• ikidd@lemmy.world
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    4 months ago

    Yah, and now we have China looking to restrict canola imports in retribution, something of actual value to the Canadian economy, unlike our non-existent EV industry. There will be massive costs to agriculture from this stupidity, and it’s all for image points, not anything useful.

    For reference sake, agriculture contributed $42 billion to Canada’s GDP in 2023. I can’t find any numbers for EV because I suspect it doesn’t exist.

    • GreyEyedGhost@lemmy.ca
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      4 months ago

      The total new car market for 2023 was almost $90 billion. Of that, EV sales count for about 10.7%, or about $9.5 billion. Stats Can provides the first number, electricautonomy.ca was the source for the second, although they got their info from Stats Can, too.

      There are a number of possible errors with this data, such as the percentage of EV sales being total sales vs. dollar sales, which would increase the amount spent on EVs since they tend to be more expensive.

      • ikidd@lemmy.world
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        4 months ago

        And how much of that is built or sourced in Canada? Thats what we would be trying to protect when we do this. And to my knowledge, its negligible. What we’re doing is appeasing the US at the cost of agricultural exports, exactly as we did when we arrested the Huawei exec that they had conveniently let across the border in order to create strife.

          • ikidd@lemmy.world
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            4 months ago

            I’m not buying it. We have billions of dollars at stake right now and are risking it for the maybe, possibly chance of producing domestic EVs someday. But our track record at things like emerging technology has been pretty poor, as seen by the Ottawa silicon-valley attempt and nanotech throw a lot of money down the drain accomplishing nothing.

            Gee, the LPC can’t get any traction west of Thunder Bay, I wonder why…