Feb. 27, 2026 | The week’s top stories and CIAS GM Jason Campbell

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Welcome to you from just outside Windsor, Ontario, the automotive capital of Canada.

Today on the show I speak with Canadian International Auto Show General Manager Jason Campbell.

He's here to break down the record-setting 2026 show, talk about what went right,

let us know what he hopes to see in 2027, and tells us whether Chinese brands are interested in attending.

But first, a look at some of the top Canadian automotive stories of the week.

One year after Stellantis halted its retooling, about 3,000 workers are still waiting for clarity

on the future of the Brampton assembly plant.

The automaker paused plans in February 2025, pointing to a re-evaluation of its product strategy.

Citing U.S. tariffs and changing business conditions, it later shifted planned production

of the next-generation Jeep Compass to Illinois.

Uniform local 1285 President Vincent Beato says if the project had stayed on track,

Brampton would already be building vehicles.

Says Beato, if they didn't pause us and they continued on, we'd be building cars today.

New Stellantis Canada CEO Trevor Longley says fixing the situation is a daily focus for him.

Says Longley, I get up every morning trying to find a solution for Brampton.

I don't get up every morning trying to find a way out.

With contract talks set for this fall, the plant's future remains uncertain.

In trade news, the United States-Mexico-Canada agreement is up for review.

The auto industry leaders in Canada have a warning. Do not pivot away from the United States.

They say Canada's manufacturing base depends on American buyers.

Says Michael Robinette of S&P Global Mobility. Do you need Americans?

Yeah, of course we do. It's like 70-80% of our volume.

He made the remarks at the recent Automotive News Canada Congress in Toronto.

Says Automotive Parts Manufacturers Association President Flavio Volpe,

we're all in this together. Period. He warns that if an integrated system broke down,

quote, we'd all fall. With USMCA talks set for July and trade tensions rising,

the message from the sector is simple. Canada's auto industry runs on access

to the United States. And finally, on the manufacturing front,

Canadian industry minister Melanie Jolie confirms Ottawa's tying defense contracts

to automotive investment in Canada. German and South Korean companies are competing

to build up to 12 submarines for the Royal Canadian Navy.

But to win the deal, Jolie says there has to be a car plant in Canada.

With thousands of auto workers laid off in Ontario, Ottawa is looking to turn

military procurement into auto jobs. Says Jolie, fundamentally,

what we want is a car plant. The subcontract is valued at roughly $12 billion.

The message from the federal government is blunt. No assembly plant, no subdeal.

And that's a look at some of the top Canadian automotive stories of the week.

Coming up, my conversation with Canadian International Auto Show General Manager Jason Campbell.

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Welcome back to the Automotive News Canada podcast.

I'm your host, Greg Lason. I'm now joined by CISGM, Jason Campbell.

Jason, thanks for joining me this week.

Great. Great to be here.

It's great to have you first. Congratulations on a successful show.

I know it was a record when it came to attendance. How did you do it?

Well, everything has to work really well for us to meet the kind of numbers that we did have.

But first of all, it's really down to the manufacturers that have brought great product, great displays.

I mean, we've got a lot of brands that brought totally new displays,

and the individual products that they brought were pretty spectacular.

Cadillac, bringing their Formula One car Audi with its beautiful display,

also with a Formula One car, got a lot of tongues wagging.

We had new display with Ford and a big product push.

Stellantis brought their Camp G back, reimagined, very popular.

Hyundai bringing some concept cars, also Infiniti concept cars, Volvo with their crash test cars.

Just GMC with their truck display was very unique.

Those kinds of things make a big difference in making the show feel and look fresh and different.

And that's a big part of it.

I think the car dealers, of course, the show is owned by the new car dealers of Ontario,

really also stepped up to the plate.

We had a big increase in terms of tickets that were purchased from the show from the car dealers,

and so that was great.

And all across the board, VIP night worked very well.

We had about 20% lift in the tickets sold for that event.

There's many, many things that are attributable,

but one of the biggest ones, obviously, is manufacturers and the amazing supercars,

which this year were probably more than we've ever had.

I think we had over $100 million of supercars on display, which you don't often get,

and you really pulled out the stops.

The people that were presenting some of those supercar displays from Paul Cummings

and what he and his team did with the Grand Touring Automobiles finding these private collectors

and convincing them to share them with us was very special.

And Car Guys, like the Faf Group and Lawrence the App in particular at Faf is a real car guy.

And to convince McLaren to lobby the owner of the very original McLaren F1 car

and allow it to come up from Chicago and to have the first display of the W1

before any other auto shows in North America, that takes a lot of work and a lot of convincing.

And those really helped add fairy deaths to the show.

Is it safe to say that this is one of the most unique and diverse and eclectic car shows out there?

I mean, it just seems so different than what we're used to in so many parts of North America.

Are you that unique and do you pride yourself on trying to be different?

Well, it is unique and I think with the no longer having a Geneva Auto Show, for example,

that I'd say in its day was probably the best car show in the world.

It's no longer is.

And we really do pride ourselves on putting on a very different set of features.

It's obviously a shopping experience and primarily it's there to drive the new car buying experience

and get people excited for the spring buying season.

But it's also a total automotive experience and we really pride on building out unique

and different features around the show.

And when we bring collectors, private collectors around the show,

and these are people that have been around the world and seen everything else that's out there,

we often hear from them, this is really an amazing show.

This is so much more than we're used to at any of the other car shows.

Yes, you'd have a like retro mabilia would be kind of also amazing,

but that's really purely focused on the kind of strange and wonderful cars and the racing machines.

It doesn't also have a big car shopping component to it.

So I think it is pretty unique in the world right now in terms of how much of a focus we have,

the kind of numbers we draw and the enthusiasm that people have at the show.

It's something we take great pride in.

You mentioned the consumers, the buyers, the shoppers.

I want to get to that right now.

What was the reception like for the EV test track?

And I ask in sort of the wake of the end and then the return of EV incentives

and a mid-global sort of EV turmoil and a downshift in the popularity.

What was the turnout like for that EV test track this year?

It's still, it's just as big as it's always been.

We had more brands participating.

So there's a little more shuffling of cars to do with 25 different cars

up from 21 last year participating in the indoor track.

And we're doing regularly between five and 600 test drives a day.

And that's pretty hard to get through that.

And despite the weather, you're still getting an amazing response.

We also had more vehicles available test around the show outside than we've ever had.

We had three different outdoor test tracks available.

But I think the return of the EV incentive payments is going to help.

A number of brands were highlighting, hey, this car qualifies for the EV incentive payment.

It only just came back just before the show.

So it's hard to say, but certainly I didn't see any kind of lack of interest.

There was always lineups for people wanting to test the latest and greatest products.

And there are an amazing number of new EVs out there that the manufacturers have invested heavily

and are still needing to sell.

And so what better showcase than to do it on the indoor test track that we have in the building.

But I think there's, it's not going away.

This is certainly a, I think a great relief in the industry.

That's the government that stepped back from its more extreme positions in terms of, you know,

mandating everyone has to be fully electric by 2035 and having a more sensible approach to that.

The devil's still in the details, but it's, there's a lot of industry relief for that

as well as an approval that this rebate coming back is going to help the industry.

It's exactly how much we'll have to wait and see.

You know, we've written stories over the last few months about affordability being an issue

and prices going up and yet you had record attendance.

You still had strong interest in electric vehicles.

What does the reception of the show and the attendance,

what does all that say about the new vehicle market in Canada in and of itself?

Well, it's still strong.

I mean, we sold 1.9 million cars in Canada last year and Ontario's 40% of that market.

So the market is still big.

I think I was reading your reports.

They came out today, it was presented to us today that showed the total market for our consumer interest,

67 billion in sales in Canada last year.

So that helps to our show.

I mean, when the car market is strong, that's consumer interest is strong

and they come out to check and shop for cars at the Auto Show.

So that's definitely helping us.

And so, of course, we try and pride ourselves in putting in the best show possible

but you can't avoid the economics and the economics are still strong in this industry

and dealers are still doing well.

And so that helps us.

Prior to the show, we know that Mark Carney and the federal government announced a deal with or a compromise with China

that lowered tariffs for electric vehicles made in China.

So a tariff of 6.1% for 49,000 electric vehicles from China.

Did you have any interest from Chinese brands this year for the show?

And the follow-up to that is, have you heard from any Chinese brands interested in next year's show?

Where is that at right now when it comes to Chinese brands?

We have had discussions.

We had discussions just prior to the show with a couple of Chinese brands.

None of them headmarked at vehicles in the market right now.

And depending on exactly who's allowed to bring in and who decides who can bring in those 49,000 cars

is going to determine I think whether or not these brands will see interest in coming and being a part of next year's show.

I think if it was kind of left open to, let's say, the Chinese government to decide who is going to provide those 49,000 vehicles

then I think that there's a large percentage chance that we will see some Chinese brands coming into the show next year.

But if it was just left to market forces, Tesla, Polestar, Volvo,

they would probably use up all 49,000 of those from their own products.

We wouldn't see any Chinese brands coming.

I think that there's inevitability that they will get here at some point.

We are travelling as some of our board members are travelling as with CADA to the Beijing Auto Show this spring.

I would say there's hundreds of brands in China and it's an interesting car show internationally

to go look at and see what's out there and what the future may hold.

So we'll see where it goes.

I know that in the past on the heels of success automakers that had not displayed

or had displays at the show have sort of called you up and said,

hey, we're in for next year with this sort of success.

Do you expect next year to have more brands on hand than ever before since the success continues?

I mean, it's been a few years running now where attendance is growing and it's been strong.

You had some weather issues over the past, but this year was fantastic.

Do you expect more brands next year given the recent success, not just this year, but over the last two or three years?

Well, we'd love to have all of the brands back and our challenge would be where to put them.

But I think we can get creative and we've seen really nice displays, very impactful displays in high traffic areas

and you don't need a massive footprint to achieve that.

I think you take a look at the mini display on the 700 level non-traditional positioning.

It was only 20 feet by 50 foot display space yet it made a huge impact and everybody in the show had to go right by them.

And so those kinds of options will always be available, always prioritize our manufacturer brands over our features

in terms of the first placement of them.

And ideally we'd love to be able to convince some of the big players that aren't here to come back.

Obviously in question, Honda, Volkswagen, those are two brands that are very well owned by people that come to the show.

And when they come and they don't find their brand that they own here on the floor,

they naturally look around to other competitors.

And so we've made the case, we'd love to keep making the case and we hope to be able to attract all of the missing brands to come back.

But right now the consumers that do come are appreciative of what they find and love the show and we're not hearing complaints from that side.

So even if we run steady with what we currently have then we'll be in a good spot to go forward.

But we always want to get bigger, always want to get better.

How soon do you start planning next year and is there anything different in the works already?

Well, we already had our first kind of 20-27 planning meeting with our board on the last Saturday of the show.

And as we walk around, we can see what works, what doesn't work, what features are popular and that work starts pretty much right away.

Obviously there's a period of clearing up all the financials that has to be done, that takes about a month or so.

But straight away we're already having some discussions about who wants what placements where, do they want to change things around.

I think we're going to be straight into it pretty much.

And in the May period is when it really fully kicks off.

And after visiting the Beijing Auto Show, we might have a few different elements we'll have to also consider on our floor plan for next year.

But the process of finding the supercars is in all your process.

The building of the features takes some time.

So that really starts right away.

What does this say about auto shows?

Does it mean they all can succeed or does it mean just the big ones succeed?

I just wonder, in terms of auto shows across the country, we know there are smaller ones.

And in North America for that matter, we know Detroit is smaller than it ever has been.

What does it say about auto shows in general?

They're still needed, only viable in big cities.

I just wonder your take on that.

Well, I think the consumer show is still very strong and powerful.

I mean, the dealers, we still have a number of car shows across Canada that are also dealer driven.

Quebec City, for one, for example, Calgary, those are very heavily dealer focused.

And BC to some extent has a lot of dealer support.

They're all successful in their own right.

They help drive sales.

They get people into car buying mode for the spring buying season.

That's important.

I think the shows that are struggled or had struggled are the big international media focused shows like Geneva or Detroit,

which was really a media driven show that had 5,000 media coming on media day.

Well, those kind of experiences with the advent of everyone doing things socially,

everything doing them online, those shows struggle.

And that's why the Frankfurt show went away.

Paris is okay, but it's not the media extravaganza that it once was.

But the shows that like ours, which are really consumer focused,

obviously we still get our media attention on our own right.

But this is still a great buying experience.

It drives a lot of interest in the market and will still be here for years to come.

Jason, always great to talk to you.

Again, congrats on record attendance.

Appreciate you discussing and breaking down the show.

All right.

Thanks very much.

Great.

I'd like to thank Jason for joining me this week.

If you want to be a guest on the show, have a suggestion or simply want to comment,

email me at glason at AutoNews.com.

And remember, you can listen to all our previous podcasts on Spotify, iTunes, Google Play,

or on our website, automotivenews.ca.

Just scroll to the podcast hub in the middle of our homepage.

And don't forget, you can follow Automotive News Canada on X, where we're at Auto News Canada.

You can find me there too under at G-Lacin, A-N-C.

Finally, look for us on LinkedIn.

Just search Automotive News Canada.

That does it for this episode of the Automotive News Canada podcast.

We hope you'll join us next time.

So long, everybody.

Feb. 27, 2026 | The week’s top stories and CIAS GM Jason Campbell

About this episode

Jeep Compass

United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement

integrated automotive manufacturing system

military procurement

assembly plant

Keyloop

cloud-based ecosystem

Cadillac

Formula One car

Audi

Ford

Stellantis

Hyundai

Infiniti

crash test cars

GMC

supercars

Mclaren F1

Geneva Auto Show

new car buying experience

EV incentives

EV incentive payment

EVs

indoor test track

tariffs

electric vehicles

Tesla

Polestar

Volvo

Beijing Auto Show

Volkswagen

Honda

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