Last Tuesday, I moderated a panel at the Australia-Canada Leadership Forum. The panelists were François-Philippe Champagne, Canadian Minister of Innovation, Science, and Industry – the man signing those cheques – and Kristy McBain, Australian Minister for Regional Development, Local Government and Territories.
And she wasn’t speaking out of turn. The Australian Labor government, elected in 2022, has extensive industrial strategy spending plans. The may include the car manufacturing. With talk in the air of subsidizing a new, electric-vehicle industry, what Australia does tomorrow could look a lot like what the Trudeau government is doing today.On the plus side for Canada, we have advantages over Australia. The latter had a small, standalone car industry, oceans away from anywhere. A multinational, just-in-time supply chain was impossible. Exporting was slow and expensive.