Ontario minister picks up trade mission pace as tariffs heighten need to diversify

TORONTO – Tariff tensions with the United States and a more pressing need to diversify Ontario’s trading partners are prompting the province’s minister responsible for economic development to pick up the already robust pace of trade missions abroad.

Vic Fedeli, who Premier Doug Ford has dubbed Ontario’s No. 1 salesperson, is in southeast Asia right now. By the end of his trip on Oct. 2 he will have marked trade missions to 15 countries, counting multiple visits to some countries he is more aggressively courting, and he has plans to hit another eight before year’s end.

“The boss (Ford) says to me — I sit beside him in the legislature — he says to me, ‘Buddy, what are you doing here?'” Fedeli recounted in a recent interview.

“You don’t make any sales when you’re sitting beside me…That’s what he reminds me of often. So we have his full, full support to continue to hit the ball out of the park like we did last year.”

Last year, when Fedeli went on 15 trade missions, the province landed 409 international companies who invested $40 billion in Ontario and created 24,711 jobs, he said.

The current trade mission to Malaysia, Vietnam, Thailand and Singapore is focused on life sciences and tech companies, Fedeli said.

“We want to continue our east-west travels around the world as we look to continue to replace trade with the United States,” he said.

“They’ve become an unreliable partner. We want to do everything we can to create economic growth here in Ontario.”

NDP economic development and trade critic Catherine Fife said she wants Fedeli to be successful on his trade missions as diversification is very important right now, but it’s hard to verify the return-on-investment numbers.

“I know that the minister’s job is to instil some confidence in Ontario’s economy, but there is obviously a disconnect between the lived reality of Ontarians, who can’t even find entry level positions right now in Ontario,” she said.

Ontario has lost 66,000 jobs since February and there are about 700,000 unemployed people in the province, according to Statistics Canada data.

Fedeli was also in eastern Europe, Germany and the United Kingdom earlier this year, where he said the push is on to secure more defence business. Ontario is home to some large defence producers and increased business could also be a boon to the Ontario steel industry, hard hit by American tariffs, Fedeli said.

Federal Finance Minister François-Philippe Champagne was just in Denmark taking part in a summit with European Union finance officials, where he brought a similar message. Canada supplied munitions and other military equipment to Allied forces during the Second World War and Canadian businesses can again take advantage of increased European defence spending, he said in an interview last week.

In the remaining three months of the year, Fedeli plans to visit eight countries, including India, Brazil, South Korea, Japan, Austria, Sweden and Germany. He has already been to some of those countries earlier this year, including four trips to Germany, he said.

Not only is Germany a focus for defence business, it is also key to Ontario’s electric vehicle supply chain strategy. Volkswagen is building an EV battery cell “gigafactory” in St. Thomas, Ont., with production expected to begin in 2027.

Fedeli expects to see a supply chain build out around that production, similar to what is happening with a Windsor, Ont., NextStar battery plant — a venture between automaker Stellantis and South Korea’s LG Energy Solution.

“When we landed NextStar, the battery plant, very quickly, they surrounded themselves with a half a dozen or more South Korean companies,” Fedeli said.

“That, we expect, will happen now at Volkswagen. They will look towards European companies, German companies, because they know the best European companies — Canadian companies (too), of course — but that’s why we’re in Germany so much.”

— With files from Craig Lord in Ottawa

This report by The Canadian Press was first published Sept. 23, 2025.