The head of the Automotive Parts Manufacturers' Association Canada is allowing a 'pure importer' into the country under the deal to allow Chinese-made electric vehicles to be sold in Canada.
APMA President Flavio Volpe says those vehicles do not have any Canadian content, Canadian raw materials, or any inclusion of Canadian labour on them.
He says it's not a good move for automotive, even if it may have been a necessary move for Canada.
Prime Minister Mark Carney and Chinese President Xi Jinping agreed while Carney was recently in China that Canada will all but drop its 100 per cent tariffs on Chinese EVs and allow an annual import quota of up to 49,000 of the vehicles in exchange for China reducing its canola tariffs.
Vople joined Ontario Premier Doug Ford, Brian Kingston, president and CEO of the Canadian Vehicle Manufacturers' Association, and Lana Payne, national Unifor president, during a news conference Wednesday condemning the China deal as putting Ontario's auto industry at a disadvantage.
Volpe told the news conference that the scale of the agreement could have costly consequences.
"50,000 cars is about a shift at an auto plant, and a shift is a thousand workers," he said, noting the ripple effects through the supplier network as trade rules under CUSMA remain uncertain.
The free trade agreement with the U.S. and Mexico is up for renegotiation.
Volpe says he gets that the prime minister is the prime minister for all of Canada, but it will make the situation tougher.
"To convince the Americans whose market that we want to have tariff-free access to again that we're good for no surprises and that we'll protect access to this market for American, USMCA-compliant vehicles," he says. "It's not a good move for automotive; it may have been a necessary move for Canada."
Volpe says what we need to do is get more Canadians into vehicles built in places like Windsor.
"There's no Canadian content on those Chinese cars, and we gave away 50,000 units, potentially 50,000 units that were manufactured there," he says.
During Wednesday's news conference, the officials told the federal government to step up with measures that will boost the domestic auto industry's competitiveness, such as lowering the cost of investing in plants, machinery, and research and development.
Volpe says they spoke with one voice during the news conference with a message to the federal government.
"Not a good idea. Not a good deal, and now you must address it with industrial policy that covers it off," he says.
Premier Ford is calling on Canadians to boycott Chinese-made electric vehicles when they are allowed back into the country, saying Canadians should support car companies that have a manufacturing presence in Canada, and he does not believe Chinese automakers will ever start producing vehicles in Canada, as Carney has suggested.
With files from the Canadian Press