The Globe and Mail reports in its Monday edition that the tools that Canadian governments wielded for decades to create a world-class auto assembly industry here have nearly all disappeared. The Globe's Greg Keenan writes that is a key conclusion of a study of Canadian automotive policy from the 1965 Canada-U.S. auto pact to the recovery from the Great Recession of 2008-09. During this period, Canadian policy-makers lost the ability to use trade policy to lever new investments out of global automakers. The competitive advantage offered by government-financed health-care costs vanished and the quality of workers in other countries has risen to close to or equal to that in Canada. The report contends, "The combined impact of these changes is that Canadian automotive workers and the governments of Ontario and Canada are in a similar position: vulnerable and exposed." Instead of using financial incentives to buttress those advantages to entice automakers to open new assembly plants in Canada, taxpayer money is aimed at keeping existing factories open. Report co-author Greig Mordue says, "We've given all of our tools away to our neighbours, and then we check in the shed and they're just not there any more."