The Lion Electric Pump‑and‑Dump: Taxpayers Deserve Real Accountability
I once again raised an issue that should concern every Canadian — the government’s complicity in the Lion Electric pump‑and‑dump scandal. This is not just about a failed company; it is about how public institutions enabled a scheme that cost taxpayers hundreds of millions of dollars while well‑connected insiders walked away with profits.
Lion Electric was heavily promoted as part of the “green transition,” building electric school buses in Quebec and receiving extraordinary levels of political support. The Quebec government invested $230 million and mandated that all electric school buses purchased in the province be built by Lion. Then came more hype, more mandates, and more inflated valuations.
But behind the hype was a structurally weak company. Its buses burned, broke down, cost more to maintain, and proved less reliable than the vehicles they were supposed to replace. Yet the bigger scandal wasn’t the technology — it was the money.
Lion merged with a U.S. SPAC that poured almost half a billion dollars into the company. Confidence in that deal was boosted just two months earlier when the federal government announced $100 million in funding. Add to that $50 million from the Strategic Innovation Fund, $400 million in financing arrangements through the Canada Infrastructure Bank, and finally a loan guarantee through Export Development Canada (EDC). These guarantees protected financiers who earned their returns regardless of the outcome.
Insiders cashed out millions before the company collapsed. Investors lost everything. And taxpayers — Canadian and American — are now left holding the bill. As the former head of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency put it, people “got to keep all the money,” and some should be facing prison.
This is the very definition of socializing risk and privatizing profits.
That is why I have repeatedly asked the government a simple question:
How much money is EDC still guaranteeing on the failed Lion Electric loans?
This should be public information. Yet the government continues to avoid answering. Canadians deserve transparency. They deserve accountability. And they deserve to know how much of their money is still at risk because of a government‑enabled pump‑and‑dump.
I will keep asking — and I will keep fighting to bring the truth to light.
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Consult the official Hansard transcript.