Opinion: With industry 'under siege,' Canada’s auto strategy needs big jolt |
Stuart Culbertson: With U.S. threats and tariffs and the partial lifting of tariffs on Chinese EVs, we need a plan to transition our industry away from U.S. market dependency and transform it into a leader in EV production
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By: Stuart Culbertson
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As 2026 opens on the global trade front, finally the much overused word “unprecedented” seems appropriate — if not an understatement.
On Jan. 16, an agreement to allow a first wave of low-tariffed electric vehicles (EVs) from China was signed by Chinese President Xi Jinping and Prime Minister Mark Carney in Beijing.
With that deal, Canada made a first move in a multi-level chess game on the future of one of our largest industries — the automotive sector. The following week, in his speech to the World Economic Forum in Davos, Carney told us that “nostalgia is not a strategy.”
There is something deeply nostalgic about the Jan. 16 date for the Canadian auto sector. That date marked the 61st anniversary of the signing of the Canada-U. S. Auto Pact by then-Prime Minister Lester B. Pearson and U.S. President Lyndon B. Johnson in 1965.
Since then, three generations of Canadian workers have built millions of vehicles under this free trade framework.
I reference the Auto Pact not out of nostalgia but in context. Its framework for free trade in vehicles and parts predates the Canada-U.S.-Mexico Trade agreement (CUSMA) by decades. This framework is now under siege by the Trump administration in its efforts to repatriate auto manufacturing back to the U.S. Three........