What the news from Honda tells us about the land assembly in Wilmot

It all makes sense now.

The news this week that Honda Canada is about to announce a new electric battery plant in Alliston, potentially worth $15 billion, connects a lot of dots.

This last piece of information leads me to believe that the secret and hasty assembly by the Region of Waterloo of 770 acres of prime farmland near Baden and New Hamburg can only be for an electric battery plant, for Toyota Motor Manufacturing Company, the biggest vehicle manufacturer in Canada.

I should be very clear that I don’t have any inside information. Elected officials and business development executives have been tightlipped from the beginning. But anyone can read the news stories and government releases to catch the flow of what’s happening. Here’s the circumstantial evidence:

■ Unlike other vehicle manufacturers that are its main competitors, Toyota doesn’t yet have a nearby site for an electric battery plant. Stellantis LG is building a $5-billion facility in Windsor. Volkswagen is building a $7-billion site in St. Thomas. Honda will soon announce it is building in Alliston, for what is suggested to be a $15billion project.

■ Toyota can’t wait much longer if it’s going to jump in. The federal government was giving out huge subsidies for these plants to be in Canada, but has stopped due to the high tax burden. Manufacturers that were slow to get started with battery plants are settling for tax credits and smaller provincial subsidies instead.

■ Wilmot is the perfect location for Toyota, which has vehicle manufacturing plants in Cambridge and Woodstock, producing more than half a million vehicles a year between them. Wilmot Township is between those two sites. The land being assembled is right on Highway 7 and 8, near a rail line, and within easy commuting distance for a large number of potential employees. Vehicle batteries are very heavy, so it’s economical to have them manufactured close to the vehicle assembly plant.

An imminent deal for Toyota would explain the secrecy and urgency surrounding the project. If the region was just looking at a site to be ready for some unknown future client, the atmosphere would be different. It would be less tense and more open. The whole tight-lipped tone of what little public conversation has taken place on this land assembly, the speed with which farmers were approached and threatened with expropriation, all suggest a very specific plan being made on a deadline for an important customer.

■ Using the Wilmot land for this purpose aligns with the long-held goal of Premier Doug Ford. Ontario officials, including Economic Development Minister Vic Fedeli, have pitched the province as a prime destination for electric vehicle and battery investments, part of a strong push from the government to make Ford’s vision of an end-to-end electric vehicle supply chain in the province a reality.

■ Electric vehicles may have their own problems, but they are coming and they’ll likely be here to stay. The federal government announced on Dec. 19 that it would require all new vehicles sold in Canada to be zero emissions by 2035. There’s a similar push in the United States.

If I’m right that the land is being assembled for a huge battery plant, it’s even more imperative that there be public conversation and consensus that this is the right thing to do, before the deal is done.

If there’s a battery plant coming, it means thousands more jobs and other industries that will be attracted here. Then this conversation isn’t just about losing prime agricultural land, or treating farmers badly, or encroaching on the countryside line, it will also be about becoming a much larger and more densely populated community, both for Wilmot and for Waterloo Region.

Shouldn’t we all have a say in that?