CANADA NEEDS ITS OWN AUTOMOBILE INDUSTRY

CANADA NEEDS ITS OWN AUTOMOBILE INDUSTRY

Smaller than Canada, Sweden has created a viable motor car industry so why haven’t we? Could it be that copy-cat Canadian industrialists have simply found it easier to build United States engineered and designed vehicles, which are undeniably excellent products. I have owned a number of them.

We have automotive engineers in Canada. We have thousands of skilled assembly line workers, the necessary natural resources, automobile stylists are not in short supply, and vacant factories are already set up or soon will be. Until we have developed our own powerplant and transmission designs, a multi-year process, we could choose from the most reliable in the world and manufacture them under licence. With proper organisation and financing, perhaps with combined government and private ownership, there is no reason why we couldn’t do the same here as they have done in Sweden. Just keep political appointees out of the management ranks because we know how that would end up.

Whether you like him or not, Elon Musk started from scratch and built a fantastically successful automobile corporation. Why can’t Canadians do the same?

Fred Barrett Woodward

Editor