PM Mark Carney's Canada

[urbanclient]

The entry of Chinese electric vehicle manufacturers into the Canadian market presents a challenge that goes far beyond vehicle quality, technological advancement or privacy protection. Canada’s automotive sector is not simply encountering new competitors; it is being exposed to a fundamentally different industrial model that operates on an entirely uneven playing field. Chinese EV manufacturers benefit from a combination of weak labour protections, limited social welfare obligations, and extensive state support, including heavy government subsidies that materially distort costs and pricing. These structural advantages are incompatible with the regulatory, labour, and market frameworks governing Canada’s automotive industry.


A recent and instructive example is the lawsuit involving BYD’s operations in Brazil. Brazilian labour authorities have alleged that Chinese)p workers connected to a BYD project were subjected to conditions deemed analogous to forced labour, including overcrowded and unsanitary housing, excessive working hours, unlawful wage deductions, and restrictions on personal freedom. Particularly revealing were reports that some workers expressed surprise at being “rescued” by authorities, as the conditions—despite clearly violating Brazilian law—were still meaningfully better than those they had previously endured in similar work environments in China. This reaction highlights how deeply minimal labour protections are normalized within parts of the Chinese manufacturing system and how this normalization feeds directly into cost competitiveness abroad.


This labour asymmetry is further compounded by extraordinary levels of government intervention. Chinese EV manufacturers benefit from direct subsidies, preferential financing from state-owned banks, discounted or free land, tax holidays, subsidized energy, and coordinated industrial policies designed to accelerate global market dominance. These supports are not isolated incentives but part of a comprehensive state-led strategy that shields firms from market risk and enables sustained losses or aggressive pricing in foreign markets. Such practices have no parallel in the Japanese or Korean automotive sectors, where manufacturers operate within market-based systems and are subject to strict labour, environmental, and competition regulations.


For Canada, the implications are stark. The domestic automotive industry is being asked to compete not only against lower labour standards but also against state-subsidized pricing that no private, rules-based market can reasonably match. Left unaddressed, this dynamic forces a binary outcome: either Canada compromises its labour standards, industrial policies, and social protections to chase artificially depressed prices, or it allows subsidized imports to flood the market, hollowing out domestic manufacturing, supplier networks, and skilled employment.


Beyond the immediate economic impact lies a broader strategic risk. Market penetration by Chinese EV manufacturers will almost certainly be portrayed through state-aligned narratives as evidence of technological superiority and systemic effectiveness, rather than as the result of labour arbitrage and heavy state subsidization. This messaging will spill into other sectors, shaping public perceptions and policy debates well beyond automotive manufacturing. In this context, the issue is not simply whether Chinese EVs can compete in Canada, but whether Canada is prepared to defend fair competition, labour protections, and industrial sovereignty against an industrial model explicitly designed to undercut them.

I think this is a good time for me to jump in and say EVs won't substantially solve climate change. They merely reduce emissions near the end-user and go carbon negative after a few years of driving. The more effective way to a more sustainable future is public transit. In particular, electrified metros and RERs that are time-competitive compared to driving for short-medium distance trips <100 km. It's just thermodynamics. One person in a 2 tonne EV versus 800 people in a 200 tonne subway train.

 

[Westey]

5 years ago everyone was concerned about the lack of manufacturing capacity during the pandemic. Everything from Medicine, materials, machinery, etc. All countries said they need to do things domestically to survive such a situation, or if our suppliers become our adversaries in war. (Russian oil in Europe is a non-pandemic example as well).
4 years later and everything is forgotten. We are just happy to say that we will side with China if anything happens in the future, to save a few bucks now.

 

[urbanclient]

5 years ago everyone was concerned about the lack of manufacturing capacity during the pandemic. Everything from Medicine, materials, machinery, etc. All countries said they need to do things domestically to survive such a situation, or if our suppliers become our adversaries in war. (Russian oil in Europe is a non-pandemic example as well).
4 years later and everything is forgotten. We are just happy to say that we will side with China if anything happens in the future, to save a few bucks now.

You win some you lose some. Especially in a short-sighted economy with less state intervention on the innovation front. It's arguable that Canada has less 'state capitalism' than the US and China.

Now is an opportunity for Canada to pull a China and reverse-engineer the Chinese EV processes and end product to catch up. The greatest form of flattery.

 

[Northern Light]

5 years ago everyone was concerned about the lack of manufacturing capacity during the pandemic. Everything from Medicine, materials, machinery, etc. All countries said they need to do things domestically to survive such a situation, or if our suppliers become our adversaries in war. (Russian oil in Europe is a non-pandemic example as well).
4 years later and everything is forgotten. We are just happy to say that we will side with China if anything happens in the future, to save a few bucks now.

May I suggest when trying to make a point that 'everyone' is a bad word to use in a sentence, no matter the position or take, because it will almost always be provably untrue. n

'Everyone' was not concerned about domestic manufacturing capacity, in general; some were, more were concerned about the ability to manufacture vaccines and PPE, among other things.

Likewise, 'everything' is not forgotten among those who did care about that issue; though it has receded some in public consciousness, as these things always will, because there are always 'new' concerns at the fore of daily life.

Just as with 'everyone', 'we' is always a problematic term, in the context of your last sentence, it would read to include yourself, which I don't think you intended, while also implying that literally everyone in Canada was polled or took a vote when no such thing has occurred.

On top of that, the statement you've made doesn't jive with the facts of the trade deal with China, which essentially reinstates the number of EVs they sold into the Canadian market pre-pandemic, (49,000) which is a very small part of the Canadian automotive market.

Should we be concerned about our ability to manufacture in Canada? Sure, absolutely. In this context, cars. But we have such ability now, this won't change that, and indeed, there is something in the works here that has been hinted at which is that BYD will likely be building an auto-related factory (might be a battery plant or the like) or could be a more conventional assembly operation.

There are certainly arguments to be made for having more Canadian-owned manufacturing capability, as well as taking steps to ensure data security and the like.

But the deal with China as it stands does not represent any rollback of Canadian automotive manufacturing capacity in the auto sector or any other.