GM CANADA’S ‘UNSUNG GEM’
New president touts tech
The new head of General Motors Co. Canada wants to make this country a top priority when it comes to the rollout of the automaker’s latest technologies.
“There are some things that are being rolled out around the world that we haven’t adopted here in Canada yet,” Travis Hester told the Financial Post in an interview last month. “I’m going to change that, from GM’s point of view.”
Hester, who was named president and managing director of GM Canada in April, pointed to GM’s new partnership with Amazon, a deal announced earlier this year which will allow eligible drivers to have packages delivered to their cars via Amazon Key. It was deployed in 37 U.S. cities in April, but is currently unavailable in Canada.
“There is no reason why we shouldn’t roll these things out in Canada at the exact same time that we’re rolling them out in the U.S,” Hester said.
Hester took the helm of GM Canada after his predecessor, Steve Carlisle, was selected to head the company’s Cadillac division. Unlike Carlisle, who began his career as a student at GM’s Oshawa assembly plant, Hester is new to the company’s Canadian unit. He began his career with the automaker in 1995 in Australia, where he worked as a Technical Support Engineer. Since then, he has held positions around the world with the company, including stints in China, Korea and Europe. He was most recently the executive chief engineer for GM’s Cadillac division, working on advanced technologies for vehicles, including the CT6 sedan.
The Australian is taking over the Canadian division at what many would say is a tumultuous period for the North American automotive industry. About two months after he arrived in Toronto, U.S. President Donald Trump initiated a Department of Commerce investigation to determine the national security effects of automobile imports, threatening to impose 25 per cent tariffs on U.S. imports of vehicles and auto parts. Automotive tariffs would be detrimental not only for the Canadian economy, but GM specifically, which produces two of its most popular trucks in Oshawa, Ont.
The potential tariffs are in addition to ongoing uncertainty surrounding the renegotiation of NAFTA. Talks between Canada and the U.S. resumed this week after negotiators failed to produce a deal before Trump’s deadline of last Friday.
Hester, who spoke to the Post in late August during a visit to Queen’s University in Kingston, Ont., where GM was sponsoring a not-for-profit summer camp run by student engineers, expressed optimism about the NAFTA talks.
He said at the time that a 75 per cent North American content rule — something that was later proposed in a preliminary deal between the U.S. and Mexico — would be acceptable and considered a successful outcome for GM. He also stressed the importance of reaching a trilateral deal, rather than one or more bilateral deals, which Trump has since threatened are a possibility if Canada does not endorse the Mexico-U.S. proposal. But above all, Hester said tariffs must be avoided.
“The Canadian manufacturing industry is heavily affected by NAFTA, and the Section 232 auto tariff potential, so for us we’re doing every single thing we can to support a successful modernization of NAFTA to get to the other side of this,” he said.
“What we need to make sure is that we avoid a very significant tax, like a 25 per cent tariff, that would be applied to the entire industry in Canada. The amount of export volume that’s done by all of our industry is so significant, a tariff like that would be destructive for the entire Canadian industry.”
But trade and tariffs do not rule Hester’s day-to-day work at GM. A key focus has been product and technology development, which he said are “an unsung gem” of GM’s Canadian operations.
GM has two technical centres in Ontario — one in Oshawa, focusing on core product development, and another in Markham, Ont., dedicated to software engineering and work on advanced safety features. The Markham facility, which officially opened in January, has so far hired 700 employees, with a goal of hiring 1,000 in total.
“We’re investing heavily in Canada, and the Markham facility alone is a proof point of our most recent major investment … These are high-quality technology jobs that are really going to drive the future,” Hester said.
Hester said he is “passionate” about bringing new technology to Canada. The adoption rates in Toronto of Maven, the company’s car-sharing service, are a sign that more technology should be launched in Canada first.
“The adoption rates on Maven are some of the best we have anywhere in the world,” he said. “From a development point of view, we just need to make sure these rollouts occur here. I’m making sure that, within our company, Canada is at the absolute forefront not just of technology development, but technology implementation.”
We’re doing every single thing we can to support a successful modernization of NAFTA to get to the other side of this
TRAVIS HESTER, President and managing director GM Canada