Brian Kingston, president and chief executive at CVMA talks about why China's electric vehicle imports are dangerous to Canada. Watch now

‘If TikTok is a security risk, then a moving vehicle that can be controlled outside of Canada is clearly one as well,’ says Brian Kingston, chief executive at Canadian Vehicle Manufacturer’s Association

He talks about why China’s electric vehicle imports are dangerous to Canada in a video (8 min).

  • CompactFlaxEnglish
    201·
    25 days ago

    How is China different than another belligerent nation, such as the one directly to the south of Canada? Thousands of vehicles with OnStar, Teslas, etc.? Ring? I mean the list goes on.

    • BlameThePeacock@lemmy.caEnglish
      33·
      24 days ago

      There’s two answers to this,

      The first is that China has shown repeatedly that it’s willing to be an absolutely belligerent asshole, and weaponize it’s companies in that undertaking against most of it’s trading partners. The US, despite also being a belligerent asshole, has not shown evidence of weaponizing it’s companies in this manner. It generally only plays asshole through government channels, at worst restricting exports to specific countries.

      The second answer, is that China would benefit more from taking such action in a global conflict. If China got into an actual fight with the USA, crippling parts of the Canadian economy would be a great way to harm the US directly given that we’re one of their largest trading partners, even with the bullshit that’s happening now. The US doesn’t benefit from harming us in a global conflict, because despite how stupid they’re being, we’d still be on their side. Going against the US militarily would be suicide for Canada, even if we didn’t like what they were doing. We’d fall faster than France did to the Germans.

      • CompactFlaxEnglish
        4·
        24 days ago

        I think you can just as easily flip that on its head.

        USA consistently weaponizes its companies through sanctions. If a country wants to be part of the global economy you need to do business with USA banks (eg SWIFT) and tech, and if your country is sanctioned, it cannot. Speaking of tech, the tech companies actively participates in wiretapping and that’s really old news - who knows what they’re doing today.

        China is typically careful about throwing its weight around because of its high dependency on exports and limited deployment capability of its army.

        In terms of a shooting war with the USA, China has a strategic advantage in being able to shut down Canadian transportation remotely, agreed.

        I think recent events have shown, however, that there’s no guarantee that the USA would automatically be on the side of Canada. I’m thinking more it’s more along the lines of how Germany and Austria were “on the same side” in WWII ie Annexation.

        • BlameThePeacock@lemmy.caEnglish
          12·
          24 days ago

          Did you just suggest China is careful about throwing it’s weight around?

          You are really not up to date on how China does business.