It appears that Tesla has been quite busy lobbying the Canadian Government over a potential manufacturing facility, meeting with the Canadian Government four times in the last six months.
The last meeting was between Tesla officials and Innovation, Science and Economic Development (ISED) Canada Minister Francois-Philippe Champagne in mid-August, according to records obtained by Electric Autonomy.
Minister Champagne visited a Tesla facility in Markham, Ontario, a few days before the meeting.
It is not clear if the two were connected.
Since then Tesla has updated its federal lobbying objectives; the new objectives are:
Seek government support to facilitate the engagement with provinces regarding permitting timelines, to increase the competitiveness of Canada and its ability to attract capital through approvals timeframes that are competitive with other manufacturing locations while working with Government to identify incentives to further increase the attractiveness of Canada.
It is unclear what Tesla wants to make or even do at the manufacturing facility.
Although we would love to see a Giga Canada making electric vehicles (EVs) come to Ontario’s golden horseshoe, the facility may end up feeding into Tesla’s supply chain instead.
Tesla is not alone in terms of working with the Canadian Government. As we reported last week, Volkswagen and Mercedes both recently signed Memorandums of Understanding with the federal government for access to Canadian raw materials.
So, it would make sense that Tesla would do the same or something similar around securing the North American supply of materials or components.
We still don’t know whether it is rare earth metals, copper foil, magnets, or some other material that Tesla would be interested in obtaining from Canada.
Minister Champagne’s office declined to give further details about the meeting.
