I don't disagree, because there have been discussions, and next week—I guess not Monday, but a week today—we are moving on to the credit card study, but I'd hate to lose the opportunity, since everyone's here and has had a little breakfast, to propose another motion that's on notice.
Thank you, Mr. Masse. I'll take the opportunity.
I put this on notice last week:
That, given that the Government of Canada has invested upward of $50 billion towards the creation of an EV battery ecosystem in Canada and has mandated that all automobile sales in Canada be zero-emitting by 2035, and given that:
(i) Northvolt's $7-billion EV battery plant in Montreal, QC, has delayed construction for upward of a year while it undergoes a “strategic review” of its future operations, despite receiving 7.2 billion dollars' worth of taxpayer money;
(ii) Unicore's $2.7-billion EV battery component plant in Kingston, ON, has halted construction, despite receiving 1 billion dollars' worth of taxpayer subsidies; and
(iii) Ford's $1.8-billion EV expansion in Oakville, ON, has been scrapped and retooled to make gasoline pickups, despite receiving 590 million dollars' worth of taxpayer subsidies;
the committee therefore agree to conduct a four-meeting study, beginning in the first week of November, to review the feasibility of the government's EV strategy, given the significant amount of taxpayer support amid a global slowdown in EV sales, and that the committee agree to hear from witnesses submitted by members of the committee proportional to their representation in the House, report its findings to the House and request that the government table a comprehensive response to the report.
I put this on notice last week. In the media over the last number of months, we've seen that a number of the companies involved in this space are scaling back their production of EVs, including plans in Canada. As I said in the motion, after a strategic review, Northvolt has already announced 1,600 layoffs in Sweden, and they're not proceeding with certain plant construction in Sweden. Volkswagen has scaled back its plans for EV and part production in Europe. Ford lost $1 billion on its EV sales last year and has scaled back.
The only place where we seem to be continuing with this thing that consumers and the markets aren't buying is where we have a massive government subsidy. In this case, when it comes to the Stellantis EV plants and Volkswagen plants, what we have is a 100% assembly subsidy from the taxpayer of Canada through 2029, as we know, and then it's 75% the year after, 50% the year after that and 25% the year after that. The result of all of that is perhaps it's not surprising that where these global companies are getting 100% taxpayer subsidies, they haven't changed some of their plans, but where they're not getting the 100% subsidies, such as Northvolt on the production subsidies, they're scaling back.
The free market is saying there isn't the capacity for this, yet the government is plowing ahead with what appears to be a fairly failed strategy of industrial engineering and selection in picking a particular technology that the market is not accepting and trying to put Canadian taxpayers on the hook. As a result, because over $50 billion has been committed to basically the three or four plants here, if you bring the provincial money into it, we should have a study on it before the government starts doling out more taxpayer money on the production subsidy side of it and on the construction side of it. We should get an update on the construction of all these plants and whether or not, at this stage, it's a good thing to do.
I will leave it there for now. I'm sure others will have a few thoughts.