A massive new electric vehicle battery plant in St. Thomas, Ont., is being hailed as a “game changer” for Canada’s auto sector and broader economy, as countries fight to secure investment in clean technologies.
Details of the multibillion-dollar project were announced on Friday at an official welcoming for German automaker Volkswagen to Canada to build what they say could be the largest EV battery plant in the world.
The plant in the southwestern Ontario city is expected to employ up to 3,000 people and create thousands of spinoff jobs. Volkswagen is investing $7 billion to build the plant, according to the Prime Minister’s Office.
The plant will be VW’s largest in North America and has the potential to be the largest VW plant in the world, said Frank Blome, the CEO of PowerCo, the Volkswagen subsidiary that makes batteries for electric vehicles.
“St. Thomas was the capital for trains and Volkswagen is the capital for automotive, so we fit well together,” Blome said on Friday. “Congratulations on outperforming the competition and bringing this factory to St. Thomas.”
The plant will have six production lines and make enough batteries for one million cars every year. VW has plans to make 25 new electric vehicle models in the coming decades, and most of their batteries will come from St. Thomas, Blome said.
Prime Minister Justin Trudeau credited Canadian workers for the largest auto deal in the country’s history and one of the largest industrial parks in all of North America.
Ontario Premier Doug Ford says politics took a back seat in order for federal and provincial officials to land the investment from Volkswagen. (Kate Dubinski/CBC)
“This deal is about workers. It will be worth $200 billion to the Canadian economy over the coming decade,” Trudeau said. He acknowledged that Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre has come out against the deal, saying the $13 billion in federal subsidies is too much.
“Cleaner environment, a stronger, healthier happier workforce, partnerships with Indigenous peoples, that is how we build a strong economy of the future,” Trudeau said. “Mr Poilievre has said this is a waste of money…. Canada is about building a stronger future for the middle class and their children.”
Trudeau says the project will create up to 30,000 indirect or spinoff jobs.
Liberals claim they are replacing oil and gas with new “green jobs”. <br><br>Yet, the lithium for electric cars comes not from Canada, but from polluting foreign countries with no paychecks for Canadians. <br><br>Foreign polluters win. Canadian workers lose. <a href=”https://t.co/2Ik2Ix0lcC”>https://t.co/2Ik2Ix0lcC</a>
The federal government agreed to give Volkswagen up to $13 billion in subsidies over the next decade, part of a deal to lure the company to build its first North American electric vehicle battery plant in southern Ontario.
“This is the largest auto investment in the province’s history. It’s a complete turnaround of the auto sector in three years. We’re back. Ontario is back,” said Vic Fedeli, the province’s minister of economic development, job creation and trade.
‘This is the future of our community’
Local business leaders also welcomed the investment. “This plant will dramatically shift the direction of where this community is going,” said Sean Dyke, CEO of the St. Thomas Economic Development Corporation.
“This is the future of our community.”
On top of the billions from Ottawa, Ontario will pay $500 million in “direct incentives” to VW. The province will also invest new funds in St. Thomas and surrounding communities.
Ontario Premier Doug Ford praised the deal and said it was important to put political differences aside to bring investment to the province.
A licence plate on a yellow VW reads, ‘St. Thomas Proud,’ at the unveiling of plans to build an EV battery plant in the southwestern Ontario city. (Kate Dubinski/CBC)
“The cars of the future will be made here in Ontario from start to finish, from the minerals in northern Ontario to the batteries here in St. Thomas, and they’ll be made by Ontario workers,” Ford said.
“We are revitalizing Ontario’s auto sector and making Ontario the auto powerhouse of North America.”
The announcement took place at the Elgin County Railway Museum, with vintage train cars looming over the politicians and executives.
Outside, striking Public Service Alliance of Canada members could be heard chanting as Trudeau praised the workers who will work in the plant.
“Canada has the advantage because of the workers themselves, people who know how to deliver exactly what the world wants,” the prime minister said.
VW deal a ‘game changer’ for Canada: Champagne
Innovation Minister François-Philippe Champagne says the $13-billion deal with the automaker is going to bring more jobs to St. Thomas, Ont., and represents a ‘generational opportunity.’
“This is more than a gigafactory. It’s an understanding that the future is going to be strong and bring for the people here and the people across the country.”
The plan is for the federal government to provide annual production subsidies to the German automaker and kick in funds for the massive factory in St. Thomas, which is estimated to be the size of 391 football fields, making it the largest factory in Canada.
‘We need to attract industry’
Billions in taxpayer dollars for a profitable automaker like Volkswagen doesn’t make sense at first glance, said one international business expert.
But it does once you consider that Canada is up against the United States’ Inflation Reduction Act, which offers billions in subsidies to companies to build south of the border, said Andreas Schotter, a professor of international strategy at the Ivey School of Business at Western University in London, Ont., and a former marketing sales controller for North America at Volkswagen.
Volkswagen to build EV battery plant in Ontario
Volkswagen has announced it’s building a major electric vehicle battery factory in St. Thomas, Ont. Slated to open in 2027, the factory is the first of its kind in Canada.
“That Inflation Reduction Act has really pushed up the need to open the pockets wider for attracting investments in green technology and battery plants. Otherwise, the plant would have been put in the United States or Mexico, but likely the U.S.,” he said.
“We need to attract industry,” Schotter said.
“Volkswagen is a global player. Attracting this plant here, from a Canadian perspective, makes sense. Price tag? You pay the price and you get them.”
Afternoon Drive6:12Agricultural Cost of a Volkswagen EV Plant
As the saying goes, once agricultural land is lost….it’s gone forever. This week we learned about 1,500 acres of land in St. Thomas, is slotted for industrial investment. Afternoon Drive Host Allison Devereaux spoke to Crispin Colvin, a Vice President from the Ontario Federation of Agriculture.
Bloomberg News first reported the federal subsidy amount. Sources with knowledge of the deal have confirmed the details of the contract with CBC News.
According to details of the deal, federal production support for the plant is expected to range from $8 billion to $13 billion over 10 years. Ottawa is also offering about $700 million in capital expense grants to Volkswagen through its Strategic Innovation Fund.
“This is a game changer for our nation,” Innovation Minister François-Philippe Champagne said, while fielding questions from reporters on Thursday.
LANGLEY, B.C. – Police in Langley, B.C., say one person is dead in a crash between a car and a motorcycle on Highway 1 that shut down the route for hours.
Mounties say their initial investigation indicates both vehicles were travelling east when they collided shortly before 4:20 a.m. near 240 Street on the highway.
The motorcycle rider died from their injuries.
Highway 1 was closed for a long stretch through Langley for about 11 hours while police investigated.
RCMP say their integrated collision analysis reconstruction team went to the scene.
The Mounties are asking anyone who witnessed the crash or who may have dash-camera footage from the area to call them.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Sept. 19, 2024.
WINNIPEG – A court has been asked to declare Lake Winnipeg a person with constitutional rights to life, liberty and security of person in a case that may go further than any other in trying to establish the rights of nature in Canada.
“It really is that simple,” said Grand Chief Jerry Daniels of the Manitoba Southern Chiefs’ Organization, which filed the suit Thursday in Court of King’s Bench in Winnipeg.
“The lake has its own rights. The lake is a living being.”
The argument is being used to help force the provincial government to conduct an environmental assessment of how Manitoba Hydro regulates lake levels for power generation. Those licences come up for renewal in August 2026, and the chiefs argue that the process under which those licences were granted was outdated and inadequate.
They quote Manitoba’s Clean Environment Commission, which said in 2015 that the licences were granted on the basis of poor science, poor consultation and poor public accountability.
Meanwhile, the statement of claim says “the (plaintiffs) describe the lake’s current state as being so sick that she is dying.”
It describes a long list of symptoms.
Fish species have disappeared, declined, migrated or become sick and inedible, the lawsuit says. Birds and wildlife including muskrat, beavers, duck, geese, eagles and gulls are vanishing from the lake’s wetlands.
Foods and traditional medicines — weekay, bulrush, cattail, sturgeon and wild rice — are getting harder to find, the document says, and algae blooms and E. coli bacteria levels have increased.
Invasive species including zebra mussels and spiny water fleas are now common, the document says.
“In Anishinaabemowin, the (plaintiffs) refer to the water in Lake Winnipeg as moowaakamiim (the water is full of feces) or wiinaagamin (the water is polluted, dirty and full of garbage),” the lawsuit says.
It blames many of the problems on Manitoba Hydro’s management of the lake waters to prevent it flushing itself clean every year.
“She is unable to go through her natural cleansing cycle and becomes stagnant and struggles to sustain other beings like animals, birds, fish, plants and people,” the document says.
The defendants, Manitoba Hydro and the provincial government, have not filed statements of defence. Both declined to comment on the lawsuit.
Daniels said it makes sense to consider the vast lake — one of the world’s largest — as alive.
“We’re living in an era of reconciliation, there’s huge changes in the mindsets of regular Canadians and science has caught up a lot in understanding. It’s not a huge stretch to understand the lake as a living entity.”
The idea has been around in western science since the 1970s. The Gaia hypothesis, which remains highly disputed, proposed the Earth is a single organism with its own feedback loops that regulate conditions and keep them favourable to life.
The courts already recognize non-human entities such as corporations as persons.
Personhood has also been claimed for two Canadian rivers.
Quebec’s Innu First Nation have claimed that status for the Magpie River, and the Athabasca Chipewyan First Nation in Alberta is seeking standing for the Athabasca River in regulatory hearings. The Magpie’s status hasn’t been tested in court and Alberta’s energy regulator has yet to rule on the Athabasca.
Matt Hulse, a lawyer who argued the Athabasca River should be treated as a person, noted the Manitoba lawsuit quotes the use of “everyone” in the Charter of Rights and Freedoms.
“The term ‘everyone’ isn’t defined, which could help (the chiefs),” he said.
But the Charter typically focuses on individual rights, Hulse added.
“What they’re asking for is substantive rights to be given to a lake. What does ‘liberty’ mean to a lake?
“Those kinds of cases require a bit of a paradigm shift. I think the Southern Chiefs Organization will face an uphill battle.”
Hulse said the Manitoba case goes further than any he’s aware of in seeking legal rights for a specific environment.
Daniels said he believes the courts and Canadians are ready to recognize humans are not separate from the world in which they live and that the law should recognize that.
“We need to understand our lakes and our environment as something we have to live in cohesion with.”
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Sept. 19, 2024.
OTTAWA – MPs on the public safety and national security committee voted unanimously to launch an investigation into an alleged Russian ploy to dupe right-wing influencers into sowing division among Americans.
A U.S. indictment filed earlier this month charged two employees of RT, a Russian state-controlled media outlet, in a US$10-million scheme that purportedly used social media personalities to distribute content with Russian government messaging.
While not explicitly mentioned in court documents, the details match up with Tenet Media, founded by Canadian Lauren Chen and Liam Donovan, who is identified as her husband on social media.
The committee will invite Chen and Donovan to testify on the matter, as well as Lauren Southern, who is among the Tenet cast of personalities.
The motion, which was brought forward by Liberal MP Pam Damoff and passed on Thursday, also seeks to invite civil society representatives and disinformation experts on the matter.
Court documents allege the Russians created a fake investor who provided money to the social media company to hire the influencers, paying the founders significant fees, including through a company account in Canada.
The U.S. Justice Department doesn’t allege any wrongdoing by the influencers.
Following the indictment, YouTube removed several channels associated with Chen, including the Tenet Media channel.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Sept. 19, 2024.
