* https://thebeaverton.com/2026/01/canada-chooses-lawful-evil-...

* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alignment_(Dungeons_%26_Dragon...

Edit: A comment in /r/canada:

> TBF I would much rather work for Lex Luthor than The Joker if I had to choose one.

https://electricautonomy.ca/data-trackers/ev-sales-data/2025...

"Canada recorded 45,366 new zero-emission vehicle registrations in Q3 2025, accounting for 9.4 per cent of all new vehicle registrations in the quarter, according to the latest report from Statistics Canada."

"Of the total, 26,792 units were battery-electric vehicles (BEVs), while 18,574 were plug-in hybrid electric vehicles (PHEVs). "

So this would represent about 1/4 of current annual EV sales.

Cheaper car options in this country will be nice, and I say this as a certified car hater who's yet to own one despite pushing 40.

Chinese car companies face far more ruthless competition than western ones so could end up making better cars as a result, imo.

There are over 100 brands in china selling electric cars

If you're going to fight economically, might as well do it in areas that aren't (a) a lost cause (b) going to hurt you economically since you'll have to settle for worse and more expensive products and (c) the alternative supplier's country isn't threatening to literally invade you and surrounding nations.

BYD, for reference, got almost 30% of their 2024 income from the Chinese state (~$1.4b).

But this is always difficult to judge because most nations help local industry to some degree, and it can be quite difficult to compare.

e.g. https://www.autoexpress.co.uk/news/366599/chinese-evs-banned...

Canada may also break apart: https://globalnews.ca/news/11615147/alberta-separatists-prai...

Musk and crew know how to make cheap stuff - they've chosen high margin for Tesla however.

Every Chinese business big enough to play at the global scale has the government in it's power structure. They don't necessarily dictate business decisions but every bit of data collected is by default accessible by the government.

Having a significant fraction of a country driving around in Chinese EVs gives an insane amount of information to the Chinese government for free. It's not just direct information either like the driver's identity and personals, with millions of cars on the road a lot can be inferred, like if the parking lots at military bases suddenly fill up on a Tuesday afternoon or traffic between a high value person's home and an airport gets unusually slow.

These correlation attacks are not just theoretical, Strava leaked the location and layout of a military base in Afghanistan, accidentally, by showing the most commonly jogged routes by users on their public map.

These cars have cellular modems, they will have wifi and bluetooth hardware, if a particular person's device was identified at, for example, a political meeting or business conference then that person could be trivially tracked by the dozens of Chinese cars that they pass in a day. The information could be smuggled home along with all the normal diagnostic, update and service info that streams out of a modern car.

This could be done today by the American government, and it is to some extent, to identify, and locate, protesters and criminals by their mobile devices but it takes time, access to equipment/logs that the government does not always own.

And it may sound paranoid but remember that China was caught operating their own "police" force around the world not long ago, they will take advantage of any opportunity they are given to spy on other countries.

edit: HN seems to have a short memory. Which country was investigated for tampering with a Canadian federal election recently?

No country can compete with China on even footing in regards to car manufacturing, despite the frequent denials, they offer extremely good products, at costs no European or American company can compete with.

I'm not saying that's happening, just that it makes more sense than this chaotic self-destruction of the American empire.

Unfortunately, this is probably what is necessary at this point.

And whatever happened to that mysterious one-day $50 million in tesla rebates?

- I'm still not over how great it feels to have confidence that Carney has a strong understanding of the economics of these political manouvers. Not only is he not a !@#$ing moron, he's a deeply experience economist more than he's a politician.

- Stratification of trading partners is nothing but good.

- This feels like safe toe-dip. Both sides have agreed to terms that are temporary, meaning there is no surprise rug-pull moment. Which is something the Americans are using more and more to keep everyone so !@#$ing wound up.

- This could be a long-term play for China: establish a presence in the North American auto market. The U.S. is right there. (Watch the Americans ban Chinese EVs from border crossing)

- Even better long-term play: establish North American manufacturing. How about Ontario builds Japanese and Chinese cars, turns CAMI and others into a Roshel or other military vehicle plant, and says good riddance to the American auto makers that have been rug-pulling long before Trump got into politics.

- A great opportunity to start improving trade lines for Canola. Possibly a trial balloon for other primary and secondary resources?

- Canada cannot stand on its own geopolitically. We must be closely tied to a major power. Intuitively that choice is the EU But I fear that China can move much faster and we'll find ourselves de-facto in their sphere while the EU is still debating this and that.

Trump threatening invasion of Greenland is also aimed against Canada; the USA would have more and more military bases threatening Canada, so Trump's anti-Greenland policy is heavily aimed at threatening Canada rather than China or Russia. One can see how he helps Putin versus Ukraine - one can not trust Trump.

The less we depend on Trumpistan the better.

I get that this is seen as a "practical" move north-of-the-border, but understand, this is the kind of move that guys like Trump, Putin, and Xi all require. They want this kind of thing to happen, because it shows the real issue was never one of democratic values and human rights. If Canadians valued that then their PM wouldn't be inking a deal with China in response to what Trump is doing. There would be some sort of deal with Europe, perhaps, but not China.

The next time the Canadian government brings up some sort of issue with the treatment of Canadians by ICE or some other kind of issue, you can bet that the horse trading will involve a reference to the fact that this deal happened.

That's already more-or-less the rationale in Trump's dealings with Europe: for all of the complaining about Russia as a threat or the sanctity of NATO and how the Greenland affair threatens all of that, there was a solid 15-year-long run where the continent was more than happy to buy petroleum products off the Russians while ignoring escalating human rights violations in Russia along with incursions into South Ossetia and the Donbas.

He picks up on these sorts of deals as hypocrisy based in realpolitik, and will exploit it.

No, not of the kayfabe goals that serve as rallying cries for his dwindling band of cultists. But rather success of the goals of our adversaries who helped put Trump in power and seem to primarily inform his policy.

(edit to answer the question below, as throttling has set in: China, obviously)

What concerns me is why does the west think China is trustworthy? Why are we all fighting one another? Culture is important. China knows this, and is unequivocally Chinese relative to the Europeans.