News about the Canadian car market: what is sold here, what is built here, and the trade and subsidy rules that keep changing the answer to both. Canada buys roughly 1.9 million light vehicles a year and assembles about 1.3 million, and those two figures describe different cars. Assembly is concentrated entirely in Ontario, where Ford, GM, Honda, Stellantis and Toyota each run plants, and most of what comes off those lines crosses the border into the United States. What Canadians actually drive is imported, from the US, Mexico, Asia and Europe.
Policy has moved faster than the plants. Zero-emission vehicles reached about 14.5% of sales in 2024, then fell to roughly 8% through the first eight months of 2025 once federal and provincial purchase incentives ran out. The federal government paused its EV sales mandate in September 2025 and repealed it in February 2026, replacing the requirement with money: the Electric Vehicle Affordability Program pays up to C$5,000 at the point of sale, but only on cars built in Canada or in a free-trade partner country. In the same period Canada cut its 100% tariff on Chinese electric cars to 6.1% for the first 49,000 imported each year, which reshaped the bottom of the price list without reshaping the rebate list.
