Oh, that’s embarrassing. As Canada boldly leverages its strategic transformational low-carbon pivot, Honda has pivoted away from a commitment to build an electric vehicle plant in Ontario despite $5 billion in promised subsidies. Evidently our federal government has known about it since January but didn’t bother mentioning it to mere citizens lest it cause talk. Even rebukes. As John Ivison wrote in the National Post, “In spring 2024, then prime minister Justin Trudeau released a video of himself wandering through Honda’s plant in Alliston, Ont. ‘We bet big on electric vehicles,’ he said, ahead of the announcement that Honda would build its electric cars entirely in Canada.” But it won’t. And they didn’t bet their own money. They bet a big heap of ours: “The strategy involved weaving a welcome mat with billions of taxpayers’ dollars — sometimes pledging more in support than the company was investing itself.” And now the house of IoUs is tumbling down.

As Ivison also observed, the whole thing was a response to American government policy, specifically the Biden-era Inflation Reduction Act offering “huge subsidies for EV producers and consumers”. So much for an independent Canadian course of action, eh? But now Honda is switching from EVs to “the Atlas gas-powered SUV” at its Tennessee plant which the St. Thomas, Ontario one was meant to supply. And don’t we look silly?

Yup. And by “we” we do not just mean Trudeau, now wandering through the celebrity wilderness dating pop stars. As Ivison further observes:

“EV sales in the U.S. dropped 27 per cent year on year in the first quarter, following the expiration of federal subsidies for EV buyers. In Canada, the government has just introduced its $2.3 billion Electric Vehicle Affordability program, where customers are offered a $5,000 rebate this year, declining to $2,000 in 2030. But this is not enough to cover the price differential between most EVs and gas-powered cars.”

Now it is true that Trudeau’s successor as head of Canada’s “Natural Governing Party” aka the Liberals is not wandering in the political wilderness. Instead he’s riding high in the polls on a perceived profound difference between his silly empathetic drama-teacher predecessor and his curt, manly central-banker-in-pricey-suit persona. But with all the trendy blather of corridors and synergy and transforming the catalytic leverage, Carney still believes almost exactly what Trudeau did, that the private sector may mysteriously have supplies of capital whereas even his Sovereign Wealth Fund is totally built on hock, but firms don’t know what to do until government gives them a nudge, or a sack of cash, and then thingy is unlocked.

Or crushed, because another aspect of Canada’s disastrous EV policy under Carney the leverager of transformative catalytics is a planned surge of Chinese EVs which, Ivison adds:

“would sound the death knell for the current giants of Canadian auto manufacturing, Honda and Toyota, which combined manufacture three-quarters of all cars in this country. Both Japanese giants have communicated to the Prime Minister’s Office that their Canadian operations have been hit by a triple whammy of public policy changes.”

So they have been warned. And presumably they have gathered in their high Laurentian towers to discuss catalysing the leveraged transformation. But they don’t bother us with it lest, again, it cause talk.

Oh, one more piece of idiocy courtesy of Ivison:

“The Canadian government’s greenhouse gas regulatory framework has proven to be yet another irritant for companies that have focused much of their production on hybrid versions of their most popular cars and trucks, such as the Toyota RAV 4 and Honda CR-V. Ottawa’s policy does not recognize hybrids, despite their reduced emissions, which forces the companies to buy compliance credits from EV companies that do not manufacture in Canada, such as Tesla.”

The famous American firm. Once again elbows up, IQ down.