Premier Doug Ford says Prime Minister Mark Carney’s deal with China on electric vehicles has hurt Ontarians and the two have not spoken since.
Ford says he was disappointed Carney did not give him a heads-up about a potential deal before the prime minister’s trip to China last week.
Carney struck a deal with China last week to allow up to 49,000 electric vehicles to receive a vastly reduced tariff rate of 6.1 per cent as they come into Canada in exchange for dropping tariffs on Canadian canola and some seafood.
Ford and Carney became fast friends after the latter’s win to become prime minister in the spring.
Ford is a selfish piece of shit. Ontario has gotten so much already and this one deal saves farmers across Canada and all he does is bitch and moan. The rest of Canada cheered when he got his deals, how about a little teamwork in return.
Did Ford give Carney a heads up when he decided to do all the shady shit he’s done? Like… professional courtesy is one thing, but Ford is acting like an entitled lil bitch.
You mean all those USian jobs that are leaving south of the border rapidly? Fuck US car companies. Why tf doesn’t Dougie support an actual affordable, basic daily driver Canadian EV company if he wants stable Ontario jobs
Why tf doesn’t Dougie support an actual affordable, basic daily driver Canadian EV company if he wants stable Ontario jobs
There are no Canadian car companies. The last one ended in 1976 after 24 months.
Bombardier: we’re no longer Canadian, but we’ll make you a car if you pay us enough!
They don’t have time for that, all levels of government are still too busy trying to sabotage Edison Motors with regulatory roadblocks whenever possible. They don’t have enough time to also sabotage NEW EV companies, they can only do so much at one time.
That may have been the way it initially looked, but after Edison’s founders had meetings with politicians and department heads, they have got some of those roadblocks removed and are well on their way to dealing with the rest.
Most of those regulations weren’t intentionally preventing what Edison is doing, but rather had been created without predicting and accommodating the type of hybrid EV that Edison is making.
It was more a “fell through the cracks” issue and not the government actively standing in their way.
The speed that the regulatory changes have happened is surprisingly fast compared to how government usually moves.
Oh, Doug Ford. Not the Ford Motor Company, which is the Ford I would’ve thought more likely to complain about having a competitor that’s actually capable of selling EVs at reasonable prices.
The main problem is that 49000 is much too small a number given the rate at which Canadians are buying cars.
It’s brilliant on the Chinese side of things. Think about the PlayStation 5. Imagine they only released 49000 of them. Scarcity can build demand if they send top quality cars at great prices.
The main problem is that 49000 is much too small a number given the rate at which Canadians are buying cars.
CDNs bought 1.9M cars in 2025. 20% were pickups. EV sales are about 8%. This is why Carney agreed to this, it won’t make any real difference and we get back $5B in canola sales to China, and yet the Skippy supporters have sand in their vaginas about this deal.
Irl it’s sand in their foreskin … but I digress.
I didn’t buy an EV in 2025 because they’re too expensive for what you get.
Then again, I also didn’t buy a pickup in 2025 because they’re too expensive for what I need.
Cheap commuter EV? As long as it’s cheaply repairable, I’m in. I don’t expect that to be the case, sadly.
My gawd … Druggie whines like a spoiled child. I wish he’d just stfu already.
He needs to feign opposition for his creamy buddies in Kenora.
Great job CBC providing context in the title: “says he still hasn’t spoken to Carney” !
I, for one, can’t wait to have access actually affordable electric cars. BTW, it’s pronounced Biyadi in China. A might fancier then three letter acronym I think.
Biyadi almost sounds Italian
BYD is an acronym for “build your dreams”.
You will have to ask yourself whether it was coerced labor that built your car. I for may part don’t want such a vehicle.
I also don’t understand why people are (rightfully) calling for stronger workers protection in Canada and the West, but at the same time welcoming Chinese cars built under forced labor conditions (Chinese carmaker BYD’s plant in Brazil last year was shut down as the factory employed Chinese migrant workers under “slavery-like” conditions, the authorities said).
If you don’t like that, then you probably don’t own a smart phone or a computer then, because the minerals required to make these devices operate is almost entirely from the same mine in the DRC where workers are buried alive by cave-ins and left to die. The magnets used to make electronics work mostly comes from a Chinese mine that has destroyed an entire village and caused the deaths of thousands of people from cancer. Probably don’t eat chocolate also because it’s almost impossible to buy chocolate that doesn’t have child slaves somewhere in the supply chain. Also there are children at the mines in the DRC, they die in cave-ins too.
There is no ethical consumption under capitalism. You can pick any one item, trace it back to the raw materials required to produce it, and you will likely find something that is ethically wrong with how it was produced. It’s all horrible, the whole system is fucked and I don’t know what to do about it but I don’t think singling out any one company for their morally bankrupt policies is the way to go about it. You can say don’t buy this or that, but then you’d eventually have to say don’t buy anything, which isn’t the way to go about changing things.
In any case, there is a definite need for affordable electric vehicles because people have been raised on the belief that owning a vehicle is somehow the only way to survive. It’s really difficult to change peoples minds on that, and it shows in how we’ve designed our cities and not invested any money at all into building a national rail network that would reduce the need for a personal vehicle. But here we are, with the climate slowly failing and most people just going on with their lives as if it wasn’t. We need something to satiate their need/want for a personal vehicle that doesn’t rely on fuel and BYD seems to be the only option for Canadians in terms of affordability. I do wish dacia and renault would open up shop in Canada but they haven’t. So now we only have the larger auto makers and fucking tesla which is unaffordable or you give slightly less money to a fascist oligarch in the states. With BYD we now have a third option: give a relatively small amount of money to a Chinese automaker with a long list of labour violations that they’re not going to do anything about. Most people will go with BYD because it’s the only one they can afford and it’s not a tesla.
Tl;DR - We need a cheap EV to help reduce the damage being caused by climate change. ‘Traditional’ manufacturers are not providing this option, so now we have BYD. They have no respect for workers rights (like every international company) but the cheaper EVs they can provide will help reduce fossil fuel usage.
If we want to fight climate change, we need -among other things- fewer cars, no matter whether they are EVs or others.
The rest of you write-up makes largely no economic sense. It’s just another “the West bad, China bad okay” rant.
Enjoy your vehicle built by slave labor and underpriced to make you dependent on China.
Canada could import affordable cars sold in Europe, but all anyone cares about anymore is saving a dollar.
AFAICT, the BYD factory in Zhengzhou is mostly automated. I mean, the Chinese government is awful, and I can’t afford to buy a vehicle anyway, but simply having another option other than expensive luxury electric car or support the american fascist oligarch is a good thing for Canadians. It’s still a choice between a turd sandwich and a piece of shit tho, at least BYD should be cheaper and has less risk than supporting a guy that’s actively undermining American democracy.
I know there are cheap electric cars from renault and dacia (also renault), and idk why they’re not sold in Canada. Maybe they don’t have the capacity to serve the Canadian market. I’m sure they’d blow BYD out of the water if they did, considering how car centered our infrastructure is and what I perceive as a thirst for cheap electric cars *and general support for increasing relations with Europe.
Anyway, their cars are made in Morocco, so I’m not sure if the workers there are treated any better than ones in China, or the states for that matter.
Ford is making no sense. He ripped out the chargers, he ended the incentives on EVs. EV sales in Canada are down to 8%.
No one is going to give up their brodozer to buy a Jiangling Panda, people will eat window caulk before giving up their F150s.
Secondly, these Chinese EVs are being drop shipped. Let them come and let the idiots find out the hard way they are disposable and cannot be fixed. I will be amazed if anyone takes a Chinese EV seriously in 5 years, but if by some miracle the cars last, then they deserve the EV market Detroit refuses to build to, despite free money from Doug and Justin.
The canola industry in ON makes $3B/yr, you’re welcome.
I’ve been byds all over Europe and Mexico, they seem decent, people say they’re sweet…
What are you on about, mate? These are proven vehicles being sold and used all over the world… Except Canada because the Canadian government would rather support obsolete technology for the sake of keeping jobs in the country instead of driving and supporting the next, necessary, leap in automotive tech.
