Last week I was admiring my Grab ride in Bangkok — a Sapphire blue, Chinese, BYD electric vehicle (EV) that looked and felt like a high-end BMW or Lexus. A quick Google search confirmed what my driver had already told me: that the retail price was approximately C$35,000 for this incredible machine. He loved the car and was effusive about its performance, quality and impressive battery capacity.
I’ve had similar experiences with happy BYD EV drivers in Singapore, Malaysia and the Philippines this year, most of whom were driving much more basic and low-cost vehicles than the sapphire beauty in Bangkok.
And at the end of each ride I found myself quietly mumbling, “Why can’t we have nice things in Canada?”
So you can imagine my delight when Prime Minister Mark Carney announced the effective removal of tariffs on Chinese EVs last week. Even though initial availability will be limited to approximately three per cent of total automotive sales in Canada, I have no doubt there will be overwhelming demand to make them more widely available to Canadians once these cars start appearing on streets across the country.
And to be clear, I consider this to be an unreserved win for Canada. I have read some of the concerns about the Canada-China deal from various sources, including this newspaper. But I’m not buying it.
Last February, I wrote in Canadian Affairs that there was no future for a North American integrated automotive supply chain. That view was somewhat controversial at the time. But if the past year has taught us anything, it is that any Canadian industry that plans to integrate long-term with the U.S. does so at their peril.
In the case of the automotive sector, this peril is magnified by the American aim of turning back the tide of technology and insisting that the U.S. remains beholden to the internal combustion engine. Just like the allegory of King Cnut commanding the incoming tide to halt (spoiler alert: it didn’t work), the U.S. automotive industry will inevitably be swept away by technology that is getting significantly better and cheaper every year.
So the idea of Canadian governments making concessions and perhaps backstopping investments so that Ontario factories can follow the big American automotive companies into oblivion is just nonsensical.
I am also not naïve in thinking that Canada can easily pivot to replace the hundreds of thousands of good jobs in the automotive sector. This change will be painful. The point is it will be painful whether or not we open our market to world class EVs.
Having said this, there are lots of opportunities for the Canadian economy going forward. As we become a little more pragmatic and less sanctimonious in our approach to the world, our opportunities will continue to multiply.
I first started doing business in China in the early 1990s, shortly after the Tiananmen Square protests. The western world was appalled at how the Chinese military repressed these protests. But we were humble and more pragmatic then. Rather than berate and virtue signal, we took the approach that economic cooperation could be a part of peaceful co-existence. And besides, was it really our position to lecture other countries on their internal politics?
This approach reaped significant rewards for Canada, as my team closed $500 million in sales of hydroelectric turbines and generators to China that were manufactured in Montreal and Peterborough, Ont.
We can reignite this pragmatic approach in Canada, and in doing so, we can win as a middle power in this new multipolar world. We can become an energy superpower, not just in oil and gas, but also in evolving nuclear technologies and in renewables. We can build our aerospace and technology industries through strategic investments in defence projects. And we can reclaim our position as a leader in artificial intelligence.
Here’s a thought for you. Rather than bail out a failing automotive supply chain, what if we committed significant national investment to developing a non-U.S. based foundational AI model? Something that can compete with Open AI, Anthropic and Google Gemini.
Now this might be a bridge too far for some of you who remain paranoid about China. But what if we, perhaps, developed such a model in cooperation with a Chinese partner such as DeepSeek?
Once we stop thinking like a vassal state beholden to the U.S., the world really is our oyster.
And so I find myself more excited for the future of the Canadian economy than I’ve ever been in my career. The NAFTA years really weren’t that great for Canada. This was personal for me as the company I led during those years suffered immensely under American dominance.
And even though this might sound like an anti-American bias, it’s really not. I hope for the best in the U.S. I desperately want our American cousins to regain their footing. But what I’m not willing to do is to stand by helplessly watching as 10,000 voters in Georgia or Wisconsin hold a balance of power that has enormous knock-on effects in Canada.
Now is our chance to be “maitres chez nous,” as they say in Quebec — masters in our own house.
