Tom Fletcher grew up in the Peace River region and has covered BC politics and business as a journalist since 1984.It looks as if Saskatchewan Premier Scott Moe will be off to experience China’s famous smog on his own, without a federal representative who has authority to make international trade deals.Moe has set a date of Sept. 6 for his mission to Beijing support Western Canada’s canola industry against the latest and largest Chinese tariff – a preliminary 75.8% levy on canola seed. That joins earlier tariffs on processed meal and oil, imposed in response to Canada’s 100% tariff wall against Chinese electric vehicles..EYRE: ‘Lawfare’: How a weaponized Charter of Rights is preventing governments from governing.Prime Minister Mark Carney inherited this problem, after the Justin Trudeau government moved in lockstep with the US government to impose the effective Chinese EV ban last year. US-matching tariffs on Chinese steel and aluminum have further inflamed the situation, resulting in the latest blow to a key agricultural export. Western Canadian pork and seafood are also targets of China’s well-known bullying.Carney sent his parliamentary secretary to Regina to assure reporters that the Canadian government is fully on board with this problem and supporting the provinces in some unspecified way. China is Canada’s second biggest canola customer after the U.S., buying close to $5 billion worth in 2024.Premiers were blunt. Moe noted that Canada’s canola industry currently employs 200,000 people. Alberta Premier Danielle Smith said Ottawa needs to move off its electric vehicle surcharge that obviously provoked the Chinese move..“It makes no sense to have a punitive tax to protect an industry that doesn’t yet exist in Canada, at the same time as we’re getting punished on canola and pork, which are products the world wants and needs, including China,” Smith said. “So I think that approach has to be reconsidered.”Remember those days when Joe Biden was throwing huge subsidies at EV manufacturers, and Canada was offering to essentially pay for construction of new EV battery factories if they produced their target of EV power supplies? That was only a year ago..STIRLING: Hamas laid a trap — and the West fell right in.Since then, Ford has scrapped its plan to make F150 Lightnings in Ontario, opting for Super Duties instead. EV sales in Canada are down, moving further away from the grandiose targets set by politicians for 2035 and even 2030 in BC car dealers are now publicly saying the EV sales targets can’t be met. Tesla sales in particular are off in Canada, and drivers have put apologetic stickers on their Teslas to distance themselves from Elon Musk.Northvolt, the Swedish company that signed on to build a heavily subsidized lithium-ion battery plant in Quebec, declared bankruptcy in March. Lyten, a California maker of lithium-sulfur drone batteries, is offering to take over Northvolt’s assets in Europe, and maybe the Quebec plant too. Stellantis, owner of Chrysler and Jeep, has a small stake in Lyten..There hasn’t even been any particular talk of producing actual electric vehicles in Canada. That industry still exists in the imagination of Justin Trudeau, and perhaps Carney as well. But having suddenly reversed himself on the world-leading retail carbon tax he championed for years, perhaps Carney is being mugged by reality again.This comes as harvest time nears for growers of one of Western Canada’s great innovations. Canola, a nutritionally improved version of the rapeseed originally developed for lamp fuel, is grown across the prairies from Manitoba to northeast BC..MASON: To leave or not to leave, that is the question.It’s also been under attack from the Donald Trump administration in the US, but not with tariffs. Robert Kennedy Jr., the former anti-fracking campaigner turned health secretary, has carried on a typically fact-challenged assault on “seed oils,” which he deems bad in some unspecified way. “Healthy“ fries should be fried in beef tallow.Our trade policies have veered dangerously from facts to fashions, whether it’s on greenhouse gas emissions or farming or innovation, which Canada keeps trying to subsidize in to existence. Canola’s a real innovation, one created without the dozens of grant programs that have sprouted up in Ottawa over the years.Tom Fletcher grew up in the Peace River region and has covered B.C. politics and business as a journalist since 1984. He lives in Victoria.tomfletcherbc@gmail.comX: @tomfletcherbc
