Flaherty Twiddles While Katie Couric Twists
Last we looked, none of Ontario’s auto plants were located in Premier Dalton McGuinty’s Ottawa-area riding. Yet the premier has been consistently supportive of Canada’s largest manufacturing sector, the powerhouse of Canada’s largest provincial economy.
When General Motors Corp. announced about 970 layoffs at its Oshawa complex last week, McGuinty popped up a day later to pledge a new auto assembly plant for the province and to remind Ontarians that Queen’s Park already is in talks with automakers in China and India seeking a North American gateway. And also with German automakers and with Fiat SpA, whose Alfa Romeo brand has been rumoured to be seeking an Ontario staging ground for a North American entré.
Behind this act of reassurance is a solid Queen’s Park track record of investing in the industry which precedes McGuinty, who has carried on the policy tradition – originally developed by Tory governments – with R&D support to automakers and by helping land a second Toyota Motor Corp. plant, in Woodstock.
We’d like to report that the federal finance minister, Jim Flaherty, is not twiddling his thumbs as this export sector braces for a sharp downturn in U.S. auto sales. And that he cares enough about his constituents in Oshawa, which he ostensibly represents in Parliament, to at least share their pain.
As yet we have no evidence on which to base such a report. We have only Flaherty’s repeated assertions that Ontario, being a high-corporate-tax jurisdiction – by his description – has itself to blame for manufacturing job losses in the province. Never mind that GM has laid off about 970 people in Flaherty’s riding because the U.S. export market for GM’s full-size pickups and SUVs is in the toilet now that U.S. gasoline prices have reached record levels above $3.50 (U.S.) per gallon.
We’re sure at election time Flaherty will muster a list of good works he’s done for Oshawa. But preserving or, heaven help us, creating jobs at its iconic employer won’t be on it.
Making rubber. Not
Detroit, which had to be ordered to adopt the three-point seat belts pioneered by Volvo that have saved thousands of lives, whines that the Bush Administration’s proposed rules to raise average passenger-car fuel economy to 35.7 mpg from 27.5 mpg by 2015 will raise the average sticker price by $6,000. Industry analysts say it would be closer to $2,000.
But the issue is moot. In the seven years of Motown foot-dragging between now and 2015, India’s Tata Motors will have an upgraded version of its $2,000 minicar on the U.S. market, China’s Chery sub-compacts will have arrived in force, and all-electric vehicles like the experimental Tesla will be shaking up the industry.
The contentment of Motown management to be a mere bystander in the evolution of the auto industry over the past half century is what laid-off autoworkers have chiefly to blame for their undeserved fate.
Tags: Alfa Romeo, Auto, auto industry, Auto Sales, automaker, automakers, downturn, economy, Fiat, gasoline prices, general motors corp, gm, MINI, seven years, Toyota, toyota motor, Volvo
