Opinion: ‘Vasa syndrome’ is killing Ontario’s auto sector

financialpost.com:

By Michael Nitefor

When know-it-alls stick their noses where they don’t belong things usually doesn’t end well. Management science gives this problem a name: “Vasa syndrome.”

In Sweden, schoolchildren learn the story of the good ship Vasa, which today has its very own museum in Stockholm. In the 1620s, when King Gustav II Adolph wanted to outfit his navy with the most high-tech fighting ship in the world, competent Swedish naval architects designed him a seaworthy warship, named the Vasa, for sheaf of grain, the king’s heraldic symbol. But the king insisted it carry twice as many bronze cannons as the engineers had planned, as well as fancy upper-deck decorations. The result? The Vasa was fatally top-heavy and, when the wind hit it, capsized and sank to the bottom of Stockholm harbour — within 20 minutes of being launched.

People in power promoting aspirational projects that run contrary to common sense is a constant refrain through history. And it usually ends about as well as the Vasa did. Our own era’s version of the Vasa is the electric-vehicle (EV) monoculture imposed by Ontario Premier Doug Ford and federal Minister of Innovation, Science and Industry François-Philippe Champagne on Ontario’s beleaguered auto sector — which is still largely in denial about the blockbuster EV fail that is about to hit. With three major American car manufacturers operating in Ontario, our auto sector is particularly vulnerable.

History doesn’t say how much warning King Gustav II Adolph got from his advisers but because no one has dared speak out our governments’ headlong, multi-billion plunge into EV and battery production is now teetering on the edge of economic disaster. For politicians, policy “strategists” and bureaucrats,