North to supply minerals for EV manufacturing in southern Ontario, minister says

At the same time a major electric vehicle announcement was being made in southern Ontario on Thursday, a federal minister was in northern Ontario hyping his government’s spending in the same sector.

Ahmed Hussen, Minister for International Development, was in the city continuing his northern tour, highlighting the 2024 federal budget.

This time he was speaking about incentives for those purchasing electric vehicles.

“The $607 million top-up to the incentive program is certainly going to encourage more people to consider electric vehicle acquisition and continuing down that road,” Hussen said.

“We need a cleaner environment and we owe it to this and future generations and that’s exactly what we’re doing to make that happen.”

Reducing emissions in the long term was key for future generations, he said. Hussen was joined at the podium by Nickel Belt MP Marc Serré and a half dozen Sudbury high school students.

Both federal politicians said northern Ontario will play a key role in manufacturing plans for the electric vehicle market.

“Greater Sudbury is a big part of that need,” Serré said.

“To make sure that we have the copper, the nickel, the lithium from northwestern Ontario. So we wanted to make sure we highlight a lot of those initiatives because these manufacturing batteries and EV vehicles in southern Ontario need to be fed by the mines and the supply and services companies here.”

Devin Arthur, an electric vehicle advocate from Sudbury and the director of government relations for EV Society, said there are still gaps, particularly in parts of northern Ontario.

Arthur said money needs to get into the hands of those who want to build charging stations, but it’s hard to make a case for getting charging stations in certain areas.

“Some of these businesses come back with: what’s the benefit to us? Do we really want this? Is this the technology that’s going to be used in the future?” Arthur said.

“But the reality is the money is there, we just need to get it into the hands of those who want to install the stations.”

The 2022 federal budget committed almost $4 billion for a critical mineral strategy, which it said set a course for Canada to become a global supplier of critical minerals and the clean technologies they enable.

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