“Net-Zero Tyranny”

There is a long-running debate about whether Tesla is a car or a technology company. For a while this was largely an academic question related to future potential and therefore valuation. But now Elon Musk’s baby has reached a crunch point and the search for an answer has become existential.

There are no prizes for guessing which side Musk comes down on. “If you value Tesla just as an auto company, you fundamentally have the wrong framework,” he said last week. “If someone doesn’t believe Tesla is going to solve autonomy, they should not be an investor in the company.”

Parties to the massive Honda EV investment deal reached this week have tacitly acknowledged that foreign workers will be involved in setting up the proposed auto plants, while attempting to downplay an issue already seized upon by the federal Conservatives.

In response to questions throughout the week, federal officials, their provincial counterparts and executives for the automaker have talked about “optimizing” or “maximizing” the number of Canadian jobs — leaving the door open for foreign workers to work on facilities resulting from the historic $15-billion deal.

The saga of Bombardier, once a symbol of Canadian pride, is a sobering one. Joseph-Armand Bombardier, who founded the company in 1942, was a great Canadian inventor and entrepreneur. But over time, the company that bears his name morphed into the poster child for corporate welfare in Canada, becoming utterly dependent on using its outsized political clout to browbeat successive governments into funneling them perpetual taxpayer largesse. The results have cost Canadians more than $4 billion in direct costs alone; distorted and disfigured our economy at the expense of other sectors not so favoured; and sowed unhelpful regional divisions to boot.

On Thursday, the federal and Ontario governments announced that they will be doling out an estimated $5 billion in corporate welfare to Honda, so the auto giant can build an electric vehicle (EV) battery plant and manufacture EVs in Ontario.

This is the third such deal in Ontario, following similar corporate welfare handouts to Volkswagen ($13 billion) and Stellantis ($15 billion). Like the previous two deals, the Honda deal comes at a significant cost to taxpayers and will almost certainly fail to create widespread economic benefits for Ontarians.

Enormous investments in EV technology shook the automotive industry in both Canada and the U.S. this week. Honda promised to spend $15 billion in Ontario on Thursday morning. Toyota unveiled new investments in Indiana that afternoon, bringing its total spending on EVs in that state to $8 billion US.

“In Canada, our target is that 100 per cent of all light duty cars and passenger truck sales be zero emission by 2035,” said Prime Minister Justin Trudeau at the Honda announcement in Alliston, Ont. “As a great Canadian once said, that is where the puck is going and that is where we’re going to be.”

But the surge in investment comes as the underlying EV industry remains at a crossroads. Growth forecasts have plateaued, charging infrastructure has not kept pace and electric vehicle prices have pushed the cars out of reach of many consumers.

This is a CBC PROPAGANDA piece for the Liberals.