By Jack Mintz
With Canadian GDP per capita dropping like a stone, what would you expect our minister of finance, Chrystia Freeland, to say last week at the elite Davos confab? “Come to Canada! We have $135 billion to give you!” is what she did say. Given our poor investment performance, it seems the only way to attract capital is to offer billions of tax dollars to foreign multinationals.
Will these “new economy” subsidies work? Past experience says no.
The extravagant EV battery subsidies for the auto industry are a perfect example of what can go wrong. Fearing EV production would go south, Canada has thrown $35 billion (so far!) at three companies (Volkswagen, Stellantis and Northvolt) to create roughly 8,500 jobs. That works out to over $4 million for each worker. By comparison, Michigan is spending US$1.75 billion on an EV battery plant that will create 2500 jobs costing $US700,000 per worker (C$920,000). Though it’s a bargain compared to Canada’s handouts, the subsidies have generated much criticism as a “massive cost” generating “good paying jobs” that in fact will pay only US$20 per hour.
And who knows whether these companies will even succeed? Tesla has 60 per cent of the U.S. EV market, compared to just six per cent for Volkswagen and zero for Stellantis. Maybe Stellantis and Volkswagen will grab a sizeable market share but with mounting EV financial losses as sales slow, it’s also possible they may end up in financial trouble and require — oops! — another bailout.
To fund this subsidized new economy, the rest of Canada is paying higher personal, excise, payroll, property and corporate taxes to cover new-economy spending. And the command-and-control socialism that is Freeland’s new-economy master plan doesn’t have a good track record, to put things kindly.
There is an alternative. Focus on the private sector’s animal spirits rather than Soviet-style central planning. As I wrote last week, no single silver bullet will solve our growth policy. We need an “open for business” agenda, which means taking the shackles off the private sector, where entrepreneurial talent is most likely to be found.
Instead of throwing around tens of billions of dollars in subsidies, we need policies that make it easier for the private sector to create jobs. Getting rid of regulation that slows down the building infrastructure and housing is a start. Cutting taxes would make life more affordable and improve incentives to work, save and invest. Keeping immigration at levels consistent with growth is critical, too.
Governments should also be looking at their own productivity. The rising furor over inflationary municipal property tax hikes is a case in point. At our home this week, we received a robocall invitation to a phone-in town hall to solve Toronto’s “financial crisis.” It’s Mayor Olivia Chow’s way of selling painful property tax hikes — 10.5 per cent — to voters already pressed by high food, shelter and transportation prices. It seems Toronto can’t find any cost savings. This same story is being repeated in Calgary (where the tax hike is 7.8 per cent), Vancouver (7.5 per cent) and Edmonton (6.6 per cent). Yet, with digitization of processes, artificial intelligence and greater opportunities for contracting-out, cities that wanted to could improve their productivity, lower their costs and not need to raid household piggy banks.
The new economy won’t come as a result of Freeland’s industrial policy. It will come from markets unfettered by political interference.
Quick Hit:
Nissan is reportedly abandoning merger talks with Honda, scrapping a $60 billion deal that would have created the world’s third-largest automaker. The collapse raises questions about Nissan’s turnaround strategy as it faces challenges from electric vehicle competitors and potential U.S. tariffs.
Key Details:
Diving Deeper:
Merger talks between Nissan and Honda have collapsed, according to sources, after months of negotiations to form an auto giant capable of competing with Chinese EV makers like BYD. The proposed deal, valued at over $60 billion, would have created the world’s third-largest automaker. However, differences in strategy and control ultimately derailed the discussions.
Reports indicate that Honda, Japan’s second-largest automaker, wanted Nissan to become a subsidiary rather than an equal merger partner. Nissan balked at the idea, leading to the collapse of negotiations. Honda’s market valuation of approximately $51.9 billion dwarfs Nissan’s, which may have fueled concerns about control. The failure of talks sent Nissan’s stock tumbling more than 4% in Tokyo, while Honda’s shares rose over 8%, reflecting investor confidence in Honda’s independent strategy.
Nissan, already in the midst of a turnaround plan involving 9,000 job cuts and a 20% reduction in global capacity, now faces mounting pressure to restructure on its own. Analysts warn that the failed merger raises uncertainty about Nissan’s ability to compete in an industry rapidly shifting toward EVs. “Investors may get concerned about Nissan’s future [and] turnaround,” Morningstar analyst Vincent Sun said.
Complicating matters further, Nissan faces heightened risks from U.S. tariffs under President Donald Trump’s trade policies. Potential tariffs on vehicles manufactured in Mexico could hit Nissan harder than competitors like Honda and Toyota. The stalled deal also impacts Nissan’s existing alliance with Renault, which had expressed openness to the merger. Renault holds a 36% stake in Nissan, including 18.7% through a French trust.
While both Nissan and Honda have stated they will finalize a direction by mid-February, the collapse of this deal signals deep divisions in Japan’s auto industry. With Nissan’s financial struggles and the growing dominance of Chinese EV makers, the company must now navigate an increasingly challenging market without external support.
Last Monday, Transport Canada released a bombshell statement, announcing that the Trudeau government’s program granting a $5,000 rebate to Canadians purchasing an Electric Vehicle (EV) had run out of money and would be discontinued, “effective immediately.” This followed a prior announcement from the government of Quebec that they would be suspending their own subsidy, which had amounted to $7,000 per EV purchased.
This is, of course, a game changer for an industry which the Trudeau government (as well as the Ford government in Ontario) has invested billions of taxpayer dollars in. That’s because, no matter the country, the EV industry is utterly dependent upon a system of carrots and sticks from the government, in the form of subsidies and mandates.
EVs have remained notably more expensive than traditional Internal Combustion Engine (ICE) vehicles, even with those government incentive programs. Without them the purchase of EVs becomes impossible for all but the wealthiest Canadians.
Which is fine. Let the rich people have their toys, if they want them. Though if they justify the expense by saying that they’re saving the planet by it, I may be tempted to deflate them a bit by pointing out that EVs are in no way appreciably better for the environment than ICE vehicles, how all the lithium, nickel, cobalt, manganese, aluminum, copper, etc, contained in just one single EV battery requires displacing about 500,000 lbs of earth. Mining these materials often takes place in poorer countries with substandard environmental regulations.
Moreover, the weight of those batteries means that EVs burn through tires more quickly than gas-and-diesel driven vehicles, and wear down roads faster as well, which among other issues leads to an increase in particulate matter in the air, what in the old days we referred to as “pollution.”
That is a potential issue, but one that is mitigated by the fact that EVs make up a small minority of cars on the road. Regular people have proved unwilling to drive them, and that will be even more true now that the consumer subsidies have disappeared.
Of course, it will be an issue if the Trudeau Liberals get their way. You see, Electric Vehicles are one of the main arenas in their ongoing battle with reality. And so even with the end of their consumer subsidies, they remain committed to their mandates requiring every new vehicle purchased in Canada to be electric by 2035, now just a decade away!
They’ve done away with the carrots, and they’re hoping to keep this plan moving with sticks alone.
This is, in a word, madness.
As I’ve said before, the Electric Vehicle mandate is a terrible policy, and one which should be repealed immediately. Canada is about the worst place to attempt this particular experiment with social engineering. It is famously cold, and EVs are famously bad in the cold, charging much slower in frigid temperatures and struggling to hold a charge. Which itself is a major issue, because our country is also enormous and spread out, meaning that most Canadians have to do a great deal of driving to get from “Point A” to “Point B.”
Canada is sorely lacking in the infrastructure which would be required to keep EVs on the road. We currently have less than 30,000 public charging stations nationwide, which is more than 400,000 short of Natural Resources Canada’s projection of what we will need to support the mandated total EV transition.
Our electrical grid is already stressed, without the addition of tens of millions of battery powered vehicles being plugged in every night over a very short time. And of course, irony of ironies, this transition is supposed to take place while our activist government is pushing us on to less reliable energy sources, like wind and solar!
Plus, as I’ve pointed out before, the economic case for EVs, such as it was, has been completely upended by the recent U.S. election. Donald Trump’s victory means that our neighbors to the south are in no immediate danger of being forced to ditch gas-and-diesel driven cars. Consequently, the pitch by the Trudeau and Ford governments that Canada was putting itself at the center of an evolving auto market has fallen flat. In reality, they’ve shackled us to a corpse.
So on behalf of my fellow Canadians I say, “Thank you,” to the government for no longer burning our tax dollars on this particular subsidy. But that isn’t even half the battle. It must be followed through with an even bigger next step.
They must repeal the EV mandate.
Dan McTeague is President of Canadians for Affordable Energy.
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