Mr. Speaker, I am going to bring the temperature down just a touch, get a little decorum and speak a little more calmly, but I am happy to participate in this debate today on the auto sector.
I am also happy to let the House know that I will be splitting my time with my friend and colleague, the great member for Niagara Falls—Niagara-on-the-Lake.
As my friend from Niagara Falls knows all too well, as a former summer student at GM in Niagara, the Niagara region was central to the development of our country, from making steel, refining critical minerals and shipping the world its grain through the Welland Canal, to harnessing the immense power of Niagara Falls to electrify a growing nation. We also made great cars.
Generations of workers and communities in Niagara did not just support the national economy, but powered it. In Fort Erie, a place where the battles of war and conflict literally led to the creation of Canada, the majestic Peace Bridge transits the vehicles of commerce across the border to the United States and beyond.
At the heart of that Niagara legacy stands the auto sector, one of the most important pillars of Niagara's industrial base. It used to be a pillar, but it is not so much anymore. What we are seeing today is further disintegration of our once dominant auto sector shrinking into a small semblance of its former glory as one of Niagara's and Canada's anchors of economic strength.
A decade ago, Canada produced over two million vehicles a year. Today, that number has fallen to just over 1.2 million. The value of auto manufacturing in Niagara has changed. It is no longer the sprawling, multiplant, labour-intensive industrial engine it once was. While it remains critical and highly specialized in our economy today, it is in a bit of precarity. The sector remains vulnerable. In the last year alone, production has dropped 7.8%.
Thousands of skilled, dedicated Canadian workers are now out of a job, and this did not happen by accident. It happened because of decisions that caused the slow but constant export of manufacturing to everywhere but Canada. Canada's complacency was not imposed on us. It was chosen through neglect by abdicating our industrial strategy through economic hibernation and by focusing on social constructs, virtue signalling, postnationalism and open borders. Remember, “the budget will balance itself.”
Exacerbating all of this is that Canada created a bureaucratic behemoth whereby our system is mired in red tape, leading to capital flight and underinvestment. We have allowed declining productivity, chronic underinvestment, bureaucratic gridlock and the lack of an industrial strategy. Our largest source of new jobs in Canada has been in building redundant bureaucracies. That is the national disgrace and a fiscal disaster.
We may want to blame Donald Trump for the shockwaves in the global markets, but the signals have been here for a very long time. Trump's rhetoric may offend us. It offends me for sure. We can denounce him from the rooftops as reckless, dangerous and destabilizing. It gives us a fleeting sense of moral satisfaction, but it accomplishes nothing.
Like it or not, the United States has, overall, seen significantly stronger productivity growth than Canada has over the past decade. The U.S. capital investment per worker is substantially higher. Business creation and job creation have been stronger. In fact, Canadians started more businesses in the United States in 2024 than they did in Canada. Let that sink in. Canadians started more corporate entities in the United States than they did in Canada in 2024. If that is not a testament to failure, I cannot imagine what is.
Energy production in the U.S. is surging, but ours is not so much. Do members remember when there was no business case for LNG? Manufacturing investment is reshoring at scale in the U.S. As the government talks about pivoting away from the United States in what seems on the surface like a reasonable strategy, we need to recognize some fundamental facts, particularly with respect to the auto sector.
The government is asking Canadians to believe that we can replace the U.S. market, where over 95% of our vehicles are sold, with exports to Europe and overseas. That is not a strategy. That is an illusion.
As I listen to the answers to the questions in this House, the government's focus is on saying, “We believe in Canada.” The Minister of Finance says that ad nauseam. He is a bit of a master of righteous indignation. Frankly, it is nothing more than a deflection from inaction, a slogan without substance and abdication instead of action.
The Prime Minister continues to talk about balance, pivoting toward China as if geography were a suggestion, rather than a fact. At the same time, we are using Canadian taxpayers' dollars to subsidize the purchase of vehicles that are not even made in Canada. Think about that. We are taxing Canadians to help buy foreign-made cars while Canadian workers are losing their jobs. That is not industrial policy. That is surrender, and the cost of that surrender is enormous.
Geography is destiny. Geography is gravity. Canada shares the longest undefended border in the world with the United States, and 75% of our exports go south. Markets follow scale, infrastructure, proximity and legal certainty. We cannot close the gap of distance to other markets. Business grows to where capital flows. Canada's trading relationship with the United States is structural, not discretionary. To suggest anything different is not only foolish, but delusional and, ultimately, destructive.
As such, we must renegotiate CUSMA and leverage our strategic advantages to secure a durable trade deal. We have the resources, the critical minerals and the raw materials that can finally bring more homegrown value added to our products, rather than simply shipping raw materials and buying them back at market prices. However, most of those strategic opportunities are solidly stuck in a bureaucratic quagmire. Whether it is approving a pipeline or LNG terminals, or eliminating interprovincial barriers, it has been like watching the government push rope uphill.
That is why my leader is calling out for a new auto pact. It is because we cannot afford to watch this industry slowly slip further away. This plan is grounded in a principle Canadians understand: fairness. If someone wants to sell cars to Canadians, they should be building cars with Canadian workers. The plan would restore tariff-free trade with the United States, but with a clear expectation that production in Canada must match access to our market. That is how we bring investment back, that is how we secure jobs and that is how we rebuild confidence in our industrial future.
If we get this right, Niagara will not just be part of our industrial past, but it will be central to our industrial future, because every day tariffs remain in place, Canadian manufacturers are losing ground. Billions of dollars are flowing south. Investment is leaving. Plants are not being retooled here, but in the United States.
I may be an MP, but I am also a business person, and I see the tragic outflow of capital every day. The best and brightest are going south, to where capital, commercialization and scale exist. Capital investment happening here is highly leveraged against tax dollars. It is happening in my riding, where two EV plants exist. One never opened and one has been delayed by years because the market collapsed. Hundreds of millions of tax dollars were committed to these projects that are now stuck in EV purgatory.
Conservatives are putting forward a serious, practical strategy to rebuild Canada's auto sector and restore our economic strength. It is a plan rooted in reality, a plan grounded in results and a plan designed to bring our industry back to life. Our goal is clear. It is to restore Canadian auto production to two million vehicles a year. We would remove the GST on Canadian-made vehicles and make it easier for Canadians to buy Canadian. We would end subsidies for foreign-made vehicles. We would bring production home. We would introduce a simple and fair rule that for every vehicle a company sells in Canada, it must produce one in Canada to earn duty-free access. It would be a one-to-one system: build here and sell here.
Let us be clear about what is at stake. It is not just about cars. It is about jobs. It is about our communities. It is about whether Canada remains an industrial nation or continues to slide in productivity while ceding more of its economic future to countries like China and Italy. That is not an option.