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Ontario Premier Doug Ford is calling on Canadians to boycott Chinese-made electric vehicles when they are allowed back into the country under a deal recently struck by Prime Minister Mark Carney.
Ford has been critical of the deal — and the fact Carney did not speak to him about it in advance — saying it will harm Ontario’s auto sector. He took that a step further Wednesday, urging Canadians not to buy the Chinese EVs.
“Boycott the Chinese EV vehicles,” he said. “Support companies that are building vehicles here. It’s as simple as that.”
Canadians should support car companies that have a manufacturing presence in Canada, Ford said, and he does not believe Chinese automakers will ever start producing vehicles here.
Carney and Chinese President Xi Jinping agreed while the prime minister was in China that Canada will all but drop its 100 per cent tariffs on Chinese EVs and allow an annual import quota of up to 49,000 of the vehicles in exchange for China reducing its canola tariffs.
Ford was speaking at a news conference he held with Brian Kingston, president and CEO of the Canadian Vehicle Manufacturers’ Association; Flavio Volpe, president of the Automotive Parts Manufacturers’ Association; and Lana Payne, national Unifor president, condemning the China deal as putting Ontario’s auto industry at a disadvantage.
Possibility of ‘shakier ground’ for auto industry
Volpe said the intent behind the 100 per cent tariffs was to give Canada’s EV investments a chance to succeed before more Chinese vehicles poured into the country, and this deal puts the domestic market on shakier ground.
“The concession is directly to the market prospects of the companies that we’re trying to bolster, at a time when we’re under unprecedented pressure,” he said.
“Fifty-thousand cars is about a shift at an auto plant, and a shift is 1,000 workers. It might be 5,000 supplier workers. So the challenge now is, if they’re inside the gate, what are we going to do to bolster the capabilities of Canadian suppliers with hundreds of millions of dollars of capital at risk?”
Ontario Premier Doug Ford responded to U.S. President Donald Trump’s comments that “Canada lives because of the United States,” in a speech from Switzerland on Wednesday. “You don’t attack your closest friend, your closest neighbour and your number one customer in the world,” Ford said.
A lack of guarantees
Carney has said the deal is an opportunity for Ontario, as there is interest in Chinese companies producing “affordable” electric vehicles in Canada. That interest, however, comes with no guarantees, said Payne.
“Given China’s massive, and I say massive, overcapacity in EV production, there is little reason for those companies to establish real and meaningful manufacturing operations in our country,” she said.
“As of today, we have given market access without guarantees or any real commitments, and even if investment were to materialize, experience in other parts of the world shows that core supply chain remains in China, supported by heavy state subsidies, as Flavio said, very, very low wages and suspect labour conditions, while parts are shipped in for a final assembly.”
The officials and Ford called on the federal government to step up with measures that will boost the domestic auto industry’s competitiveness, such as lowering the cost of investing in plants, machinery and research and development.
“We are in the fight of our lives here fending off Trump’s tariffs, and that fight just got a little harder,” Payne said.
“We must collectively come together to stabilize and protect the auto sector we have so we can actually have a future one.”
