Canada’s federal and provincial governments, led by Ontario, are being alarmingly vague about the fate of $52.5 billion they’ve invested in Canada’s fledgling electric vehicle industry, now that U.S. President Donald Trump is vowing to curtail American investments south of the border.
According to independent, non-partisan parliamentary budget officer Yves Giroux, that $52.5-million commitment of public funding is $6.4 billion more than the $46.1 billion the EV industry is spending on itself during that period.
Much of that money was only supposed to be approved if the U.S. continued to offer subsidies to America’s EV sector under former U.S. president Joe Biden’s Inflation Reduction Act.
So what happens if those subsidies dry up?
Trump has issued an executive order to end all federal government subsidies, programs and policies that encourage EV sales through “ill-conceived government-imposed market distortions.”
While the U.S. government has not issued specific mandates to EV manufacturers for how many EVs must be sold in America every year, critics say the auto sector cannot meet recently approved limits on tailpipe emissions without selling more EVs.
That means mandatory sales targets are, in effect, whatever one calls them.
Finally if Trump is serious about his boast that the U.S. can build its own cars and doesn’t need any produced in Canada, or with auto parts installed in Canada, then the entire auto industry — both EV and internal combustion engine vehicles — will be thrown into chaos.
Trump has said he’s making these demands as part of what he says is his campaign to give motorists free choice in what kind of vehicles they want to die in, instead of stacking the deck in favour of EVs.
Trudeau last year posted on “X”, along with video, proclaiming, “We bet big on electric vehicles. Now that industry is betting on us,” which has been overtaken by events with regard to the auto sector since that happened.
Ford, currently campaigning for re-election in Ontario, has said he will continue funding the province’s EV sector no matter what happens in the U.S. or elsewhere.
But there’s no point in building more EVs if all they’re going to do is end up sitting unsold in massive parking lots because there’s no market for them.