Ontario and the Feds have come to an agreement on funding the Stellantis EV battery plant in Windsor. Martin Regg Cohn writes:
So why did the premier and the prime minister dig so deep? And deeper still?
They couldn’t risk Stellantis pulling up stakes — and pulling the rug out from the rest of the auto sector.
There is no simple political calculus, no easy economic calculation for placing so big a bet in so broad a bidding war. You do what you have to do.
Or you do nothing at all. And watch the sector spiral into nothingness.
When the provincial and federal governments first ponied up a witch’s brew of sweeteners and concessions to lure a Stellantis electric vehicle battery plant last year, it seemed like a good idea at the time. At a good price.
But then things changed:
Once U.S. President Joe Biden opened the door to massive subsidies for American EV battery-making, the corrosive effect was always going to leach into Canadian decision-making. With a better offer over the border, you can’t blame Stellantis for holding us over a barrel.
Why put itself at a competitive disadvantage knowing its rivals would gain an edge? Why would we?
When the carmaker downed tools, suspended construction and made plans to relocate to the highest bidder, it wasn’t bluffing. Stellantis wasn’t so much putting a gun to our head as it was pointing the way to its next move — as logical as it was inevitable.
As the company’s CEO Carlos Tavares told my colleague Rob Ferguson this week, he had to make a rational business decision in a world where everyone wants to come out on top. It’s also a defensible governmental decision in a world where no one wants to hit bottom.
To be sure, labour and business both will cheerfully if optimistically tally up the potential multiplier effects of a car sector that generates spinoff jobs throughout the economy — from mining of rare minerals to assembly of commonplace auto parts. Multipliers don’t always add up, but they are not nothing.
Which is why Unifor, which represents auto industry workers, lavished praise on two politicians from two different parties it doesn’t always love.
“Thousands upon thousands of workers’ livelihoods were hanging in the balance throughout this dispute,” said Lana Payne, president of the country’s largest private sector union. “We would like to thank Prime Minister (Justin) Trudeau, Premier Doug Ford and the company.”
Such is the world we live in.
Image: The Toronto Star
9 comments:
After 40 years of happily offshoring North American jobs to save a few cents here and there, our exports are mostly fossil fuels and other resource commodities, while China exports mainly sophisticated manufactured goods needing incredibly complex supply chains.
Now our oligarchs (some of them) have decided to try and bribe industry to return here.
Bribery works ... for a time, but bribery victims are not very loyal if the money stops.
Bribery is just one form (and the nice-side) of coercion. Provoking a war is another way to sell weapons (one of the few remaining America industries) and replace 'evil' fossil fuels with our 'ethical' fossil fuels ... too bad about that pipeline.
Big money still calls the tune. PoV.
Yummy ... another better idea by the clever monkeys ... it's almost like vampires who are banished until you invite them in ... why is it always short sighted answers with devastating long term consequences?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yRPW8zN_c0E
And this is the way of the future, lungta?
I check ProgBlog a couple of times a week and I'm consistently disappointed by how little interest is shown to the climate tragedy now unfolding before us. It conveys a measure of resignation. Government inaction is one thing but what worries me is when the public fails to rally to the threat. Then we are screwed. Once we've arrived at that point what is politics but pointless bickering? Progressive thinking is dulled, irrelevant. That's because progressivism always focused on a better future for generations to come. Now we've written them off.
If we don't fight climate change together, we'll wind up fighting each other. Gwynne Dyer contends that each nation's greatest threat is the bordering nation that lies between it and the equator. It's your neighbour. I was reminded of these realities as news stories emerged this week that Canada's military is woefully understrength. Resource wars. Wars of subsistence. Wars of survival. The UN tracks them. In larger countries this can lead to regional tensions. In Europe there's some discussion about dividing the European Union along a north-south line, the northern states jettisoning the overheated Mediterranean countries. In the United States the Great Lakes governors unite with their Canadian provincial counterparts to resist periodic demands to drain freshwater into the Mississippi.
Potential hot spots that could spill over into major conflicts often involve shared access to river water. On the Nile, upstream countries such as Sudan want to dam the river for hydro-electricity. Egypt has relied on the Nile for millennia for irrigation and the annual floods essential for agriculture and it's threatening to bomb those dams. In Iraq, the Tigris and Euphrates, so instrumental in the development of civilization in the "fertile crescent," are failing due to upstream dams. The waters of the Mekong River, the lifeblood of Southeast Asia, face a similar access problem. As water levels recede, sea water moves ever further upstream, into areas that once relied on freshwater to fill rice paddies. Meanwhile, 40 million Americans are dependent on the declining Colorado River waters. The worst problem, however, traces to the Himalayan headwaters that spill into rivers critical to the survival of Pakistan, India and China. Ever wonder why China invaded and annexed Tibet? There you go. Not only are India and China grossly overpopulated, all three - Pakistan, India and China have substantial nuclear arsenals.
Here's something else to ponder. The Himalayan headwaters, the Nile, the Colorado, the Mekong (toss in the Yellow and Yangtze rivers), the Tigris and the Euphrates have something else in common. All of them are vital to the survival of countries that are becoming blistering hot, the front lines of the unfolding climate tragedy.
And here we sit, dormant, waiting for events to overtake us. Christ on a crutch!
We know what is happening, Mound. But we can't muster the political will to deal with a global problem. In the end, we will be defeated by our own smallness -- our inability to rise above our darker angels.
Another rare sighting of the elusive MoS reminds us that the current human squabbles are akin to re-arranging the deck chairs on the sinking Titanic.
It is not that we couldn't fix it, ameliorate it and/or adapt to it in time.
It is just that we are not showing any civic will to indicate that we will take the action to save ourselves from imminent climate/environmental disaster.
I saw a new term that sums up where I am at: "Collapse Aware". It is not a comfortable perch - hence the many folks (as decried by MoS) who prefer lala land.
https://medium.com/@CollapseSurvival/the-profound-loneliness-of-being-collapse-aware-28ac7a705b9
The Americans are looking north to our water? Why, just yesterday(July 13) I heard a comment regarding "Canadian Water". "if oil goes to pot, we always have our water to rely upon for money". While Canada keeps advertising we have 20% of the world's fresh water. Bring on the dams, turn the rivers south is the stupidity of some of the mindset in this Province of Alberta. Anyong
It's part of a mindset that sees the United States as The Garen of Eden, Anyong. Obviously, those who believe that myth are ill-informed.
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