Finance Minister Chrystia Freeland stated that the Trudeau government had to invest billions in Ontario's Volkswagen electric vehicle (EV) battery plant. . Volkswagen Logo .According to Blacklock’s Reporter, Freeland made the comments after a Parliamentary Budget Office (PBO) report said that the battery plant would cost taxpayers almost 20% more than initially projected..“We knew Canada had to be at the table,” Freeland told reporters. .“We were just not, as a government, going to tolerate a situation in which investment was sucked out of Canada, sucked to south of the border, and I don’t think Canadian workers should tolerate that situation.”.On April 20, the Trudeau government agreed to subsidize a Volkswagen EV battery plant in St. Thomas, ON, with federal assistance projected at $13.7 billion. .However, according to “a preliminary cost estimate of the entirety of the Government of Canada’s funding commitments to Volkswagen,” the PBO said on Wednesday that the subsidy is projected to be $16.3 billion..“The Budget Office estimates the government’s financial commitment to Volkswagen will total around $16.3 billion over the period of the agreement,” said the report Fiscal Analysis of Canada’s Support for Volkswagen’s Electric Vehicle Battery Manufacturing Plant. .“This includes an estimated $12.8 billion in production support.”.The subsidies for Volkswagen's EV battery plant are three times the annual federal aid given to all corporations in Canada, which averages $5.5 billion per year..“Shovels haven’t even hit dirt and the Volkswagen handout will cost taxpayers billions of dollars more than the government let on,” said Franco Terrazzano, federal director of the Canadian Taxpayers Federation, in a statement. .“Taxpayers don’t have $16.3 billion to give to a multinational corporation.”.READ MORE SHOCKING: PBO reveals $2.4 billion overrun in Volkswagen EV plant budget.In his May 5 testimony at the Senate Banking committee, Simon Kennedy, deputy minister of Industry, said the Volkswagen subsidies were the start of a new green economy. .“The entire automotive supply chain and industry are rapidly moving to battery electric vehicles,” said Kennedy..“If Canada is not able to successfully make that transition, not just the handful of companies that make the cars will arguably disappear, but the entire cluster will disappear, which is hundreds of thousands of jobs,” said Kennedy..“A central argument in favour of supporting a firm such as Volkswagen in establishing a battery facility would be something like this: Canada has a significant automotive cluster anchored by a relatively small handful of firms and those firms, it’s true, employ a lot of people.”.“Those firms are really anchor facilities for a much broader ecosystem including hundreds of Canadian companies, firms like Magna, Martinrea, Linamar and so on that are substantial parts suppliers,” said Kennedy..“If you think of the traditional shopping mall with hundreds of stores in it, in the old days, it was traditionally anchored by three or four large department stores.”.“The argument is not just you’re going to put this plant here and it’s going to create ‘x’ jobs,” said Kennedy. .“The argument is this is an entire industry.”
