It took big job losses in Oshawa and an angry blockade by union workers to force Finance Minister Jim Flaherty out of the peanut gallery and into the game. The question now is this: Will he play offence, or defence?
For the first time since high fuel prices and a weak U.S. economy began their steady assault on this country’s auto manufacturing sector, Flaherty this week sounded like he cares, a little bit. Faced with General Motors of Canada’s surprise announcement that it will shutter its Oshawa pickup plant, he proposed that GM might take a share of a $250-million federal fund set up to boost development of fuel-efficient vehicles.
If the auto maker can cobble together a plan to produce a gas-electric hybrid in Oshawa, in other words, the feds may give it a big chunk of cash. Added to that the threat from Ontario to take back $175-million in loans made to GM three years ago, and there’s powerful incentive for GM to rethink its plans.
Here’s the trouble: It’s a finger in the dyke. Short-term, it is laudable and necessary for government to do what it can to protect Canadian manufacturing jobs. Long-term, it seems to me, we need a national strategy that gets us beyond our reliance on building big cars and trucks that run on gasoline or diesel.
China and the India will mass-produce conventional gasoline-powered cars at costs a fraction of those in Canada. Toyota, Renault, Hyundai and Tata all are working furiously to develop under-$5,000 compact cars for sale in emerging markets. Market forces dictate that at some stage those ultra-low-cost cars will make their way to North America. Arguably, they should: Isn’t disinflation in the price of consumer products the single greatest benefit to us of free trade?
But there are big problems here. If $25,000 cars in sparsely populated industrialized nations are mucking up the air and spewing too much carbon dioxide into the atmosphere, imagine what a $5,000 car in China will do.
Second, and of much more immediate importance to anyone who lives in Oshawa or Windsor, our auto industry as we know it will vanish. A GM worker earning $35 an hour cannot compete, productivity-wise, with a Chinese worker earning $5 a day.
In Ontario, this is the elephant in the room. It underlies the backbiting we saw earlier this year between the federal finance minister and Premier Dalton McGuinty in Ontario. Each sees the approaching cataclysm. They know they can’t stop it. And they’re desperately looking for a way to transfer blame, before it happens.
There is no such thing as a magic bullet to insulate Ontario’s manufacturing economy from the seismic shifts to come. But maybe we’re missing part of the picture. Soaring gasoline prices are very likely here to stay. That will make driving conventional cars – even ultra-cheap ones produced in China – far less affordable than we’ve ever been used to, no matter how compact they are.
So, perhaps it’s time Canadians set about building and mass-producing an all-electric car, with no carbon-fuel component at all. Such a car would necessarily be tiny and lightweight It would travel at speeds below those of conventional automobiles. It would be ill-suited to long highway trips. But it would be well-positioned to help us lower our costs in the North America to come, which will likely be subject to some form of tax on carbon.
A mass-market electric car for Canada would have broader implications. The first would be a need for fast, modern rail service, with rail cars specially designed to transport these new personal vehicles over longer distances. The second would be a huge need for new sources of power. That would require much more active government investment in wind, micro-hydro, geothermal and solar power. Solar roofing tiles – known as Building Integrated Photovoltaic (BIPV) panels, are already in the marketplace. With a big push from government, these could go mass-market.
Most of all, the country would need more, newer and better nuclear power plants. That notion is anathema to the Green Party and to many environmentalists. But there would be no avoiding it, given our existing uses for electricity, combined with greatly increased consumption stemming from mass use of electric vehicles.
Is this all just dreaming? Possibly. But that’s partly what we pay politicians to do isn’t it? They need to look forward. If Flaherty, McGuinty et al spent more time thinking and less time gnashing their teeth and pointing fingers, we’d all be better off. And come election time, so would they.
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Canada already HAS an All Canadian Electric Car – The ZEN – being sold and driven in over a dozen countries including the U.S. – BUTT NOT IN CANADA – because of the totalitarian dictatorship of government by foreign corporations like GM. Canadian taxpayer has GIVEN – BILLIONS of $ to foreign car companies – We OWN those plants and the industry – Take them over and build ZENs !!! Oil cars in Canada burn up over 55 BILLION LITERS of Gasoline, not including Diesel – every year – the BIGGEST source of Disease-causing Toxins on the planet. The Oil and Oil-Car industry MUCH prefer other things, such as second hand tobacco smoke, get falsely blamed for all that disease, The costs of extracting, processing, delivering, and burning all that oil and polluting the atmosphere can more than pay for building new electric energy plants and switching to $ 11,000 electric cars. AND think of all the Health Care money we’ll save too. AND, society can finally stop wrongly blaming tobacco smokers’ smoke for what the oil-cars are actually doing to us all.
I agree with Steve too, but there is a new car this fall being released in France that runs on just compressed air! Go to your search engine and under video type “air car”. They have been using this method of forklifts and transprtation in an Austrailian factory for years and no pollution. I am sure this could be an answer too and then watch the price of oil drop, just like karoseen (spelling lol) when the light bulb was invented. As I said, check it out.
There is an electric car built in BC outside Vancouver but not approved for sale in Canada by Transport Canada. It is similar to an enclosed golf cart, and is recharged by plugging it into your household outdoor outlet. Here in Ontario that would be electricity from mainly nuclear reactors and not coal, oil or natural gas. Part of the reason that Transport Canada refuses to allow it for sale for use on Canadian streets is that it has a maximum speed of only 25KPH. It is not that difficult for legislators to wrap there minds around two simple concepts: first make it mandatory that these vehicles are for city streets only and not freeways or highways, and second pass a Federal Law making city street speed limits maximum 25KPH.
This will save lives, and vastly improve the environment. It is not hard either to make these electric cars tax free such as a one time permanent license, and road tax free so that there is additional incentive to make the transportation mode switch over. It is also important for Canadians to be told if there is any kind of an auto industry lobby against this mgf application for Transport Canada approval! We need to have full disclosure about what our civil service is doing!
You are right on the subject and Canadians are capable of manufacturing an all-electric vehicle. Canadians already have one if not two manufacturers of electric cars but manufacturing is not the issue. The issue is that our economy depends of the tax revenues generated by oil products to pay for all the damage caused by GHG emissions, acid rain, global warming, car accidents, and oil suppliers need their profit share.
Our elected politicians named as Finance or Transport Ministers have no interest in the well been or their constituency. They look for the best strategy to avoid the matter.
Why don’t you ask Jim Flaherty to share the $250 million from the Automotive funds with a small business located in the GTA: The ZENN Motor Co.
ZENN Motor Corp already manufactures electric cars in Toronto and Quebec and can deliver what you need. This corporation can also generate employment to a great deal of the layoff 2600 GM employees. The CEO of ZENN Co. will find a way to employ them all if our generous Finance Minister could promote Made in Canada.
For your information: 100% of ZENN electric cars are exported and most of it is sold in the USA.
The second handicap we face as Canadian is that we are not consuming what we manufacture. Our Ministry of Transport in Ontario – James Bradley Minister – answer back saying that Canadian electric vehicles like the ZENN are not fit for our roads. They are NOT SAFE to be driven on our roads here in Ontario. He feels that safety with engine power is the answer to select if an EV is fit or not, facing all the gas guzzlers at $2.00/liter which cost you thousand$ to maintain each year. Call ZENN and order an electric car made in Canada right away and listen what they have to say.
The third reason “Why we cannot have electric vehicles on the roads” is because no-one know that your can convert an existing ICE (Internal Combustion Engine) vehicle into an electric vehicle powered by an electric motor.
As an example in Ontario, we have a tax return on all vehicles converted to electric and you don’t take advantage of it.
As for the rhetoric of “we won’t have enough electricity to support the demand” this is not true. Electric vehicles can be charged with solar, wind and fuel cells.
JP Fernbach
President of
Durham Electric Vehlcle Association
An electric car is the worst idea ever. Lets see. There is the life span of the battery. Any electrical equipment from ipods, laptops to your remote control only has a certain life and its a a heck of a lot less than a year! Then the charge for said batter can only go for MAXIMUM of 500 charges. Then there is the fact that if you plug said electric car in your hydro WILL go up and much further than what you pay at the pumps currently. Not to mention the fact that Ontario gets its electricity from coal fired power plants, which negates all zero emissions from the electric car and now is far worse a polluter than the biggest gas guzzling SUV!
Ethanol will reduce green house gases, cheaper to produce, more friendly to the environment, can adapt to our current infrastructure and benefits the economy with spin off Jobs.
“Electric vehicles can be charged with solar, wind and fuel cells.”
NOT true. Solar and wind will not provide enough electricity to power the car. Unless you leave it sit in the driveway for months. Fuel cell technology is a myth and currently does not exist for the general public
And what happens if you get into a car accident in an electric car? You get shocked, which is the current problem with the Toyota Hybrids
First of all let’s debunk “NOT true”,
Check out the windmills “Whisper 100/200 ” they produce 900-1,000 watts of power. Which means 100-158 kWh per month of free wind power at your disposal. Now maybe someone can tell me how much electricity an all electric car uses per month and we will be off to the races!