Battery production is at the core of a lot of critical minerals discussions. I think there are a few things to note in response to your question. First, in order to spur battery production in Canada—and maybe I'll touch on that more in a moment—there needs to be funding to support capital expenditures in this space, but there also has to be the required infrastructure across the country to support consumer adoption of new technologies. Our automotive manufacturing industry builds where they sell. We have five OEMs operating out of Ontario producing about 1.4 million consumer cars annually, the majority of which are shipped to the United States. For Canada to increase its share of EV use amongst Canadians, there needs to be supporting infrastructure, charging infrastructure readily available coast to coast.
I saw that Flavio Volpe of the Automotive Parts Manufacturers' Association recently appeared before the committee. I suspect that some of what I say here may have been mentioned previously, but I think that within the auto sector, which is quickly electrifying their fleet of products while also decarbonizing their operations, there exists ample opportunity for battery production in this space. Canada has a unique opportunity here. Localized mineral supply will make our automotive manufacturing industry more competitive while supporting EV development by reducing logistical costs and further sourcing critical minerals in alignment with the regional-value-content requirements of the USMCA, the new NAFTA, which provides a competitive advantage to serving North American markets.
There are advantages to building EV batteries here in Canada, but we have to develop those extraction supply chains to source critical minerals to do so, and we also have to form financial partnerships to offset the significant capital expenditures required to set up EV production facilities.