Tariffs were supposed to make America the obvious place to invest. Instead, GM is putting more than $1 billion into Ontario while Canadian exporters and European buyers build alternatives to the US.
What is the state of affairs concerning Stellantis pulling out of Ontario? How are the negotiations going on them returning the cash we gave them to expand?
Alicia, that’s actually an important part of the story.
Stellantis hasn’t simply been allowed to take the government money and walk away.
After it moved the planned Jeep Compass production from Brampton to Illinois, Ottawa froze further payments under the agreement, cut Stellantis’s tariff-remission quota by 50%, and triggered the formal dispute-resolution process.
The federal government says $222.4 million had already been paid toward the Brampton/Windsor project, and recovering taxpayer money is part of the dispute.
Stellantis has not formally announced Brampton’s closure, although Unifor says the company is now considering selling the plant.
So yes, Stellantis is a problem... a big one.
But it doesn’t contradict what I wrote about GM.
If anything, the two companies demonstrate the point... one automaker is pulling production toward the U.S. under Trump’s tariff pressure while another is committing more than $1 billion to Ontario.
That’s why I prefer following the actual investments rather than declaring that every company is either “fleeing Canada” or “fleeing America.”
American corporations spent decades building global supply chains because it was profitable to manufacture elsewhere.
China certainly benefited enormously from that.
Now Washington seems to think tariffs can simply reverse 30 or 40 years of corporate decisions and bring all that manufacturing home.
But factories aren’t light switches.
Companies need suppliers, skilled workers, infrastructure, stable costs and... most importantly... some idea what the rules will be five or ten years from now.
That’s why I’m watching where companies actually put their money.
The speeches tell us what politicians want.
**The investment decisions tell us what businesses believe.**
Fred how do you feel about Trump inviting Putin to the G7 meeting in Florida? As a Brit, I can only hope that all the other G7 members boycott the meeting.
Penny, one correction because I had to look this up myself... it’s the G20 meeting in Miami, not the G7.
Russia is still a member of the G20, although Putin hasn’t attended one in person since before the invasion of Ukraine.
Russia was kicked out of what was then the G8 after annexing Crimea in 2014, and it has not been readmitted to the G7.
As for boycotting the G20, I’m not sure I’d go that far.
I have no problem with leaders talking to Putin.
Eventually wars usually end with people sitting across a table from people they don't particularly like.
What bothers me is treating Putin as though Russia’s invasion of Ukraine never happened, or welcoming him back into the democratic club without extracting anything in return.
If Carney goes, I’d rather have Canada sitting at that table defending Ukraine and reminding everyone why Russia was isolated in the first place than leave the chair empty for Trump and Putin.
Talking is diplomacy.
Pretending the last four years didn't happen is something else entirely.
I am with you about the talking, Mark Carney is the best leader they could find . But I am wary of what Trump is up to. Personally, I cannot understand how he is still in Power, I suspect that most of his sycophantic cabinet will desert before or shortly after the midterms . We don’t need his ‘support’ over the Falklands, but perhaps he has already co opted Argentina for the oil, time will show.
Well what else can we say about Trump's economic FANTASY...
I'd like to mention Christa Freeland's opinion piece in yesterday NYT. Basically, it outlines how american policy is leading to the long term Demise of the west, propelling China to be the winner of Trump's direction and grifting.
Wow Fred just read your 2 latest and both put me in a very good mood ( well- your research and writing always does). Will stop reading for the night so it ends on a high note.
Good to know they ll sell well here. I m not sure I love them because they re so big these days and people are invisible and getting run down in the city here,but I m glad folks who need them have the Made in Canada option
These trucks aren’t being built just for the Canadian market.
Oshawa is part of GM’s North American production system, so the market includes Canada and the United States.
GM currently builds Silverado light- and heavy-duty trucks at Oshawa, and the new investment will add the next-generation GMC Sierra heavy-duty truck as well.
Here’s the part I find particularly interesting... roughly 17% of GM’s Silverado production is currently built in Canada.
So yes... some Canadian-built trucks are ultimately being sold into the American market.
Which makes the tariff situation even crazier.
GM isn’t really operating a “Canadian” auto industry and an “American” auto industry. It has spent decades building one integrated North American production system.
Trump is trying to put a tariff wall through the middle of it.
And GM apparently still believes Oshawa is important enough to invest hundreds of millions more there. 🇨🇦
Claire, I think “we remember” might be closer than “vindictive.” 😊
Canadians can be pretty easygoing right up until somebody gives us a reason not to be.
Look at what happened with American booze and travel.
Nobody had to order Canadians to stop vacationing in the U.S.
Millions simply made different choices.
Provincial liquor stores pulled American products, and Canadians discovered there are plenty of good things to drink that don't come from Kentucky or California.
And that's the part American businesses should worry about.
A boycott can end overnight.
**A changed habit may not.**
If Canadians discover a Canadian whisky they like, vacation in Portugal instead of Florida, or buy a Canadian, European, Japanese or Korean product instead of an American one, Trump can eventually disappear and that customer may never come back.
Companies planning five or ten years ahead understand that.
Canada may forgive.
**But we don't necessarily put the bourbon back in the shopping cart.** 😂
That’s what I really meant. I was using vindictive when thinking of a certain hockey player that showed his true colours at the 4 nations and thereafter
Betsy-Ann, I checked because Toyota and Honda are important pieces of this story.
Toyota is still very much invested in Canada.
This year it started building the new generation RAV4 in Ontario after investing another $1.1 billion in Canadian manufacturing.
Toyota has now invested more than $12 billion here.
Honda is more complicated.
It has indefinitely suspended its huge planned Ontario EV and battery expansion because its global EV strategy and the market changed.
But Honda has NOT pulled out of Canada.
Its existing Alliston plant continues building Civics and CR-Vs, including hybrids.
Now both have a Trump problem.
Toyota and Honda together produce more than three-quarters of the vehicles built in Canada, and a lot of those Canadian-built vehicles are sold in the United States.
If Trump actually imposes his threatened 50% tariff on Canadian vehicles January 1, both companies face some very ugly decisions.
And that's what makes this whole thing so bizarre.
These aren't really foreign companies choosing between Canada and America.
They spent decades building integrated North American manufacturing systems.
**Trump is trying to draw a tariff border through the middle of their factories and supply chains.**
Toyota builds Rav4s in Kentucky as well as Canada, as well as another vehicle too. Both Toyota and Honda are very popular cars in the US. My next new car will be Canadian for sure. I have been a real Ford fan for many years. O believe I have purchased 8 or 9 new Fords over time. But, that's over.
Fred, thank you for your response. Toyota has a big factory in Kentucky, Texas, Illinois, and more. They shouldn't worry about what they are doing in Canada. I Don't know anything about what Honda does in the US.
The question that companies might be asking is .... "come home" to what, exactly?
And how did the US manage to get to that point?
The slide was gradual ...
Electing a fibbing felon as one's president -- not once but _TWICE_ -- is what happens when "tax cuts!" has been the focus for decades, ever since Proposition-13 and since trickle-down Reaganomics.
The result is that there are now _entire _generations of voting citizens in the US who can't tell fact from fiction -- voting citizens who cannot detect BS -- because their under-funded public school systems were whittled down to just warehousing children, all thanks to fewer taxes.
It might be best not to expect huge turnarounds in the near future:
upcoming elections will still include those very same unfortunate misled (duped?) voters.
That opening question really gets to the heart of it...
**“Come home to what, exactly?”**
You can slap tariffs on imports and tell manufacturers to come back, but you still have to give them somewhere economically sensible to come back to.
Factories need skilled workers, suppliers, infrastructure, affordable energy, access to markets and... something I keep coming back to... predictable rules.
I’m less convinced that America’s problem can be traced mainly to underfunded schools or tax cuts.
I think what’s happened there is considerably more complicated than that.
But I absolutely agree with your larger warning about expecting some magical reset after Trump.
Trump didn’t create every division in America.
He figured out how to exploit divisions that were already there.
Eventually Trump will leave the stage.
**The conditions that made Trump possible won’t necessarily leave with him.**
And that’s another reason Canada cannot build its long-term economic strategy around waiting for the next American president to put everything back the way it was.
I tried to come up with an explanation as to how so many US voters could not recognize the BS that was being fed to them.
A lack of public schooling was the simplest explanation.
And that lack of public schooling fit with the decades of under-funded public schools, where public schools were usually one of the first items targeted by those wanting to cut taxes or redirect taxes to charter schools, etc.
And because of that underfunding, teacher supports were whittled away to the point where teachers just barely have time to teach the basics — if they’re lucky — let alone teach kids how to understand the world around them.
Now, carry that trend forward for 4 decades - since the 80s when Reagan and Thatcher were in full swing — and you end up with complete generations of public school graduates who barely have a grasp on how to analyse what their “leaders” are telling them.
Another spot-on article Fred! It's a good thing that during the financial crisis of 2008, Prime Minister Stephen Harper decided to bail out GM to prevent the collapse of the auto sector. That investment has paid off handsomely. The debt for equity swap also resulted in a good profit when Canada sold its equity in GM.
I fail to understand why so many Republican politicians and voters think that tariffs are a good idea. Trump has presented them with lie after lie, and they assume that manufacturers can close up shop here in Canada, and open up the next day in the US. They've also been duped into thinking that it's the foreign governments who pay the tariffs. Economics 101 was a course that Trump obviously slept through.
The auto sector is highly integrated among the US, Canada, and Mexico. Because GM needs stability when making decisions, and realizing that Trump won't be around forever (we hope!) GM is playing the "long game", actually the same process that Mark Carney is deploying.
I forgot to mention that I believe that Harper probably reluctantly agreed to the bailout. I also feel that if PP had been PM at the time, GM, and the others wouldn't have been helped. PP is very orthodox in his right-wing Conservative views In my honest opinion.
Jerry, there’s a fascinating bit of history in this, and I went back and checked it.
Whatever anyone thinks of Stephen Harper, his government made the call in 2009 that allowing GM and potentially a big chunk of Canada's auto industry to collapse would cost the country far more than intervening.
Canada and Ontario ultimately provided $10.8 billion in support to GM, and Harper later defended that decision as necessary to protect Canadian jobs and Canada's place in the integrated North American auto industry.
And here we are 17 years later with GM investing another billion-plus in Ontario.
I would make one distinction, though.
The government recorded a substantial gain when it eventually sold its remaining GM shares, but that accounting gain isn't quite the same thing as saying taxpayers made a profit on the entire bailout.
As for Pierre, I'm reluctant to say what he would have done as PM.
He was actually part of Harper's Conservative government at the time, and I found him in Parliament defending that government's assistance to the auto industry.
That surprised me a little... which is exactly why I keep checking this stuff. 😂
But your larger point about the long game is the one that sticks with me.
**Governments and companies sometimes have to make decisions based on where the country will be ten years from now, not what makes the best political slogan next Tuesday.**
That's certainly what GM appears to be doing now. And I think it's what Canada has to do too.
Good article, Fred. Minister Tim Hodgson speaking in Saskatchewan today on the McIlvenna Bay venture said three key terms.
“Process, Refine, Sell”. He might have included ship as well. He confirms our country’s need to maximize industry and hence, profits to stay here. Let’s kill the phrase “hewers of wood and drawers of water” from our “Canadian speak”!
Scott, those three words caught my attention too...
**Process. Refine. Sell.**
And yes, I’d add **ship**... because finding customers and actually getting Canadian products to them is the other half of this job.
For too long Canada has been very good at digging something valuable out of the ground, putting it on a train or ship, and letting somebody else do the higher-value work.
McIlvenna Bay is encouraging because the copper comes out of Saskatchewan and is expected to be smelted in Quebec.
That’s more of the value chain staying here.
Mine it here.
Process it here.
Refine it here where we can.
Build things from it here.
Then sell the highest-value Canadian product we can to the world.
We’re always going to export raw commodities... and there’s nothing wrong with that when it makes economic sense.
But “hewers of wood and drawers of water” shouldn’t be our bloody national business plan. 😂
What is the state of affairs concerning Stellantis pulling out of Ontario? How are the negotiations going on them returning the cash we gave them to expand?
Alicia, that’s actually an important part of the story.
Stellantis hasn’t simply been allowed to take the government money and walk away.
After it moved the planned Jeep Compass production from Brampton to Illinois, Ottawa froze further payments under the agreement, cut Stellantis’s tariff-remission quota by 50%, and triggered the formal dispute-resolution process.
The federal government says $222.4 million had already been paid toward the Brampton/Windsor project, and recovering taxpayer money is part of the dispute.
Stellantis has not formally announced Brampton’s closure, although Unifor says the company is now considering selling the plant.
So yes, Stellantis is a problem... a big one.
But it doesn’t contradict what I wrote about GM.
If anything, the two companies demonstrate the point... one automaker is pulling production toward the U.S. under Trump’s tariff pressure while another is committing more than $1 billion to Ontario.
That’s why I prefer following the actual investments rather than declaring that every company is either “fleeing Canada” or “fleeing America.”
The picture is more complicated than that.
Brilliant post, and true!
I concur and thank you Fred!
Most US manufacturing is done offshore! Bunch of 🤡who made China wealthy and now crying about it !
Kat, that’s the irony of the whole thing.
American corporations spent decades building global supply chains because it was profitable to manufacture elsewhere.
China certainly benefited enormously from that.
Now Washington seems to think tariffs can simply reverse 30 or 40 years of corporate decisions and bring all that manufacturing home.
But factories aren’t light switches.
Companies need suppliers, skilled workers, infrastructure, stable costs and... most importantly... some idea what the rules will be five or ten years from now.
That’s why I’m watching where companies actually put their money.
The speeches tell us what politicians want.
**The investment decisions tell us what businesses believe.**
They’re putting into Canada, and more will come!💪
Good wake up call
Fred how do you feel about Trump inviting Putin to the G7 meeting in Florida? As a Brit, I can only hope that all the other G7 members boycott the meeting.
Penny, one correction because I had to look this up myself... it’s the G20 meeting in Miami, not the G7.
Russia is still a member of the G20, although Putin hasn’t attended one in person since before the invasion of Ukraine.
Russia was kicked out of what was then the G8 after annexing Crimea in 2014, and it has not been readmitted to the G7.
As for boycotting the G20, I’m not sure I’d go that far.
I have no problem with leaders talking to Putin.
Eventually wars usually end with people sitting across a table from people they don't particularly like.
What bothers me is treating Putin as though Russia’s invasion of Ukraine never happened, or welcoming him back into the democratic club without extracting anything in return.
If Carney goes, I’d rather have Canada sitting at that table defending Ukraine and reminding everyone why Russia was isolated in the first place than leave the chair empty for Trump and Putin.
Talking is diplomacy.
Pretending the last four years didn't happen is something else entirely.
I am with you about the talking, Mark Carney is the best leader they could find . But I am wary of what Trump is up to. Personally, I cannot understand how he is still in Power, I suspect that most of his sycophantic cabinet will desert before or shortly after the midterms . We don’t need his ‘support’ over the Falklands, but perhaps he has already co opted Argentina for the oil, time will show.
Well what else can we say about Trump's economic FANTASY...
I'd like to mention Christa Freeland's opinion piece in yesterday NYT. Basically, it outlines how american policy is leading to the long term Demise of the west, propelling China to be the winner of Trump's direction and grifting.
WTF!
Bernie, I went looking for the Freeland piece because that’s a hell of a bigger question than GM.
I think the irony is extraordinary.
For years Washington has told us China is America’s great long-term strategic competitor.
If that’s true, America’s greatest advantage isn’t tariffs.
**It’s allies.**
Canada. Europe. Japan. South Korea. Australia.
Countries that spent decades largely operating inside an American-led economic and security system.
And now Trump is picking fights with many of them.
Those countries aren’t suddenly going to become Chinese satellites.
But they are going to hedge their bets, diversify their trade and build relationships that make them less dependent on Washington.
China doesn’t have to defeat the West to benefit from that.
**It just has to watch while the West pulls itself apart.**
That may turn out to be one of the most consequential parts of this whole Trump experiment.
And WTF is a perfectly reasonable summary. 😂
Wow Fred just read your 2 latest and both put me in a very good mood ( well- your research and writing always does). Will stop reading for the night so it ends on a high note.
Shelley, thank you. That made this old guy’s night too. 😊
There’s enough going on these days to keep all of us worried, so I’m glad I managed to send you off on a high note for a change.
Sleep well... I’ll probably find something to stir the pot again tomorrow. 😂
GM is no fool. Felon will be gone long before gas fueled vehicles are gone.
Kay, I think that’s an important part of it.
GM isn’t making a decision for the next election cycle.
They’re planning plants, engines and next-generation trucks that have to make economic sense years from now.
Trump will eventually be gone.
These factories, workers and supply chains will still be here.
And GM clearly isn’t betting everything on one technology either.
They’re investing heavily in EVs while putting serious money into Canadian production of gas-powered trucks and next-generation V8 engines.
That tells me GM is doing what smart companies do:
**Don’t bet the company on one politician, one technology, or one prediction about the future. Keep your options open.**
Canada ought to remember that lesson too. 🇨🇦
I love the gut punch! What a great column!
Thanks Sandi! 😊
I’m getting rather fond of those Gut Punches myself.
It gives me one last chance to say what I spent the whole damn article trying to explain... without all the explaining. 😂
Glad you enjoyed this one!
This is really happy for us just now. what I d like to know is who is the market for these trucks? Domestic? International including USA? Other?
If you lived in Alberta you would understand. Trucks, trucks, trucks everywhere.
Good to know they ll sell well here. I m not sure I love them because they re so big these days and people are invisible and getting run down in the city here,but I m glad folks who need them have the Made in Canada option
Bev, excellent question... so I went looking.
These trucks aren’t being built just for the Canadian market.
Oshawa is part of GM’s North American production system, so the market includes Canada and the United States.
GM currently builds Silverado light- and heavy-duty trucks at Oshawa, and the new investment will add the next-generation GMC Sierra heavy-duty truck as well.
Here’s the part I find particularly interesting... roughly 17% of GM’s Silverado production is currently built in Canada.
So yes... some Canadian-built trucks are ultimately being sold into the American market.
Which makes the tariff situation even crazier.
GM isn’t really operating a “Canadian” auto industry and an “American” auto industry. It has spent decades building one integrated North American production system.
Trump is trying to put a tariff wall through the middle of it.
And GM apparently still believes Oshawa is important enough to invest hundreds of millions more there. 🇨🇦
I’m thinking these companies know how long Canada remembers and how we can be vindictive. Look at Kentucky bourbon, at tourism…..
Claire, I think “we remember” might be closer than “vindictive.” 😊
Canadians can be pretty easygoing right up until somebody gives us a reason not to be.
Look at what happened with American booze and travel.
Nobody had to order Canadians to stop vacationing in the U.S.
Millions simply made different choices.
Provincial liquor stores pulled American products, and Canadians discovered there are plenty of good things to drink that don't come from Kentucky or California.
And that's the part American businesses should worry about.
A boycott can end overnight.
**A changed habit may not.**
If Canadians discover a Canadian whisky they like, vacation in Portugal instead of Florida, or buy a Canadian, European, Japanese or Korean product instead of an American one, Trump can eventually disappear and that customer may never come back.
Companies planning five or ten years ahead understand that.
Canada may forgive.
**But we don't necessarily put the bourbon back in the shopping cart.** 😂
That’s what I really meant. I was using vindictive when thinking of a certain hockey player that showed his true colours at the 4 nations and thereafter
Go Canada!!!
What exactly is happening with Toyota and Honda?
Betsy-Ann, I checked because Toyota and Honda are important pieces of this story.
Toyota is still very much invested in Canada.
This year it started building the new generation RAV4 in Ontario after investing another $1.1 billion in Canadian manufacturing.
Toyota has now invested more than $12 billion here.
Honda is more complicated.
It has indefinitely suspended its huge planned Ontario EV and battery expansion because its global EV strategy and the market changed.
But Honda has NOT pulled out of Canada.
Its existing Alliston plant continues building Civics and CR-Vs, including hybrids.
Now both have a Trump problem.
Toyota and Honda together produce more than three-quarters of the vehicles built in Canada, and a lot of those Canadian-built vehicles are sold in the United States.
If Trump actually imposes his threatened 50% tariff on Canadian vehicles January 1, both companies face some very ugly decisions.
And that's what makes this whole thing so bizarre.
These aren't really foreign companies choosing between Canada and America.
They spent decades building integrated North American manufacturing systems.
**Trump is trying to draw a tariff border through the middle of their factories and supply chains.**
Toyota and Honda aren't the problem.
The uncertainty is.
Toyota builds Rav4s in Kentucky as well as Canada, as well as another vehicle too. Both Toyota and Honda are very popular cars in the US. My next new car will be Canadian for sure. I have been a real Ford fan for many years. O believe I have purchased 8 or 9 new Fords over time. But, that's over.
Fred, thank you for your response. Toyota has a big factory in Kentucky, Texas, Illinois, and more. They shouldn't worry about what they are doing in Canada. I Don't know anything about what Honda does in the US.
The question that companies might be asking is .... "come home" to what, exactly?
And how did the US manage to get to that point?
The slide was gradual ...
Electing a fibbing felon as one's president -- not once but _TWICE_ -- is what happens when "tax cuts!" has been the focus for decades, ever since Proposition-13 and since trickle-down Reaganomics.
The result is that there are now _entire _generations of voting citizens in the US who can't tell fact from fiction -- voting citizens who cannot detect BS -- because their under-funded public school systems were whittled down to just warehousing children, all thanks to fewer taxes.
It might be best not to expect huge turnarounds in the near future:
upcoming elections will still include those very same unfortunate misled (duped?) voters.
That opening question really gets to the heart of it...
**“Come home to what, exactly?”**
You can slap tariffs on imports and tell manufacturers to come back, but you still have to give them somewhere economically sensible to come back to.
Factories need skilled workers, suppliers, infrastructure, affordable energy, access to markets and... something I keep coming back to... predictable rules.
I’m less convinced that America’s problem can be traced mainly to underfunded schools or tax cuts.
I think what’s happened there is considerably more complicated than that.
But I absolutely agree with your larger warning about expecting some magical reset after Trump.
Trump didn’t create every division in America.
He figured out how to exploit divisions that were already there.
Eventually Trump will leave the stage.
**The conditions that made Trump possible won’t necessarily leave with him.**
And that’s another reason Canada cannot build its long-term economic strategy around waiting for the next American president to put everything back the way it was.
I tried to come up with an explanation as to how so many US voters could not recognize the BS that was being fed to them.
A lack of public schooling was the simplest explanation.
And that lack of public schooling fit with the decades of under-funded public schools, where public schools were usually one of the first items targeted by those wanting to cut taxes or redirect taxes to charter schools, etc.
And because of that underfunding, teacher supports were whittled away to the point where teachers just barely have time to teach the basics — if they’re lucky — let alone teach kids how to understand the world around them.
Now, carry that trend forward for 4 decades - since the 80s when Reagan and Thatcher were in full swing — and you end up with complete generations of public school graduates who barely have a grasp on how to analyse what their “leaders” are telling them.
Another spot-on article Fred! It's a good thing that during the financial crisis of 2008, Prime Minister Stephen Harper decided to bail out GM to prevent the collapse of the auto sector. That investment has paid off handsomely. The debt for equity swap also resulted in a good profit when Canada sold its equity in GM.
I fail to understand why so many Republican politicians and voters think that tariffs are a good idea. Trump has presented them with lie after lie, and they assume that manufacturers can close up shop here in Canada, and open up the next day in the US. They've also been duped into thinking that it's the foreign governments who pay the tariffs. Economics 101 was a course that Trump obviously slept through.
The auto sector is highly integrated among the US, Canada, and Mexico. Because GM needs stability when making decisions, and realizing that Trump won't be around forever (we hope!) GM is playing the "long game", actually the same process that Mark Carney is deploying.
I forgot to mention that I believe that Harper probably reluctantly agreed to the bailout. I also feel that if PP had been PM at the time, GM, and the others wouldn't have been helped. PP is very orthodox in his right-wing Conservative views In my honest opinion.
Jerry, there’s a fascinating bit of history in this, and I went back and checked it.
Whatever anyone thinks of Stephen Harper, his government made the call in 2009 that allowing GM and potentially a big chunk of Canada's auto industry to collapse would cost the country far more than intervening.
Canada and Ontario ultimately provided $10.8 billion in support to GM, and Harper later defended that decision as necessary to protect Canadian jobs and Canada's place in the integrated North American auto industry.
And here we are 17 years later with GM investing another billion-plus in Ontario.
I would make one distinction, though.
The government recorded a substantial gain when it eventually sold its remaining GM shares, but that accounting gain isn't quite the same thing as saying taxpayers made a profit on the entire bailout.
As for Pierre, I'm reluctant to say what he would have done as PM.
He was actually part of Harper's Conservative government at the time, and I found him in Parliament defending that government's assistance to the auto industry.
That surprised me a little... which is exactly why I keep checking this stuff. 😂
But your larger point about the long game is the one that sticks with me.
**Governments and companies sometimes have to make decisions based on where the country will be ten years from now, not what makes the best political slogan next Tuesday.**
That's certainly what GM appears to be doing now. And I think it's what Canada has to do too.
Good article, Fred. Minister Tim Hodgson speaking in Saskatchewan today on the McIlvenna Bay venture said three key terms.
“Process, Refine, Sell”. He might have included ship as well. He confirms our country’s need to maximize industry and hence, profits to stay here. Let’s kill the phrase “hewers of wood and drawers of water” from our “Canadian speak”!
Scott, those three words caught my attention too...
**Process. Refine. Sell.**
And yes, I’d add **ship**... because finding customers and actually getting Canadian products to them is the other half of this job.
For too long Canada has been very good at digging something valuable out of the ground, putting it on a train or ship, and letting somebody else do the higher-value work.
McIlvenna Bay is encouraging because the copper comes out of Saskatchewan and is expected to be smelted in Quebec.
That’s more of the value chain staying here.
Mine it here.
Process it here.
Refine it here where we can.
Build things from it here.
Then sell the highest-value Canadian product we can to the world.
We’re always going to export raw commodities... and there’s nothing wrong with that when it makes economic sense.
But “hewers of wood and drawers of water” shouldn’t be our bloody national business plan. 😂