal, a significant minority in the country that

00:30:02.640 are very hostile. Call them the Gibos of the world, you know, and the Justin Trudeau's of the world.

00:30:08.400 And they vote. And so he's got to bring them all along with him to convince them that that's the way

00:30:14.960 to go. And so that's why I think he wrote that book. And I think the real Mark Carney is more

00:30:21.600 supportive of economic growth and resources than he is of what he wrote in that book.

00:30:26.080 I really hope you're right. Last question. We've got this dispute with China. So they've got some 0.98

00:30:32.800 serious tariffs on our products coming into the prairies here. I'm here in Lethbridge, Alberta.

00:30:36.960 And so you hear about it all the time. And now we're hearing about, oh, well, why don't we open up our

00:30:41.600 market to what I would describe as cheap battery powered Chinese vehicles? I actually don't know

00:30:46.560 what you think about this. So I'm wanting to know your answer. If we did that and we had these Chinese 1.00

00:30:53.840 battery powered vehicles over here in Canada all of a sudden, how would that alter our current dispute

00:31:00.320 with US President Donald Trump in the United States? I've been back and forth in my own head

00:31:07.840 with myself. I've been having arguments with myself in the last little while. First off,

00:31:12.240 because I guess because my late mother came from Saskatchewan, from a farm in Saskatchewan,

00:31:16.560 and I'm very, very aware of the agrarian, the importance of the resources and agriculture to the

00:31:20.880 West and canola, for example. And I know they're really taking it in the neck because of the batteries,

00:31:27.360 because of the tariff we put on their cars. That's point one. Point two,

00:31:32.880 and nobody's talking about this, including my friend Brian Kingston, who's the head of the

00:31:37.920 Auto Manufacturers Association. We do not make inexpensive EVs in Canada. There is no such

00:31:44.800 creature. They're all 70, 80, 90 thousand dollars or more like the Teslas. They are not ordinary

00:31:51.120 working class, middle class cars. Point three, you're right about China. We don't want to become 1.00

00:31:56.240 dependent on them because it is in a regime that can't be trusted. Let's be frank.

00:32:00.400 So I'm looking at all these and saying we could do, I've been thinking about this for quite some

00:32:07.040 time. We could say, okay, look, we don't make any EVs in Canada, less than whatever we can

00:32:13.280 determine it very quickly. Let's say it's 60,000. I think it's probably 60,000. So why not allow

00:32:19.120 Chinese EVs into Canada tariff free under 60,000 and above 60,000, they'll be tariffed to protect our

00:32:25.760 domestic EV industry to the extent that it exists. The Chinese, and I've been teaching in China,

00:32:31.440 by the way, full disclosure, and I don't consult to the Chinese government. I've been teaching there

00:32:34.880 since 1997 once a year, every year. In fact, I'll be there in April. And my students, these are EMBA,

00:32:40.480 these are people in their mid-20s and 30s, well up the corporate ladder. And they all have Chinese EVs

00:32:46.000 and they pick me up. They may have terms, you know, okay, I'll pick you up on Friday morning from the hotel

00:32:49.520 and drive you to class. I'll take you home Friday night. So I've driven in the last 10 or 12 years,

00:32:54.960 I think I've driven and sat in just about every Chinese EV. And I can tell you this, Chris, and

00:33:00.880 there's a new report out from the IEA world EV market. China has 60% market share in the world EV

00:33:08.000 market. And I'm not saying this to take sides on this, but China is so far ahead of Canada and the

00:33:13.360 United States and Europeans on EVs. It's not funny. They are winning now. Yes. They poured 0.86

00:33:19.200 gazillions into it. Yes. They did all kinds of things that we don't agree with, but I'm not going

00:33:24.400 there. I'm just saying they are ahead of us on EVs. They are selling a $15,000 USD gull. It's called

00:33:34.720 the gull into Brazil. Imagine being able to buy an electric car for $15,000. There's no way in God's

00:33:41.360 green earth that Ford, GM or Chrysler or Honda or Toyota can do that or Tesla. They just can't.

00:33:48.320 So, you know, if we want to go or encourage the EV industry, or we want to encourage people to go EVs,

00:33:54.640 well, one way would be to say, allow the Chinese in at the low end of the market.

00:33:58.320 And then, but then I do understand the arguments for not allowing them in. But if we do,

00:34:03.520 then we're basically kissing goodbye to a big portion of our Western agriculture. And I don't think

00:34:09.520 that's right either. My goodness. Sorry. Is there anything else you want to make sure our

00:34:16.720 listeners and our viewers know about this, either the current fight that we're in with the United

00:34:20.800 States, like the main message you would like to give there, or with this idea of having a lot of

00:34:26.560 EVs in Canada? Well, my overarching is, is that I, this could be a blessing in disguise that he is

00:34:33.840 basically putting a tariff, not basically, he's putting a tariff on our cars being exported in,

00:34:38.160 which I believe, as I've said, is going to close down the industry. This could be the,

00:34:42.400 the driving force that causes us to reframe our whole country's policy in our direction.

00:34:49.360 So maybe if, you know, and in other words, pivot to resources, the takeaway that I'm making is,

00:34:54.960 we have gone down the wrong road for 70 years, saying, we're going to build cars or airplanes,

00:35:00.400 bombardiers or whatever, and become a manufacturing superpower. It was never going to happen. We don't

00:35:06.560 have the economies of scale. We don't have the population size. We do have resources that are

00:35:11.440 unparalleled or probably only exceeded by Russia because it's a physically larger country, almost

00:35:16.320 double the size geographically of Canada. So we should be saying, we're going to develop all our

00:35:22.720 resources. I'm talking agriculture. I'm talking potash. I'm talking nuclear. I'm talking electricity.

00:35:27.680 I'm talking timber in British Columbia. I'm talking oil. I'm talking gas. I'm talking pipelines,

00:35:33.760 all of the above, all of the above, and stop talking about manufacturing, which is 2%.

00:35:41.520 One more quick metric, Chris. In 1970, when Pierre Trudeau was in his first term,

00:35:46.480 manufacturing was one third of Canadian GDP. Today, it's 10% and autos are only 2%.

00:35:53.760 So the idea that Canada is desperately dependent on automotive manufacturing is not supported

00:36:01.040 empirically by the data. Professor Ian Lee, Sprott School of Business in Ottawa. Thank you so much

00:36:07.200 for your time today. Thanks very much, Chris. Really enjoyed this. Thank you.

00:36:10.400 Me too. Once again, folks, this is why it's important to support independent media. And also,

00:36:17.360 to be fair, Professor Ian Lee is often on mainstream media and talk radio. As you can tell, the guys

00:36:24.240 had a lot of experience. The man is super smart. I strongly recommend you check out some of his

00:36:30.080 teachings. You can find a lot of his writings online. If you just look him up, that is once again,

00:36:35.520 Professor Ian Lee is with the Sprott School of Business. Some of those numbers and analysis he's

00:36:41.920 giving over the auto manufacturing sector were pretty stark, eh? What do you guys think? What do

00:36:48.400 you think about what the professor said? What do you think about having Chinese EVs in Canada?

00:36:54.480 Now, at the Canadian Taxpayers Federation, we've been sounding the alarm on this ban on the sale of

00:36:59.440 gasoline and diesel-powered vehicles now for years because we don't have the money for this. We've been

00:37:05.040 blowing billions of dollars on subsidies to big multinational corporations that do not need your tax

00:37:10.320 dollars. And we don't have the electricity for this. If everybody in Canada suddenly plugged in

00:37:16.880 their vehicle that they already own, we would need more than 14 brand new can-do reactors. Those are

00:37:24.640 those big nuclear reactors that we see in Southern Ontario. And we're not building any anymore. Those

00:37:30.880 things cost around $12 or $15 billion with a B each. So we don't have the money for this. And people

00:37:38.560 aren't purchasing EVs. I think the last time I checked the quarterly financials, the natural demand and

00:37:45.040 sale of EVs in Canada without all these crazy subsidies was around 8%. Eight single digit. So

00:37:54.240 what's going to happen in the future? What do you think about what the professor said with our

00:37:57.680 relationship with the United States? Please leave a comment underneath this video. And if you have not

00:38:02.400 yet done so, make sure you like this video and share it with your friends who need to know.

Juno News - October 18, 2025

Does the Canadian auto sector have a future？

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