Toyota announces new Ontario plant

Toyota has just announced that it will be building an $800 million plant in Woodstock, Ontario to assemble its popular RAV4 vehicle. No mention of any subsidies, or should I say "strategic partnerships" or whatever corporate welfare is called nowadays.

Now if that were GM or Ford making the announcement, there would be ministers from both levels of government standing along side the auto industry execs as they boasted about how many jobs the new plant would create, thanks to the government's "investment".

What's the lesson here? Toyota finds it advantageous to set up shop in Ontario, without any special inducement from government. Therefore, it is perfectly reasonable to expect that any and all automakers can run competitive manufacturing operations in Ontario. Therefore, everytime the federal and Ontario governments offer up money to one of the big three automakers so they can build a new plant, you're getting screwed. Remember that the next time some Liberal cabinet minister announces a new "investment" in the auto industry.