OTTAWA — Innovation Minister Francois-Philippe Champagne says the convergence of Canada’s automotive and mining sectors is working to lure extra firms to Canada to make electrical vehicles and the batteries that energy them.

Over eight weeks final spring, automakers and battery firms introduced greater than $13 billion in new investments within the electrical automobile manufacturing sphere in Canada, together with batteries and their parts, buses and electrical vehicles.

These bulletins included retooling or increasing auto manufacturing crops that exist already in Canada.

Champagne is in Japan this week the place he’s assembly with the heads of a number of Japanese automakers that wouldn’t have a Canadian manufacturing presence, together with Mitsubishi, Nissan and Subaru.

Champagne says the gross sales pitch is to level out that in a world the place provide chain points are an enormous headache for producers, Canada has the expert workforce, the uncooked supplies and the steadiness they need.

He says he is telling firms that “stability, predictability, and the rule of regulation is in excessive demand and brief provide.”

Whereas he’s additionally assembly with Honda and Toyota, each of that are retooling Canadian crops to allow them to make electrical autos, the conferences with the others are completely different, he says.

“If you happen to speak to individuals who have a longtime footprint in Canada it is completely different, as a result of they’ve already invested,” he stated.

For the others, he says most have informed him, “it is actually the three issues that actually drive investments: expertise, ecosystem and sources. And if you put that collectively, Canada turns into type of the provider of alternative.”

This journey follows one other to Europe within the spring the place Champagne met with all the most important German automakers, together with Volkswagen, which is frequently duking it out with Toyota to see which would be the greatest automotive firm on the planet.

One other journey to Asia, prone to embrace Korea, is within the works for the autumn.