From the Frontier Centre for Public Policy

By Marco Navarro-Genie

GM’s Ontario EV plant was sold as a green success story. Instead it collapsed under subsidies, layoffs and unsold vans

Every age invents new names for old mistakes. In ours, they’re sold as investments. Before the Carney government unveils its November budget promising another future paid for in advance, Canadians should remember Ingersoll, Ont., one of the last places a prime minister tried to buy tomorrow.

Eager to transform the economy, in December 2022, former prime minister Justin Trudeau promised that government backing would help General Motors turn its Ingersoll plant into a beacon of green industry. “By 2025 it will be producing 50,000 electric vehicles per year,” he declared: 137 vehicles daily, six every hour. What sounded like renewal became an expensive demonstration of how progressive governments peddle rampant spending as sound strategy.

The plan began with $259 million from Ottawa and another $259 million from Ontario: over half a billion to switch from Equinox production to BrightDrop electric delivery vans. The promise was thousands of “good, middle-class jobs.”

The assembly plant employed 2,000 workers before retooling. Today, fewer than 700 remain; a two-thirds collapse. With $518 million in public funds and only 3,500 vans built in 2024, taxpayers paid $148,000 per vehicle. The subsidy works out to over half a million dollars per remaining worker. Two out of every three employees from Trudeau’s photo-op are now unemployed.

The failure was entirely predictable. Demand for EVs never met the government’s plan. Parking lots filled with unsold inventory. GM did the rational thing: slowed production, cut staff and left. The Canadian taxpayer was left to pay the bill.

This reveals the weakness of Ottawa’s industrial policy. Instead of creating conditions for enterprise, such as reliable energy, stable regulation, and moderate taxes, progressive governments spend to gain applause. They judge success by the number of jobs announced, yet those jobs vanish once the cameras leave.

Politicians keep writing cheques to industry. Each administration claims to be more strategic, yet the pattern persists. No country ever bought its way into competitiveness.

Trudeau “bet big on electric vehicles,” but betting with other people’s money isn’t vision; it’s gambling. The wager wasn’t on technology but narrative, the naive idea that moral intention could replace market reality. The result? Fewer jobs, unwanted products and claims of success that convinced no one.

Prime Minister Mark Carney has mastered the same rhetorical sleight of hand. Spending becomes “investment,” programs become “platforms.” He promises to “catalyze unprecedented investments” while announcing fiscal restraint: investing more while spending less. His $13-billion federal housing agency is billed as a future investment, though it’s immediate public spending under a moral banner.

“We can build big. Build bold. Build now,” Carney declared, promising infrastructure to “reduce our vulnerabilities.” The cadence of certainty masks the absence of limits. Announcing “investment” becomes synonymous with action itself; ambition replaces accountability.

The structure mirrors the Ingersoll case: promise vast returns from state-directed spending, redefine subsidy as vision, rely on tomorrow to conceal today’s bill. “Investment” has become the language of evasion, entitlement and false pride.

As Carney prepares his first budget, Canadians should remember what happened when their last leader tried to buy a future with lavish “investment.”

A free economy doesn’t need bribery to breathe. It requires the discipline of risk and liberty to fail without dragging a country down. Ingersoll wasn’t undone by technology but by ideological conceit. Prosperity cannot be decreed and markets cannot be commanded into obedience.

Every age invents new names for old mistakes. Ours keeps making the same ones. Entitled hubris knows no bounds.

Marco Navarro-Genie is vice-president of research at the Frontier Centre for Public Policy and co-author, with Barry Cooper, of Canada’s COVID: The Story of a Pandemic Moral Panic (2023).

From the Frontier Centre for Public Policy

By Conrad Eder

Consumer choice, not government coercion, should shape the market. Doug Ford’s alcohol crackdown trades symbolic outrage for sound policy and Ontarians will pay the price

Ontario politicians have developed an insatiable appetite for prohibition. Having already imposed a sweeping ban on all American alcohol, Premier Doug Ford has now threatened to remove Crown Royal, Smirnoff and potentially other brands from LCBO shelves. Such authoritarian impulses reflect a disturbing shift in our political culture—one that undermines economic prosperity and individual liberty.

After Diageo, the multinational behind brands like Crown Royal and Smirnoff, announced in August that it would close its Amherstburg, Ont., bottling facility, affecting 200 workers, the political response was swift. NDP MPP Lisa Gretzky urged the government to retaliate by pulling Crown Royal from LCBO shelves. Days later, Ford dramatically dumped a bottle of the whisky during a press conference, signalling he might follow through.

Now, the premier has escalated the threat, vowing to remove Smirnoff and potentially other Diageo products.

These gestures may make headlines, but they come at a cost. They undermine business confidence, discourage investment, and send the wrong message to employers. More fundamentally, they reflect a poor understanding of how free societies settle disputes and make decisions.

To understand what’s at stake, it helps to consider the two basic mechanisms available to democratic societies: the marketplace and the ballot box. At the ballot box, citizens vote once, and majority rule determines a single outcome. The marketplace, by contrast, allows people to vote continuously with their dollars. Individuals make countless choices reflecting their own values and priorities. You get what you choose—without overriding anyone else’s preference.

There’s a role for government in correcting market failures, where there’s fraud, monopoly power or public risk. But banning legal products simply because of political displeasure with a company’s decision is not market correction. It’s coercion.

Diageo’s decision to close a facility may be unfortunate, but it doesn’t involve deception, unfair dominance, or harm to the public. Bans aren’t rooted in sound principle; they’re political, plain and simple.

Some argue the government is justified in acting to protect Ontario jobs. But that line of thinking is short-sighted. If job protection alone warranted banning products, we’d resist every innovation or trade deal that disrupted the status quo. Sustainable job growth depends on encouraging investment and innovation, not shielding every position from change.

The appropriate response to plant closures is policy reform, not retaliation. Ontario should focus on creating an environment where businesses want to invest and grow. That means fostering a stable, competitive business climate with clear rules, reasonable taxes, and efficient regulation. Threatening companies with bans only creates uncertainty and drives investment elsewhere.

With Ontarians spending $740 million annually on Diageo products, removing them from store shelves would impose real economic costs. Consumers would face fewer choices, weaker competition, and higher prices. Restaurants and retailers would be forced to adjust. The LCBO, Ontario’s government-run liquor retailer, would lose sales.

This isn’t hypothetical. The province’s ban on American alcohol is already projected to block nearly $1 billion in annual sales, while doing nothing to benefit Ontario consumers. The LCBO is serving political interests, not the public.

Supporters of such bans often reveal their lack of confidence in public opinion. Rather than persuade others to boycott a product voluntarily, they demand that government enforce a blanket restriction.

There’s a better way. Consumer-led boycotts offer accountability without coercion. They allow individuals to act on their beliefs without forcing others to comply. And they tend to be more effective, as companies respond faster to falling sales than to political theatrics.

But the issue at hand goes beyond liquor. It’s about whether elected officials should impose a single set of preferences on everyone, or whether citizens are trusted to decide for themselves.

Each new ban makes the next one easier to justify. Over time, these interventions accumulate and normalize government interference in private choice. Unlike consumer preferences, which can shift quickly and reverse, government prohibitions often persist. The LCBO’s century-old structure is evidence of how long some policies endure, even when they no longer serve the public interest.

This isn’t a call to eliminate government’s role. But it is a call for principled governance, the kind that distinguishes between legitimate oversight and overreach rooted in symbolism or political frustration.

Ontario’s government would do better to focus on long-term prosperity. That means building an economy where investors feel welcome, businesses can grow, and consumers are free to choose.

Ontarians are perfectly capable of making their own choices about which products to buy and which companies to support. They don’t need politicians like  Ford making those decisions for them.

Conrad Eder is a policy analyst at the Frontier Centre for Public Policy.