From Canadians For Affordable Energy

More good money is being thrown after bad, but that seems to be the theme of Trudeau’s government.

On Monday Goodyear Tire announced a $575 million expansion of their Eastern Ontario manufacturing plant to produce electric vehicles, and to make their plant more energy efficient.

And Doug Ford and Justin Trudeau were there for the photo opportunity. Why? Because — shocker — this move comes with serious money from taxpayers in Ontario and throughout Canada. Goodyear is set to receive up to $44.3 million from the federal government through the Strategic Innovation Fund and $20 million from Ontario through the provincial Invest Ontario.

In case you’ve lost track of the money — your money — which has been thrown down this blackhole to date, here’s only some of the close to $46 billion that has been committed:

• Northvolt, electric vehicle battery manufacturing facility, up to $1.34 billion
• Stellantis—LGES (NextStar), EV battery manufacturing facility — $5 billion
• Volkswagen (PowerCo), Federal ($700 million) and Ontario governments ($500 million)
• Ford EcoPro, $322 million
• Stellantis, Federal ($529 million) and Ontario government ($513 million)
• Umicore, Federal ($551.3 million) and Ontario government ($424.6 million)
• Ford Motor Company of Canada, $295 million from both the Federal and Ontario governments
• GM Ingersoll, $259 million from both the Federal and Ontario governments

More taxpayer dollars for cars that no one wants to buy, and are only affordable with heavy government subsidies.

In fact, last month Ford Canada announced that they would be abandoning their plans to retool their plant in Oakville, ON to focus on EV production. Instead, the plant will begin to produce their popular F-Series gasoline-powered heavy duty pickup truck. Ford plants in Ohio and Kentucky are at full capacity and can’t keep up with the demand for the F-Series, so they are shifting some of the load to Oakville. (Trudeau might learn a lesson here about supply and demand, which is what makes a healthy economy work.)

Plant workers were no doubt relieved to hear this, as Ford had already delayed the date when the plant would begin producing EVs from 2025 to 2027, due no doubt to their multi-billion dollar annual losses on EVs. (They lost $4.7 billion on EVs in 2023 and they’re projected to lose nearly $5.5 billion this year.) Many workers had already been laid off, and many more layoffs were expected. But now they’ll be hard at work producing a reliable Internal Combustion Engine (ICE) pickup.

This should come as no surprise. We need only look around the world for examples of dwindling EV sales. In Germany, EV sales fell by 37%. This slump is directly related to the premature ending of the purchase subsidies program. Budget issues forced Germany to end the program a year sooner than anticipated.

In fact, whenever a country reports an increase in EV sales, be sure to look at the subsidies being offered. “In France, a social leasing scheme which helps to provide cheap EVs to low-income households helped see BEV sales increase by 14.9 per cent in the first half of 2024”. And in Italy EV incentives helped push EV sales “up by 7 per cent across the first six months of the year.”

The lavish subsidy programs for EVs have created a false economy whereby they are only attractive and affordable with taxpayer handouts. Canada should expect the same slump in sales when our own subsidy programs come to an end.

In fact, the only nation which shows no sign of slowing down on electric vehicles is China, where they’re pumping them out at breakneck speed. This is, of course, so that they can take advantage of the EV mandates which Canada and other nations have enacted. China’s EV manufacturers are able to undercut Western producers since they control the lion’s share of Lithium battery production.

Their government also heavily subsidizes the industry. But chances are, once they control most of the EV market share, bankrupting smaller producers, they’ll jack up the price. And because of the mandates, drivers will either have to pay what they’re asking, or else invest in a horse and buggy.

This has led to calls for the Trudeau government to impose punitive tariffs on Chinese EVs, to prevent them from inundating the Canadian market to the detriment of Canada’s economy and Canadian workers. Trudeau and co have dragged their feet, likely because they don’t want to offend Chairman Xi.

We certainly should impose those tariffs. But what would be even better for regular, everyday Canadian taxpayers — not that that ever seems to be top-of-mind for Trudeau or Doug Ford — would be to scrap the EV mandates altogether. Forcing Canadians to buy EVs by 2035 is a terrible policy that will make us poorer as individuals and poorer as a nation. And it will ultimately fail.

Better to admit that now, while we still have some money we haven’t paid out by the truckload to green corporate grifters.

Dan McTeague is President of Canadians for Affordable Energy.