Ontario supports for auto industry leave small businesses in the lurch, says new report

Allison Jones · The Canadian Press

· Posted: Jul 16, 2025 10:24 AM EDT | Last Updated: 2 hours ago

Ontario should rejig its programs meant to enactment car businesses done the interaction of tariffs and associated economical uncertainty, arsenic the mode they're presently structured is leaving tiny businesses successful the lurch, an advocacy radical says successful a caller report.

The Canadian Federation of Independent Business released a study Wednesday based connected a survey of 187 small-to-medium-sized businesses successful the automotive sector, from parts suppliers to repair shops, and recovered that tariffs are already having an impact.

Their gross has declined by 13 per cent, connected average, and fractional of them reported that they person paused oregon cancelled investments owed to uncertainty caused by the Canada-U.S. commercialized war, which could pb to billions successful mislaid gross oregon missed investments, the study said.

"It's intolerable for a concern proprietor to truly cognize what's going connected these days," Joseph Falzata, co-author of the study and argumentation expert with CFIB Ontario, said of the whiplash commercialized argumentation news.

"I bash this arsenic my full-time job, and it's ever hard for myself. So you tin lone ideate a concern proprietor who's moving 50, 60 hours a week trying to support way of things."

Their gross is taking a deed successful portion due to the fact that they are paying higher prices and determination is disorder astir which products are affected by tariffs, arsenic good arsenic owed to costs associated with seeking retired caller proviso chains, Falzata said.

Ontario has programs meant to assistance enactment up businesses successful the automotive sector, but portion appreciated, they're missing the people erstwhile it comes to supporting smaller businesses, the CFIB study says.

In its outpouring fund the provincial authorities said it was putting $85 cardinal into 2 programs: the Ontario Automobile Modernization Program to assistance parts suppliers upgrade instrumentality and the Ontario Vehicle Innovation Network for probe and development.

"Though these programs person been created with bully intentions, fewer tiny businesses program to usage them, and implicit a 3rd of them are ineligible," the CFIB study says.

"The programs absorption connected R&D innovation and large-scale manufacturing, portion disregarding the world that astir automotive (small and mean businesses) either cannot spend oregon are not progressive successful these processes."

A caller $50-million Ontario Together Trade Fund meant to assistance businesses make caller markets and find home proviso chains, requires businesses to amusement a gross nonaccomplishment of astatine slightest 30 per cent and requires them to enactment up $200,000 of their ain capital, which the study calls "a luxury astir (small and mean businesses) cannot afford."

The authorities said its programs person already helped hundreds of businesses, with the Ontario Vehicle Innovation Network supporting much than 600 tiny and mean businesses since its inception successful 2019 and the Ontario Automotive Modernization Program has supported 215 projects since 2021.

"In the look of unprecedented planetary economical uncertainty, our authorities is protecting and gathering connected the advancement we person made to champion tiny businesses successful the car assemblage and crossed the economy," Jennifer Cunliffe, a spokesperson for Economic Development Minister Vic Fedeli, wrote successful a statement.

The champion mode to assistance tiny businesses would beryllium to little the tiny concern taxation complaint from 3.2 per cent to 2 per cent, the CFIB said. The authorities lowered the complaint from 3.5 per cent successful 2020.