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Canola or Automotive: Which Contributes More to the Economy?
Episode 6 • 12th September 2025 • Making it in Ontario • Trillium Network for Advanced Manufacturing
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This episode of 'Making it in Ontario' unpacks a new data bulletin by the Trillium Network for Advanced Manufacturing that examines claims that the canola industry contributes $43 billion worth of GDP to Canada's economy, more than the automotive, steel, and aluminum sectors combined. Hosts Michelle Samson and Brendan Sweeney discuss the flawed methodology that generated that total, how the Trillium Network generated a more accurate number, and the importance of responsible advocacy.

  • 00:14 A New Narrative About Canola’s Economic Contributions
  • 01:22 Debunking the Canola Report
  • 03:15 Investigating the Canola Report’s Methodology
  • 06:13 Trillium’s Methodology and Findings
  • 10:23 Responsible vs. Irresponsible Advocacy
  • 11:55 Podcast Updates and Reminders

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Find Out More About Trillium

About the Making it in Ontario Podcast

Making it in Ontario is your window into what's next in manufacturing. Ontario’s economy depends on manufacturing, but the latest research reveals concerning trends that could undermine the sector’s strength—if we don’t address them. Join us as we talk to CEOs and other leaders at the forefront of the sector about productivity, strategy, talent markets and career opportunities, and the role of manufacturing in a prosperous and sustainable future.

This podcast is an initiative of the Trillium Network for Advanced Manufacturing. It is produced by Storied Places Media.

Transcripts

Michelle Samson:

Welcome to Making it in Ontario, your window into what's next in

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Ontario's manufacturing sector from the

data driven researchers at the Trillium

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Network for Advanced Manufacturing.

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I'm Michelle Samson.

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Brendan Sweeney: And I'm Brendan Sweeney.

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Michelle Samson: Alright, Brendan,

we are going to talk today about

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a recent data bulletin that the

Trillium Network for Advanced

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Manufacturing produced about canola.

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Brendan Sweeney: Yeah.

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About the economic contributions

of canola to Canada's economy.

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Michelle Samson: This would seem

like an odd choice for the Trillium

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Network for Advanced Manufacturing.

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Brendan Sweeney: It was an odd choice.

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It was really to chime in on a

narrative that's going around.

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It was advanced by a number of folks,

mostly in the prairies, including

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Saskatchewan Premier Scott Moe.

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And that narrative goes something like

this: The canola industry apparently

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contributes more to Canada's economy

than the automotive, steel, and aluminum

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and aluminum industries combined.

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And these comments are in the context

of ongoing trade disputes with China.

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Canada puts tariffs on Chinese EVs.

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China puts counter tariffs

on Canadian canola.

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And now we've got a dispute on our hands.

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Michelle Samson: Yeah.

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So I mean, data is Trillium's thing.

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It is your thing.

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So what did you make of those numbers?

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Brendan Sweeney: Scott Moe is dead wrong.

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The report that came up with those numbers

is flawed, really flawed, the idea that

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that canola, which is not unimportant,

but the idea that canola contributes more

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to Canada's economy than auto, steel,

and aluminum combined is laughable.

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Laughable.

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I mean, the idea, and we proved this

out in this data bulletin, the idea

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that canola contributes more than

automotive alone is itself laughable.

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So auto, steel, and aluminum?

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No.

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That dog won't hunt.

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Michelle Samson: Yeah.

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So how did this get on your radar?

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Brendan Sweeney: So after a couple

weeks at the cottage, I kind of

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popped my head back up to speak with

a journalist, Lorraine Sommerfeld,

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who wrote something for driving.ca,

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and that's out.

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And that was the genesis of this, so I

credit Lorraine for that because she kind

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of told me some of the numbers in our

discussion, you know, something like,

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okay, $13 billion worth of canola exports.

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$43 billion worth of GDP.

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What?

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That didn't make sense.

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If it was the other way around, maybe

it would've just been high, but it

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would've, but to turn an export based

industry, canola, that exports, you

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know, $12 or $13 billion worth of goods

every year into $43 or $44, whatever

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they said, billion dollars worth of GDP?

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That's just not right.

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So, we started digging into the data and

yeah, the canola numbers were a bit off.

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Michelle Samson: It sounds like

they were more than just a bit off.

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Brendan Sweeney: Yeah, they were way off.

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Way off.

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Like the most off I've ever

seen for these kind of numbers.

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Michelle Samson: How does

one get to be so off?

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Brendan Sweeney: Well, you use

a really wacky methodology.

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Michelle Samson: Hmm.

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Brendan Sweeney: Instead

of just going to the data.

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Instead of just saying, okay, you

know, StatsCan, tell me how many

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people this industry employs.

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StatsCan, tell me how much GDP

it contributes to the economy.

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Or even going to some of the

companies on the processing side and

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seeing how many people they employ.

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'Cause they report that out

to the government every year.

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We did that too.

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So you use a wacky, untested methodology

rather than just using the actual numbers.

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And then that just leads to errors

compounding on top of errors, compounding

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on top of errors, compounding on top

of errors, and so on and so forth.

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And you get a really, really

high number, like $44 billion.

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Michelle Samson: So if we wanna

take a generous take on this,

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Brendan Sweeney: Mm-hmm.

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Michelle Samson: You know, like

maybe dig a little bit more into,

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like, how they might have ended

up choosing this methodology and

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ending up with these numbers.

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Brendan Sweeney: So, one, I mean,

I have to kind of step back and

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say maybe they're not as familiar

with the StatsCan data as we are.

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Michelle Samson: Hmm.

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Brendan Sweeney: Maybe they're not as

familiar with, I mean, the report was

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written by a UK-based consulting company,

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Michelle Samson: Hmm.

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Brendan Sweeney: GlobalData Plc, and

maybe they're not familiar with Canada

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to the degree that we are, and StatsCan,

and systems of where you can find data.

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Where companies have to report

things to the federal government,

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and then in those reports you can

find out certain things about them,

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like how many people they employ.

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So maybe they just don't

have access to that.

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Maybe they did have access to that, and

those numbers seemed a little light to

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them for what they were being paid to do.

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Michelle Samson: Hmm.

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Brendan Sweeney: And so they wanted

to come up with better, quote

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unquote, better numbers, right?

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They wanted to really show the

higher end, the theoretical

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top end of these contributions.

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And, I guess it, like, it's so, you

know, when you do these things, is

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there a little expectation that you

exaggerate or that you, again, that you

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might use the real high end of things?

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Yeah.

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Do you exaggerate on your CV?

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Sure, a little bit.

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It's expected, you're expected to do that.

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But do you include a career on

there that you've been working at

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for 20 years that didn't exist?

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No.

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No, you don't do that.

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I don't know much about dating

profiles, but I imagine you have to

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use a photo of you that's of you when

you're younger, because photos of

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you when you're older don't exist.

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Michelle Samson: Can't argue on that.

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Brendan Sweeney: Do you use a photo

of you that's like two years younger?

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Maybe.

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Do you use a photo of you

that's 22 years younger?

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Probably not, right?

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So anyway, these numbers

is just a huge overreach.

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Threw up all these red flags.

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And when we dug in, we just started with,

okay, let's find the direct contribution.

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And we found for automotive, it's

like well over 100,000 direct jobs,

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and that's in vehicle assembly

and parts manufacturing, and $18,

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$19 billion worth of GDP directly.

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Before we put multipliers onto it.

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When we did that for canola, it was

about, you know, we took the two

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main value adding sides of canola.

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Not the indirect, not the

supply chain benefits, but the

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two main value adding sides.

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So we're doing an apples

to apples kind of thing.

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The crop production I think was about $4.5

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billion dollars.

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Okay.

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That's a lot.

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And the processing, 14 plants

in Canada, including one in

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Hamilton, including one in Windsor.

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So 14 processing facilities in Canada,

about like 1,500 employees, and maybe

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$500 million contributions to to GDP.

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So combined, you're looking at like $5

billion, and, you know, 22,000 employees.

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Michelle Samson: Big difference.

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Brendan Sweeney: Well, I mean, there is

a difference between those activities

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and the total economic impact.

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But going from $5 billion to $43

billion in GDP, and going from 22,000

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employees to 200,000 employees?

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That's just not, that's not real.

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Michelle Samson: Putting my economic

development hat on, you know, it's always

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nice when you have larger numbers to

report or you can say that your economy or

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this particular sector is really strong.

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But that being used in a marketing

context, while still not right and

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not good if it's so inflated, this

gets really dangerous when it's in

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an advocacy point of view, right?

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Brendan Sweeney: Yeah, and I mean

it's, well, when it's disingenuous.

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I think that, you know, if I am Premier

Moe, I'm having a conversation with a

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number of people right now, including

my staff, any economist that I have on

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staff, and including the people who put

this report in front of me, who put these

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numbers in front of me, and saying like,

Guys, you're making me look dumb here.

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And at a time when we're

trying to come together as one

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country, this is not helping.

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But I mean, Scott Moe didn't help himself

by comparing the canola, I mean he kind

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of started it, right, comparing the canola

thing to automotive, steel, and aluminum.

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And, you know, I think back to some

of the conversations we had with David

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Adams of Global Automakers of Canada

where he talked about what industry

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associations do, and sometimes what

they do with Trillium, and that's,

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you know, do some of this research.

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One of the reasons is that, you know,

a lot of industry associations, they'll

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get someone like us to do the work

because they just don't have the capacity

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to do it or the expertise to do it.

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Michelle Samson: Yeah.

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Brendan Sweeney: And similarly, they

increasingly rely on us, just as

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governments rely on them for this kind

of work because a lot of governments

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don't necessarily have the resources

or the capabilities to do that.

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Or even if they do, I mean, we

know that the federal government

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has certain capabilities.

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They want to make sure

things kind of line up.

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They want to do the report, then have

an independent third party do the

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report and just make sure that they're

within within a certain tolerance range.

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Michelle Samson: Right.

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Brendan Sweeney: And I think in

this case, you know, in early

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conversations with stakeholders,

there were a lot of comments to us

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kind of like, Yeah, I looked at that.

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I don't know how they came

up with those numbers.

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So thank you for adding

a corrective to this,

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Michelle Samson: Hmm.

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Brendan Sweeney: because we didn't

think it was right, but it wasn't

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really our space to call them out on it.

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It was not.

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So anyway, this is where I think we need

to, whether it's today, whether it's

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tomorrow, whether it's down the road,

engage in conversations about, okay,

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well what does advocacy look like and

what does responsible advocacy look like?

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Michelle Samson: Hmm.

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Brendan Sweeney: Because what I think,

you know, I think why we are here is

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because of irresponsible advocacy.

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I think I'd call it lavish exaggeration

that went unchecked at every stage.

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And we have at the Trillium Network

not only been there to do that kind

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of research, that economic impact

research, but also help stakeholders,

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help governments make sense of

something somebody else wrote,

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and they'll engage us to do that.

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But this one, this particular

data bulletin, just for the

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record, nobody paid for it.

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Nobody commissioned it.

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Michelle Samson: Mmm.

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Brendan Sweeney: I mean, we just

wrote it because that's what we do.

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Michelle Samson: Yeah.

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Brendan Sweeney: And last week it started

making the rounds on a couple media

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outlets, links in the show notes, and, you

know, haven't had much of a response from

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the folks, the canola stakeholders yet.

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A couple kind of prepackaged comments

that frankly were a bit trite, and just

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repeated what they did, where what we were

saying was what they did was inaccurate.

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Michelle Samson: Yeah, so we're

recording this a few days early, but,

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you know, if there are any updates

between the time of recording and

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when this is published, we'll include

that in the show notes as well.

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Brendan Sweeney: Hmm.

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And also I'd just like to say, response

to our episode last week with Norman

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Wickboldt of PowerCo, it was just great.

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And, hey, maybe credit to us for

being the first with a full length

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podcast with PowerCo Canada so far.

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So, that's awesome.

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And a reminder that if you wanna

meet some of the folks from PowerCo,

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they're sponsoring the St.Thomas

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Octoberfest in downtown St.

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Thomas in about a week's time.

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Links in the show notes.

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Michelle Samson: See you there with, uh...

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Brendan Sweeney: Lederhosen?

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Michelle Samson: Yes.

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Lederhosen!

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Brendan Sweeney: Lederhosen.

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Which one though?

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Which lederhosen do I wear

for a September Octoberfest?

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Tough decision.

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Michelle Samson: You'll have

to just head over to St.

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Thomas to find out what

Brendan is wearing.

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New episodes of Making it in

Ontario are published weekly.

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Follow us now on Apple Podcasts or

Spotify to make sure you don't miss any.

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Making it in Ontario is an

initiative of the Trillium Network

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for Advanced Manufacturing.

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It is produced by Storied Places Media.

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