Quick Facts on Canada's Auto Industry

What does the auto industry mean to Canada?

The auto industry is a critical part of Canada's economy. The industry is a source of good, union jobs as well as skills development, applied research and innovation. The auto sector sustains a long and complex value chain, that is heavily integrated within North America. From component parts to final assembly, Canada is a world-renowned auto manufacturing centre and is still one of the foremost auto-making regions of the world.

The auto industry makes an oversized economic contribution to many communities across Canada, spurring economic growth, spin-off employment and boosting public spending by generating hundreds of millions of federal, provincial and municipal tax dollars.

What are the economic challenges surrounding Auto Talks 2026?

Canada's industrial economy faces a severe crisis, a result of numerous and overlapping economic headwinds.

U.S. import tariffs imposed on Canadian industrial goods, including cars, steel, aluminum and wood products, among others, present an immediate and pressing threat to the domestic economy and jobs. Heavy supply chain integration has defined the U.S.–Canada trade relationship, especially in autos since the 1960s. Trade arrangements, like the 1965 Auto Pact, allowed American automakers to orient their supply chains across borders to service both U.S. and Canadian markets. Special Canadian content protections helped ensure autoworkers jobs would be protected and grow. By imposing tariffs on Canadian cars, the U.S. is not only explicitly violating its commitments under the CUSMA trade deal, it is weaponizing Canada's dependence on U.S. export sales (a design feature of integrated North American trade) in a malicious effort to steal away Canadian auto jobs and investment.

Auto Talks 2026 takes place against extraordinary trade tensions within North America, and a tariff dispute that has so far resulted in two idled Canadian assembly plants (Brampton and Ingersoll), sluggish investment, as well as indefinite layoffs on both sides of the border.

Auto Talks 2026 also take place on the heels of the Trump Administration reneging on government commitments for the electric vehicle transition. The Administration eliminated industrial EV subsidies, consumer rebate programs and revoked non-compliance penalties on fuel economy standards. These changes have frozen the U.S. sales market for electric cars, and derailed landmark EV investments across North America – with transitioning workers caught in the crosshairs. Automakers are now doubling back on internal combustion engine programs as global firms, including automakers from China, seek to secure EV market share in what is still a fast-rising sales market.

Why Auto Talks 2026 matters to Canadian workers

Negotiations between Unifor and the Detroit Three automakers serves as an important bellwether for wages and workplace benefits across Canada's automotive supply chain. Wage rates set in Auto Talks, for instance, often pass through to non-unionized auto assembly and trades workers at Toyota and Honda factories. This is an example of how unions can have a positive, upward effect on wages across an entire labour market. These "pass-through" economic benefits are also realized by auto parts workers across the supply chain and often serve as the standard-setter for workers throughout the Canadian economy, including transportation, manufacturing and elsewhere.

All told, the outcomes of Auto Talks are consequential for Canada's industrial workers, at large.

Auto Talks 2026 marks the first round of major sector-wide industrial negotiations in Canada, since the start of the U.S.-led trade war – which has devastated large groups of industrial workers. Although the economic headwinds gripping the auto sector fall outside the scope of collective bargaining between Unifor and the Detroit Three automakers, Auto Talks 2026 presents an opportunity for autoworkers to respond and react to these pressures.

Canada's auto industry plays a pre-eminent role in Canada's industrial economy, and remains a source of good jobs, economic activity, as well as research and innovation.

Key figures

• Direct jobs: 122,000 (2025)
• Total auto-impacted jobs (direct, spin-off and supported): approximately 600,000
• GDP: $17 billion (2024)
• Exports: $73 billion (2025). The auto sector is Canada's #2 export industry.
• R&D spending: $732 billion (2025)
• Vehicles produced per day: 3,389 (2025)

Sources: Statistics Canada; Canadian Vehicle Manufacturers Association; Omdia Automotive Data; Industry Canada – Trade Data Online

Major Auto Sector Employers

Five major automakers operate assembly facilities in Canada including Ford, General Motors, Stellantis (which constitute the Detroit Three), as well as Honda and Toyota. Workers in the Detroit Three are unionized with Unifor. Automakers in Canada produce passenger cars as well as light and heavy-duty trucks including sedans, hatchbacks, CUVs, minivans, and pick-ups. Automakers also produce engines and engine components, and undertake design, testing and engineering work in Canada.

Canada is also home to a highly developed auto-parts sector. The sector includes hundreds of independent suppliers that feed assembly operations. These independent suppliers include Canadian-owned firms that are among the largest in the world such as Magna, Linamar, and Martinrea. Unifor represents thousands of workers at independent parts firms in Canada.

As Canada continues to secure new investments in the electric vehicle value chain, new battery production facilities have been sourced in Canada, including LG/NextStar Energy in Windsor (in operation) and Volkswagen/PowerCo in St. Thomas (under construction). Unifor represents hundreds of workers at the NextStar Energy battery plant.

Quick Facts

• In 2025, Canada's autoworkers built more than 1.2 million vehicles (3,389 per day) sold in Canada and around the world.
• Autoworkers produced and shipped vehicles, parts and trailers worth more than $92 billion in 2025.

Source: Omdia Automotive Data; Statistics Canada

Jobs and the Economy

Canada's auto industry directly employed 122,000 workers in 2025 including 36,000 in assembly, 18,000 in truck and trailer production and 68,000 in parts. Factoring in additional auto-dependent jobs along the value chain as well as other spin-off jobs, the auto industry supports an estimated total of 600,000 jobs across Canada.

Quick Facts

• Decent wages, won by unions, help spur workers' economic activity. Autoworkers' wages in 2025 contributed $8.6 billion to the Canadian economy.
• The "multiplier" effect of a single auto assembly job is historically wide-ranging and cited as creating as many as 10 additional jobs. Today, auto manufacturing supports approximately 600,000 jobs in the economy — across the value chain as well as in construction, in services, dealerships and many others.

Source: Unifor Research; Statistics Canada; Canadian Vehicle Manufacturers Association

Trade

Canada's auto sector is connected to a robust North American supply chain, that stretches from raw materials and parts production to final assembly and sale. Nine in every 10 cars assembled in Canada is exported for sale. Among those vehicles exported, approximately 90% are destined for sale in the United States. Conversely, Canada imports more than 800,000 U.S.-assembled vehicles for sale each year, representing two-thirds of total vehicle sales. Auto parts value chains criss-cross the Canada and U.S. border multiple times before final installation. It's no wonder Canada and the U.S. share a near perfectly balanced trading relationship in cars and parts (in 2023, for instance, Canada imported approximately $80 billion in cars and parts from the U.S. and exported $80 billion in cars and parts to the U.S.).

Despite North America serving as a self-contained automotive market, that can build and sell the cars it needs, the share of non-North American vehicle imports is rising – representing approximately 5 million per year (or the equivalent of 20 assembly plants worth of production). Allowing Chinese-based automakers to sell into Canada, without strict assembly and production requirements, creates additional pressure to preserve North American production capacity and jobs.

Quick Facts

• Canada's auto industry exported $73 billion worth of goods in 2025 (9% of Canada's total). Among all of Canada's manufacturing export industries, the auto industry ranks #1.
• In Ontario, auto industry exports represent 20% of all provincial exports — the largest and most significant of all trade-dependent sectors (2025).
• Canadian-assembled vehicles exported to U.S. and Mexico: 940,000 (2025)
• Canadian-assembled vehicles exported outside North America: 111,000 (2025)

Source: Statistics Canada; Industry Canada, Trade Data Online; S&P

Diversity and Inclusion

Increasing employment diversity in Canada's manufacturing sector is an important objective of unions and must be of Canada's employers as well. The auto industry is no exception to this. While there have been significant advances to ensure workforce demographics better reflect the working age population of Canada, more needs to be done. Expanding hiring practices to be inclusive of women, Black workers and workers of colour, Indigenous workers, newcomers, and workers with disabilities creates needed economic opportunities.

Quick Facts

• Across Canada's vehicle assembly plants, an estimated 26% of workers identify as visible minorities and 27% are newcomers. In Canada's auto parts, the share is far higher (42% of workers identifying as visible minorities, and 44% as newcomers).
• Women continue to be under-represented in Canada's auto sector. Despite impressive strides in recent years to hire more women, including at GM's assembly complex in Oshawa, still just 19% of auto assembly workers in Canada are women.
• Indigenous people represent approximately 4% of the total Canadian workforce, but only 2% of workers in the auto assembly and auto parts sector.

Source: FOCAL Initiative, 2021 Automotive Manufacturing Diversity Data