Important Facts

Auto manufacturing regularly contributes over $20 billion to Canadian GDP.
Nationally, auto and parts production accounts for about 16.8% of ‎manufacturing sales.
In Ontario, transportation equipment manufacturing is 20.2% of GDP.
Direct industry employment in Canada accounts for 130,000. The majority of these jobs – at least 124,000 – are located in Ontario. Both direct and indirect jobs are estimated at 500,000 jobs across Canada.
Vehicles are the top Canadian export valued at $64.6 billion in 2016 of which 95% was exported to the U.S.

Auto is the lead Ontario trade export at 28.10% of all exports in 2015.
NAFTA trade totaled $1.1 trillion in 2015, and about 20%, or $230 billion of that was automotive-related. Of that, vehicles comprised 45% and parts was 55%.
Given the highly integrated nature of the auto industry, parts and components may cross the NAFTA countries’ borders as many as 8 times before being installed in a final assembly plant in one of the 3 NAFTA partner countries (Wilson C.E., 2011).
The Detroit-Windsor crossing represents the highest number of loaded truck container crossings, 1.6 million annually, along the Canada/U.S. border. A significant percentage of these would be auto manufacturing related.

Estimates suggest that for every one assembly job, nine others in the economy are created in upstream and downstream activities (Stanford, 2014).
Over 90 percent of automotive manufacturing jobs are fulltime high paying jobs with hourly wages that exceed provincial and national averages.

Canada is the 10th leading vehicle producer in the world.
CVMA member companies annually produce approximately 60% of all vehicles assembled in Canada.
In 2016, CVMA member companies produced over 1.3 million vehicles in Canada.
Canada contributes 13% of all vehicles produced in North America.
Canada is dependent on exporting outside of its own borders, with domestic consumption of just 12% of the vehicles it manufactures within its borders.

Canadian Vehicle Manufacturers' Association