Canada needs to become more aligned with the European market at a time when U.S. tariffs pose a real challenge to the country’s economy.

That was the message from Mélanie Joly, Canada’s federal minister of industry, at the Conference of Montreal on Monday.

Joly wants Canada to double its exports to Europe.

“Europe’s needs in terms of aluminum are massive as we’re developing even more defence production and that is something that we want to work together,” said Joly, who is also the minister of Canadian economic development for Quebec regions.

“I think also that we can do even more in terms of aerospace. And we know that Quebec is a hub, but also Canada is a hub for aerospace.”

Added François-Philippe Champagne, the federal finance and national revenue minister: “We have historical ties with Europe. CETA (Comprehensive Economic and Trade Agreement) is a great free trade agreement that allows us to operate on a preferential basis in Europe.”

  • CanadaPlus
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    1 day ago

    The interesting thing here is that that’s actually proportional to how they want to grow non-US trade across the board. There’s no special preference for Europe being shown.

    • CanadaPlus
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      1 day ago

      Step 2 would basically grind the economy to a stop the way COVID did. That’s 3/4 of our trade right now.

  • alsimoneau@lemmy.ca
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    3 days ago

    Can we import European cars? They have all the nice small one while were stuck with monster trucks

    • sup@sh.itjust.works
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      2 days ago

      Doesn’t mean they will sell them, because the demand could be to low. The trend is going to “multi-purpose vehicles (including sport utility vehicles and crossovers)” https://www150.statcan.gc.ca/n1/daily-quotidien/251017/cg-c001-eng.htm The same trend is happening in Europe. I could see the financial pressure building right now counteracting it a little bit, smaller cars could benefit like electric already are, but that’s just a guess.

        • CanadaPlus
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          1 day ago

          Demand is low. You can find small cars, but they’re poor sellers. Talk to the random people IRL about cars and you’ll hear a lot of “what if I need to move a mattress”-type comments.

          Maybe demand is artificially low from past regulation mistakes, and the resulting aggressive advertising, but that’s about it.

  • GreenBeard@lemmy.ca
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    3 days ago

    Sounds good to me, let’s get 'er done. Hopefully if we can finally get this De Havilland factory in Alberta up and running we can even further expand our Aerospace capacity and diversify western Canadian industry.

    • Typotyper@sh.itjust.works
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      3 days ago

      With an independence vote set for Alberta investment will crash just like it did when the Quebec reforendom was alive.

      • GameGod@lemmy.ca
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        2 days ago

        It shows how effective the whole “Albertan independence” campaign by US interlocuters is - it’s a lose-lose for Canada either way because the reputational damage it will do to Alberta’s economy. And all you need to do this kind of shit is some analysts, a Facebook troll farm, and some weak politicians.