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Frank_Lee said:
Why not subsidize a rolling stock factory? The cumulative loss of manufacturing jobs in SW Ontario includes a lot of jobs connected to railway manufacturing, like EMD in London. If the aim is preserving skilled manufacturing jobs, it shouldn't need to be tied to the automotive industry specifically.
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First because rolling stock demand isn't nearly as much as auto demand. Next, because the region already has an auto manufacturing base that can be built on and maintained.

Keep in mind these auto investments are not about serving the Canadian market. They are about serving the massive export market just 2 hrs drive south of London. Building rail stock doesn't offer nearly the same employment potential. Not in the least because the US Government doesn't pay for transit vehicles built outside the US.

I think some of you rail zealots must have missed what happened in the American rust belt and why the government is trying to make sure that the green transition doesn't result in a similar dynamic in SWO.
 
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Frank_Lee said:
Why not subsidize a rolling stock factory? The cumulative loss of manufacturing jobs in SW Ontario includes a lot of jobs connected to railway manufacturing, like EMD in London. If the aim is preserving skilled manufacturing jobs, it shouldn't need to be tied to the automotive industry specifically.
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We have one - National Steel Car in Hamilton. It is boom and bust already.

- Paul
 
kEiThZ said:
We aren't doing this to help Volkswagen. We're doing this to save jobs in Ontario. If those subsidies weren't given Volkswagen would simply set up everywhere.

So again, I'll ask, given that the government's primary concern is keeping high quality (and high paying) manufacturing jobs in Ontario, and specifically in Southwestern Ontario (which has become a bit of a rust belt), what specific evidence is there that reallocating that money to public transport will achieve those goals. No generic responses or lectures about the virtues of Capitalism or how evil corporations are.
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Ah, so Volkswagen bullies us into giving them a shit ton of money, and we agree, no questions asked, like the good indentured servants of corporations that we really are? If there is, at all, any business value to selling VW e-cars in Ontario, then surely it would be good business sense for VW to invest in that market, no? What possible reason exists for us to subsidize it, instead? Other than, of course, the fact that the company is run by parasites who would never invest a penny of their hard "earned" profits when there are citizens to leech off of, instead? And if VW makes good on their "promise" and sets up elsewhere - depriving themselves of the opportunity to manufacture and sell vehicles locally, and requiring any e-cars sold in Ontario to be imported from other provinces or from the States, at additional expense - is that not, in effect, an admission that there is no business sense in having an e-car manufacturing facility at all, and giving them billions to prop it up doesn't make any sense?

I'm not sure why you bring up reallocating the money to public transport. I never argued anything of the sort; I'm against corporate welfare with or without worthier projects to invest in, instead. It is enough that we keep being told there's no money for anything, that inflation is bringing us to our knees, but apparently, it's perfectly OK to give money to wayward businesses because they threaten us, and we have no spine. But since you ask, the TTC has been having quite a bit of difficult getting money for their new subway trains. This is not a project I feel any particular inclination towards - in fact, all the hysteria about how keeping subway trains a few years longer than we otherwise would would cause the entire Bloor-Danforth line to collapse makes me feel the right thing to do would be to not give them a penny - but fair is fair. Why can't Toronto get money for new subway trains, but we give billions of dollars to VW?

BTW, if the factory in St. Thomas didn't exist before, how can this be "saving" jobs?
 
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If we don't back/support/subsidize industry to come to Canada or Ontario, they will go to the jurisdictions that do, because pretty much everybody is doing it. In global terms, our domestic market is tiny; these plants are primarily for Canadian consumers.

What else would attract global-scale industry? Raw materials? To a degree. Cheap labour? High productivity? Low input costs? Hardly.

Correction: These plants are not primarily for Canadian consumers.
 
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T3G said:
Ah, so Volkswagen bullies us into giving them a shit ton of money, and we agree, no questions asked, like the good indentured servants of corporations that we really are?
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Yes. Because we want the jobs. It's that simple.

You can complain and rant all you want. But thankfully, most of our politicians fear voters in SWO more than they care about ideological purists arguing for others to be unemployed while they enjoy cushy office jobs in Toronto.

T3G said:
And if VW makes good on their "promise" and sets up elsewhere - depriving themselves of the opportunity to manufacture and sell vehicles locally, and requiring any e-cars sold in Ontario to be imported from other provinces or from the States, at additional expense - is that not, in effect, an admission that there is no business sense in having an e-car manufacturing facility at all, and giving them billions to prop it up doesn't make any sense?
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You do understand that our prosperity in this country depends substantially on exporting goods and services? And since we don't have oil to sell to the US, like Alberta, we need to build things in Ontario to sell.

Also, cars made in the US are not imported at additional expense (shipping fees are irrelevant). Everything manufactured in the US is tariff free. That's how free trade works.

T3G said:
I'm not sure why you bring up reallocating the money to public transport.
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Because that was literally the topic that started this tangent. @Frank_Lee suggested that subsidies given to VW be reinvested in transit. Go back and read.

T3G said:
BTW, if the factory in St. Thomas didn't exist before, how can this be "saving" jobs?
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It replaces other manufacturing jobs lost in SWO and that the area desperately needs. There's a reason the opioid crisis is raging down there after substantial deindustrialization.
 
lenaitch said:
If we don't back/support/subsidize industry to come to Canada or Ontario, they will go to the jurisdictions that do, because pretty much everybody is doing it. In global terms, our domestic market is tiny; these plants are primarily for Canadian consumers.

What else would attract global-scale industry? Raw materials? To a degree. Cheap labour? High productivity? Low input costs? Hardly.

Correction: These plants are not primarily for Canadian consumers.
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I call this Toronto brain. Having lost most of its manufacturing base, a massive chunk of Torontonians now have no clue how the rest of the country works. The laptop class are the same lot that supported sending manufacturing to Mexico and China in the 90s and 2000s, that turned places like SWO and the American Midwest into rust belts. And then we whine about these places electing populists.

SWO is, thankfully, not yet Ohio. It's salvageable. And I'm glad governments are investing in the region.
 
kEiThZ said:
But thankfully, most of our politicians fear voters in SWO more than they care about ideological purists arguing for others to be unemployed while they enjoy cushy office jobs in Toronto.
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Yeah. Sure. They're doing this because they fear the wrath of voters in the southwest and have their best interests in mind, and not because they're neoliberals in bed with all the major corporations who operate here.

BTW, I don't work in an office, but ok.
 
T3G said:
Yeah. Sure. They're doing this because they fear the wrath of voters in the southwest and have their best interests in mind, and not because they're neoliberals in bed with all the major corporations who operate here.

BTW, I don't work in an office, but ok.
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Less wrath than what comes with places becoming rust belts. Either way, believe what you want. Thankfully, your opinion isn't widely shared by people who care about the region, and irrelevant to decision-makers.
 
If you dropped $13B in $100 bills from a helicopter over SWO it would probably create more jobs than this factory will. These programs normally end up costing hundreds of thousands of dollars per job created.
 
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