No doubt we have a lot of production capabilities, and you are right, I’m sure you could piece most of the rest together. The marketplace is the biggest conundrum, I would propose. All those manufacturing facilities are in SW Ontario, so the only way to get them to other markets (which is going to be necessary here, because the Canadian marketplace isn’t big enough), it is going to involve ocean liners. Which is feasible, but your margins are going to get cooked here. There’s too much risk.

This ain’t the industry Canada needs to double down on, in a suddenly protectionist world. It’s natural resources, and maybe service related. And hopefully all sorts of other industries that we aren’t even thinking about.

I’m worried too. I was born and raised in SW Ontario, so most of my family and friends work in some sort of auto manufacturing or automotive-related industry. It’s already been pretty bad the past decade or so, this will likely be the death knell if it grows legs.

Fun fact, did you know that there was actually even electric cars made in the late 1800s? Some even in Canada. Car companies in this era all eventually failed though, or merged into other companies. There wasn’t ever really any production volumes in auto until Oldsmobile and Ford came onto the scene, especially with the latter who established the golden standard of auto production lines.

I wasn’t guessing. I cut my teeth in automotive. I have an education in automotive engineering, amongst other things, and I have extensive working experience at both the retailer, and Tier 1 and 2 manufacturing experience earlier in my career. Not proclaiming to be the end all be all, or the smartest person in the world, or that I know much of anything, but I’m also far from being the village idiot on this topic.

It ain’t happening bud, I’m sorry. There’s not enough marketplace to recover the costs, it would be complicated to transport finished goods to other markets, especially considering that most of the manufacturing facilities are located in southern Ontario. Which means you’d have to pretty much stick everything on a ship, and that adds costs, versus trucking to the states. It obviously can be done, easily enough, but it cuts into margins at higher production levels. Margins aren’t high in this industry, and the labour is mostly unionized, or very quickly will be if it’s not, and that adds a dearth of costs. Volatility in commodities pricing alone would be enough to knock something like this into non-profitable territory. It likely wouldn’t be profitable for a decade either. Even look at something like Tesla, it took them 17 years to turn a profit, and it actually doesn’t really turn a profit from its cars, it’s actually from the sale of environmental credits.

If you are going to see any automotive investment and new OEMs, something like a new Tesla or whatever, it’s almost certainly going to be in Europe, not North America. Donald Trump has all but guaranteed that there’s not going to be one dime spent in deepening or expanding automotive manufacturing capabilities spent here, for quite a while, likely a decade or more if he keeps it up. Canada has learned its lesson here, and I would imagine if anything happens in the automotive sector, it’ll be a contraction, not an expansion. Even as close as four of five months ago, there have been new plans launched for factory expansion and construction of tier 1 suppliers in Southwestern Ontario, but I would bet you that’ll be off now. We’ll have to wait and see though, only those closest to the projects will know, and nobody else’s crystal ball can predict the future.

And let’s not even begin to consider that China is foaming at the mouth to dump mostly state backed, very viable electric cars here, for a fraction of the price tag that we’ve been paying. We aren’t going to be able to block that off forever, they’ll find a way around the tariffs eventually. How are you going to compete with that?

Yeah I don’t know about it being fact that we are that much smarter. Polls aren’t yet going to be a good predictor, we are too far out from the election. It can only take the temperature of the mood in the past, not at present moment or in the future. This election hasn’t even really actually begun yet, this is just the circling of the wagons phase.

Sure hope you are right on that last paragraph, but I’ve lost a lot of hope these past few years.

Sure, and me too, for sure. The issue is, unfortunately, the greater electorate has issues with allowing the opposing parties to twist it around and use it against them. A lot of people only believe what’s put in front of them. All it takes is a pieced together YouTube clip of him saying this with some other point they are trying to make, and it can be incredibly damaging.

Australia had automotive production. They don’t anymore, because it wasn’t viable.

South Korea is definitely an exporter of automobiles. Thing is it took them about ~40 years to get to the point where they caught traction with it. The early Korean exports were pretty low quality and sort of unreliable (different people had different experiences). It took time for their R&D to work it out, and for economies of scale to develop.

It’s not the belief that we need to sell to the United States that would be stopping us here. It’s that they are right next door + 100 years ahead of us on R&D and progress, not to mention having long established integrated facilities and economies of scale. You’d have to enter the global marketplace with a car company built from scratch, that would need billions if not even maybe hundreds of billions dumped into R&D, design & development, which takes time. You would need manufacturing facilities that would be huge, that would also probably cost tens if not hundreds of billions to develop. Where is your steel going to come from? How are you going to stamp it? Where’s all the parts coming from if you don’t want to work with the US, and then how are you going to get them on a timely basis if they are coming by ship? Not to mention the zillion other questions one would need to figure out. It would take ~a decade to get this all sorted out. And godless sums of money. All to then compete in a global marketplace with international companies that have centuries of experience.

Magna would be the only developed enough option where this could even be feasible, but even they’ve sort of poked around looking at developing a product in the past, and the absence of said product in the marketplace kind of tells you everything you need to know about the viability of it.

I’m growing a bit worried about the element of foreign interference in this one though, especially in social media. No one can think with their brains anymore. It’s going to be a big factor here, like it’s not even about trust, it’s going to be more about the other side courting misinformation and exaggerations, and whether they can get it to stick. It’ll be an onslaught too.

For sure. It’s just sometimes better to not admit stuff like this on the campaign trail, gives the other side ammo to manipulate and twist the message.

That’s why they went quiet for a couple weeks. Just grasping at straws now, this new strategy is basically throwing shit at the wall and hoping something sticks.

It’s going to be hard to run an election against a former Bank of Canada, Bank of England governor. Carney’s a pretty smart dude, like the Conservatives always run on economic stuff, it’s all they got going for themselves. This dudes going to be able to stand up and say, oh well I’m an actual economist, I took a leading role in steering our country away from financial destruction in 2008, like here’s my economic stance.

PP in the meantime is going to be like I’m a conservative bootlicker and ive never had a real job…

Like come on. I ain’t saying a large portion wont vote for him, they will because people are pretty stupid these days. But during the election, like that’s going to be peak US meltdown probably, you got that weighing in, and all PP is going to be able to do at a debate is hurl insults. Canadians don’t tend to really love that. It was all fun and games while everyone was locked up during COVID and getting mad to go hard at the Liberals, but with the sober second thought thats about to start really kicking in, it’s going to be interesting to see how this all shakes out. Which in itself is interesting, considering barely even a month ago it was looking like a for sure Liberal bloodbath. Still might be, but it’s getting interesting.

My FIL is actually a long term inner circle Conservative party member, and even he’s refusing to do anything for them this round. He was mad as hell that PP got nominated.

I doubt it would make sense, as our marketplace isn’t large enough to support it alone. You would only do this to give you more access to the North American marketplace.

I look forward to hearing about Debt Carnage Carney next.

This is a misstep. You don’t admit stuff like this on election campaigns.

I think Canadians are slowly coming to the realization this guy is nothing but a chode whiny-ass nerd.

Donald Trump is doing us a favour in a lot of ways.

This could trigger a Minsky moment. And a world wide financial meltdown. Then he’ll just say haha just kidding. Once that genie is out of the bottle though, there’s no going back.

I’ve been wondering this past week if Canada Post could take advantage of this angst against America that we are all feeling, and start an all Canadian Amazon competitor. I mean Canada Post would for sure find a way to fuck this up, but they’ve already got the shipping network on lock. Start a marketplace.

This has to stop. OMG

Will someone please, for the love of God, get this organization an accountant and a financial planner?

No matter how much money we give these guys, the state of crime and this city continues to decline. Enough.

I’m just waiting for Cocaine Carney. You just know it’s coming.

Shopify can go toss a salad.

Fuck Singh, he’s just as sus as PP is. What does he think he’s going to accomplish here? Would it not be just as well to keep some order, while the country faces it’s biggest threat in probably 200 years?

It’s well known. I’m actually a polisci grad from another university, we all knew that if it was boot licking conservative, we didn’t even need to look at the header, we knew where it came from. I mean sure, it’s important not to paint people with wide swath brushes, but that school is heavily heavily tainted with conservative one-track mind.

Edit: I should point out, just to your point, like a famous grad of UofC was Naheed Nenshi, so non-cons exist there. But the issue at the UofC, for every Nenshi there’s like five Danielle Smiths. Makes sense, I mean Alberta is a con stronghold, and has been since forever pretty much. So it goes to say of course the UofC is too. But it’s just a bit over the top.