It’s the system that gets car parts and cars from where they’re made to where they’re needed. If a key route is blocked, it can slow down production and deliveries.
These are electric cars made in China and shipped to Canada. The big idea is that where the cars are built can change how fast they arrive and how much they cost.
Dongfeng is a car company that works with other automakers in partnerships. Here, it’s mentioned because Nissan is using that partnership to think about exporting EVs.
Automatic emergency braking is a safety feature that can detect a crash risk and brake for you. The goal is to help prevent the collision or make it less severe.
Volkswagen is growing a Canadian warehouse and distribution operation for car parts. That can help parts get to shops and dealerships more efficiently.
Just-in-time delivery means parts are scheduled to show up right when the factory needs them. That can save money on storing extra parts, but if shipping gets stuck, production can be affected.
Fuel consumption is how much fuel vehicles use. If trucks are stuck in traffic, they waste fuel idling and slowing down, so a smoother trip can use less fuel.
Essex Engine is a local automotive supplier mentioned as having been shut down and then restarted with government support. Suppliers like this can affect how quickly car production can happen.
The Gordie Howe bridge is a new/major bridge connecting Canada and the U.S. near Windsor and Detroit. If it opens and runs smoothly, it can help trucks move car parts faster and with fewer delays.
USMCA is a trade agreement between the U.S., Mexico, and Canada. For car makers and parts suppliers, it can change how smoothly parts can cross the border and how companies plan production.
A blockade is when people block a route so cars can’t get through. At a border crossing, that can stop shipments and cause major delays for businesses.
A second span means building an extra bridge route. The idea is that if one crossing gets blocked or shut down, there’s another way for vehicles to keep moving.
An emergency injunction is a fast court order. In this case, it was used to get the bridge reopened right away because the delay could cause big damage.
The Hyundai Tucson is a popular SUV. Here it’s just used as an example of the kinds of vehicles that were affected during the bridge blockade chaos.
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Hi everyone and welcome to the May 22nd, 2026 episode of the Automotive News Canada podcast.
I'm your host Greg Lason, the digital and mobile editor at Automotive News Canada.
Coming to you from just outside Windsor, Ontario, the automotive capital of Canada.
Today on the show, I speak with Automotive Parts Manufacturers Association President
Flavio Volpe. He's here to discuss the New Gordy Howe International Bridge,
which connects Windsor to Detroit. The span is supposed to open before summer 2026,
and it's a key link in the North American auto supply chain.
But US President Donald Trump is threatening to keep it closed,
presumably until trade concessions are made by Canada. Flavio tells us why the link is needed
so badly for automotive and how we got to this point. But first, a look at some of the top Canadian
automotive stories of the week. Nissan is considering bringing China-built electric
vehicles to Canada. The automaker says it is studying exports from its joint venture with
Dongfeng. Canada recently opened the door to as many as 49,000 China-made EVs. Nissan is looking for
lower cost vehicles and faster EV development. It's part of an effort to rebuild sales and cut
costs. The company is also planning major increases in exports from China to Latin America.
In retail news, in the past decade, new vehicle prices in Canada and the United States
have climbed more than 40 percent. But industry experts say safety technology is not the main
reason for the increases. Analysts speaking in Toronto recently say prices are higher because
buyers are choosing larger, more expensive vehicles. Automakers also say today's vehicles come with
far more standard safety features, including automatic emergency braking and collision alerts.
And finally, on the automaker front, Volkswagen is expanding its Canadian parts and distribution hub
The first phase of the expansion in Ajax, Ontario added more than 100,000 square feet of warehouse
space. It includes secure storage for electric vehicle batteries. Volkswagen also added loading
docks and parking spaces as it plans for future growth. The company says the larger three-phase
expansion project is expected to wrap up by 2027. And that's a look at some of the top Canadian
automotive stories of the week. You can find more on those and other stories at our website
automotivenews.ca. Coming up, I speak with Automotive Parts Manufacturers Association
President Flavio Volpe. At TD Auto Finance, we pride ourselves on being remarkably human and
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We also offer a full suite of commercial floor plan financing options that can help you grow your
business. Welcome back to the Automotive News Canada podcast. I'm your host Greg Lason. I'm now
joined by Automotive Parts Manufacturers Association President, Flavio Volpe.
Flavio, thanks for joining me once again. Thanks for having me. Always a pleasure. Take me back to
when the unnamed Gordy Howe Bridge was first discussed. What was the logistical situation
like in automotive transporting parts to and from Ontario and the United States?
Well, look, if you want to send goods, you got to go over
at the time Maddie Maroon's Bridge. It's capacity constrained, but it's also constrained by someone
in charge of what he wants, when he wants. It's not just the most important commercial
crossing between two G7 economies. It's the only privately held one. There was a really good discussion
between a conservative Prime Minister, the Stephen Harper here up on my wall,
and Barack Obama. How do we do this? What do we do? Certainly fought by the owner of the Ambassador
Bridge and the Maroon family now, like any other private business would want to defend its spot
there. The American side said, look, we understand the value in it, but we don't have the money to
put into it, which is amazing. We don't have the money to put into it at the moment, but let's work
a tolling agreement so that you guys front the money and then you make it back on tolls. We did
that. The bridge is financed by Canada. It's financed by Canada with a very specific return
agreement that worked for Canada, but mostly worked for Canada because Canada had to find
another way in from Windsor to Detroit, because at that time, much like it is today, but with
more volume, the most important things that went from Canada to the US and in vice versa were
manufactured goods, and the center of manufactured goods is Detroit Windsor.
So what were you flagging at that time? You and your members, were you saying this is
costing us time and money? This is a bottleneck. I just wonder what you were flagging or what the
parts industry and auto industries stance was and what their recommendations were to both sides
of government, whether it was US or Canadian government officials.
Look, on the Canadian side, the argument was more about a bottleneck and what that bottleneck cost
versus the toll on the bridge. But the toll on the bridge is, look, you got two lanes. Anytime
you got an issue, you're stuck, getting that cost money, but you got to go through town to get to
that bridge. And if we're going to spend some money on infrastructure, going around town, build
the highway to a new bridge and get you right out there, get it off center, and then see if we
can't get the capacity right through town than we did. And so we did a couple of things. We built
capacity to the current bridge, and we've also built that long-term capacity to the new bridge.
And the travel and goods is really balanced in either direction. And so the industry at large
said, yeah, this works for us. This also allows us to grow that capacity at the time
that we'd come to the bridge decision. This Detroit-centered cluster was losing investment
decisions to the US Southeast. And in a lot of cases to Mexico, and some of those US Southeast
conversations were, well, access to deep water ports. And so you're going to make the stuff
and you're going to export it out. And then the Mexican argument was, look, cheap labor, cheap
this, cheap that. But also, we've got trade agreements for 45, 46 different countries. So you
can use Mexico as a base. And the Detroit cluster was seen as, well, you're servicing the Midwest
and you're servicing American markets, but you've got a lot of inertia in the way you move goods.
And this bridge was one of the solutions in moving goods in the air.
To put it in context for the listeners who don't know, there was an old joke around Windsor
that went as follows. You could get from Quebec to Miami and pass 13 stoplights and 12 of them
were on a stretch of basically residential roads leading into Michigan. And then there was one
on the other side of the bridge before you hooked up with the interstate system that could get you
all over America and avoiding stoplights. That is the bottleneck you were talking about,
correct? That residential street, essentially. And now it's free flowing to a brand new
eight lane bridge. How does that change the way auto industry moves goods? And how does that change
in terms of monetary savings just in time delivery? Because we know that's how the industry operates.
Yeah, it's all the obvious changes. Look, you can predict when a shipment's going to arrive.
You can bulk up on shipments and not necessarily worry about whether there's excess capacity.
We're all stuck in the straight of our moves right now. There's a better
calculation on fuel consumption when you're not stuck in Windsor for half an hour,
when you're rolling. And also, it's a clear signal to the industry that all three levels
of government understand that movement of goods is important because we built the monument to it.
I remember talking to Eddie Francis, former mayor of Windsor about this so many times.
And from a municipal point of view, of course, they didn't have the infrastructure dollars to
commission something so expansive. But he was dealing with General Motors had closed a transmission
plant there. There was a series of closures and slowdowns on the American side. And the whole
issue in Windsor was, look, how much longer is Windsor going to be in the auto business
if we don't fix some of these things? We closed Essex Engine. We reopened it with money from the
federal and provincial government. But at that time, a major infrastructure project was good for
Windsor rights in Ontario companies. And it was very good long term vision for anybody that
knew that you had to go through Windsor to get to the US. Let's do that in the most painless way
possible. And Eddie was a real champion of it. He was the mayor. And Eddie's no longer the mayor.
It's been a long time since Eddie's been the mayor. He probably has all his hair to go back.
But this bridge couldn't be arriving at a better time. Politics aside, I think we're going to get
peace on the USMCA front. I think we're going to see volumes pick back up. And
the U-turn that the Americans are going to make on how they view the USMCA region as critical to
their competitiveness with China and the rest of the world may actually cause a real
glut of business when this stuff gets announced. Outside my window here, I can see the Ford
Oakville plant. That's going to be online later this year. And better to have a romantic idea
that you can get that stuff across rather quickly like when you look at pictures of the 401 from
the 60s. You know, you brought up USMCA and you seem to believe a deal is possible and probably
likely the other sort of monkey wrench that's been thrown into this is Donald Trump saying he
won't open the bridge. So even if we get a USMCA deal, do you believe that Donald Trump will indeed
approve it? Does he have any leg to stand on when he says he won't open it or is this going to open
no matter what? Well, he's never wasted an opportunity to create a negotiating friction. And I think
this you could file this into that. That bridge will open. It may not open the minute that we
said it's going to open, but the bridges go two ways. And the American companies that are relying
on the shipment of goods into Canada, like $29 billion worth of auto parts that come into
Canada every year from the US, where do they go? They go on many maroons or the maroons family
bridge, you know, some of it sneaks through in other places, like in through starting, for example,
yes, or New York, Ontario bridges, but for the bulk of it goes through there. So
I think he's just pressurizing the situation and making him in the way that he does, but
it's not, there's no way. I want to go back to a couple of things that you mentioned. First,
I want to talk you liken this to the Strait of Hormuzor, at least you showed why one passing
is not enough, right? And we've seen this in auto. If you go back to the COVID-19 crisis and the
blockade at the ambassador bridge, was that really a signal to all parties involved that, hey,
we need a second span in case there is an emergency of any kind at Maddie Maroon's bridge or any
other crossing for that matter? Yeah, somewhere on my wall over here that you can't see on your
screen is a framed copy of the emergency injunction the APMA got to reopen that bridge.
And the way that we did it was to argue that there was a reputable harm being done on production
that would never be rescheduled. And subsequent reports showed analysis, third party analysis
showed that was about a billion dollar cost to the auto industry. That's in five days.
What we argued in the moment was this thing is so absolutely critical. It has to be cleared.
It has to be cleared today. And you'll remember that everybody bitched and moaned about it.
But everybody like, well, is it Windsor police services? Is it the OPP? CBSA?
And we went and got clarity on it. But I spent like maybe the next six months apologizing for
a bunch of idiots with hockey sticks and Hyundai Tucson, who caused wreaked havoc because they
understood. I shouldn't call them idiots because they did understand one thing. It was the only way
in. Right. And it was owned by a private company that said, I'm not going to intervene. And by the
way, the blockade is at the bottom of the bridge. Yeah, you're right. It was on public roadways
and public roadways. It was not on the actual physical structure of the bridge, which is privately
owned, as you mentioned by the money. Yeah. Yeah. So I think it helped to make the case for what was
emerging physically as the second bridge over there to say like, we're not going to have that
problem over there. No, of course, we made some legislative changes in the provincial government
was said, Hey, by the way, you go to jail and we can charge you a 100000 dollars.
That's not a traffic ticket. Don't fool around. But that moment was exactly why that was our
straight up for a moose moment. Exactly why you should have other paths. The other thing I want
to circle back on is you brought it up and I wanted to discuss this. It was a conservative
prime minister and a democratic US president that announced the deal that got together and got this
done at two parts. One was the political relationship back then better. And two,
was there a better understanding of automotive supply integration between the conservative,
the conservatives under Harper and the Democrats under Barack Obama? What was the relationship
politically better? And was there a better understanding of how tied together North America
is in the auto industry? Well, I'll say all the relationships on either end of the spectrum
on both sides of the of the 49th parallel have been better than than any relationship that
Donald Trump is the counterparty on, mostly because American presidents, while they always
understood that they had size and leverage over Canada, always said, okay, well, Canada's our most
important trading relationship. So we're not going to be self-destructive while being mean-spirited
to them and cut off our noses by their face. They know how exposed they were. So it made those
relationships easier to manage because it was an expectation of professionals. Nixon hated
Pierre Trudeau. And there's a famous story where he called him an a-hole. And Trudeau,
having heard that said, I've been called the worst things by better people. And neither one of those
two sides of that conversation meant better relations between the two countries. But the
relations, and you know, Nixon put a tariff on Canadian automotive goods in 1971 to cause a
crisis as well. But we don't remember that. We don't get taught that because it was within the
regular spectrum of how these two countries would operate with each other. So Stephen Harper
worked very well with Barack Obama, even if they may not exactly have liked each other.
Now, your question on whether this administration or this Canadian government really understands
and or appreciates the integration of the automotive trade, I would argue that Donald
Trump and his administration probably understands better than many of their predecessors. And that's
why he pushed that button. And that's why he's using it as the wedge. Like, I know how much
pain this is. And by the way, I don't care about you. Here you go. That makes sense. My last question
to you, as we all know, your sports fan, do you approve of the name the Gordie Howe International
Bridge? It seems like it's right up your alley. I just wonder your thoughts to get us out of here
on something like your thoughts on the name. You know, we've all kind of spent a better part of
the last year cringing at a phrase that really worked for about a month, which was elbows up.
But but Gordie Howe was known for his elbows. And he was he was very good. He was not flashy.
But he was the best player on the ice. And he was the strongest guy in the ice.
And he told a story with his elbows and and the curve of his stick. But he did it for
the Detroit Red Wings. And he was Captain Canada, when he was the captain of the team in the industrial
heartland of the USA, that bridge could not have been named after anybody else. And frankly,
they should have called it the Gordie Howe Gordie Howe Bridge twice, because he will stand as a
testament to Canada, US culture, family and relationships long after all of us are gone.
And everybody who poked everybody else's eye. There was only one number nine.
Appreciate it as always, Flavio. Always a pleasure. Great. I'd like to thank Flavio for his time. If
you'd like to be a guest on the show, I have a suggestion or simply want to comment email me at
glason at auto news dot com. And remember, you can listen to all our previous podcasts on Spotify,
iTunes, Google Play, or on our website, automotive news dot 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. I'm there too under at glason and see finally look for us on LinkedIn. Just
search automotive news Canada. That doesn't for this episode of the automotive news Canada podcast.
We hope you'll join us next time. So long, everybody.
About this episode
Canada’s auto headlines set the stage with EV import sourcing from China, rising vehicle prices tied to buyer choices and standard safety tech, and Volkswagen’s parts hub expansion. The conversation then pivots to Flavio Volpe on the Gordie Howe bridge—why it matters for cross-border automotive parts logistics, how tolling and capacity constraints affect costs, and what redundancy lessons came from the Ambassador Bridge blockade. The discussion also touches on USMCA expectations and the scale of auto parts moving between the two countries.
Nissan eyes China exports; Tech’s effect on pricing; VW Canada expansion. Plus, Automotive Parts Manufacturers’ Association President Flavio Volpe talks about the need for the Gordie Howe International Bridge to open. It’s a key link in the North American automotive supply chain.
