INDIANAPOLIS — A recent Indiana delegation's trade mission to shore up business cooperation agreements with Canada proved fruitful but didn't create new jobs, Gov Eric Holcomb said Thursday.
His three-day mission reinforced commitments with business chambers and industries in Ottawa, Quebec, Montreal and Ontario, Holcomb said. He also met with Prime Minister Justin Trudeau in Ottawa. The governor described Trudeau as "very engaging, very optimistic."
"I appreciated his focus that I share on workforce development and making sure that our citizens respectively are skilled up for the 21st century," Holcomb said. "I found him to be a leader on that front."
Holcomb also invited Trudeau, son of the late Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau, to an Indianapolis 500 race. "He (Trudeau) did share that his father was into auto racing and he had a fast Mercedes in a garage as we spoke that his father left him. I told him, 'We could get you going around that track at 150 miles an hour,'" Holcomb said.
Canada is Indiana's lead foreign trade partner with $20.9 billion worth of goods exchanged between the two in 2017, according to the Indiana Economic Development Corp. Private donations through the Indiana Economic Development Foundation funded the mission trip where Holcomb was joined by Indiana Secretary of Commerce Jim Schellinger, First Lady Karen Holcomb, Ports of Indiana CEO Rich Cooper and Gary Mayor Karen Freeman-Wilson.
Freeman-Wilson was part of the delegation since Canadian exports are often shipped through Burns Harbor. In 2017, Canadian Finance Minister Bill Morneau visited Gary to promote relations.
Indiana is home to more than 70 Canadian businesses and sells more Hoosier-made products to Canada than to Indiana's next five largest markets, Holcomb said Thursday.
The Ontario visit yielded a memorandum of understanding promoting economic cooperation and trade relations — a "to do list" targeting foreign direct investment, Holcomb said.
The Ontario memorandum points to cooperation in 11 categories including life sciences agriculture, aerospace and one of Holcomb's legislative agenda items, workforce development. Among the 11, two points made reference to autonomous vehicles through sharing development and support of the auto industry. Earlier this year, Holcomb sought autonomous vehicle research in Indiana as one of his legislative agenda items.
In the recent Indiana General Assembly, a bill was introduced by Rep. Ed Soliday, R-Valparaiso, that would in part define standards for research and development of autonomous vehicles in Indiana. However, the auto industry lobbied against the bill saying it did not want state-mandated limits on research. The bill died and Holcomb hasn't said if he will ask another legislator to carry a similar bill next session.
Holcomb said Canada is a "powerhouse" in AV development. "We want to make sure that whether it's trucking or automobile that we're doing it in the safest manner humanly possible, even if a human isn't in the car and they (Canada) share the same.
He added, "The refreshing thing was we know what they know — that it's coming. It's about quality of life and efficiency and effectiveness and the way of the future. And to not be a future denier and just to think that the status quo is always going to remain — it's not. We want to be the change agents, the leaders of the change and so do they."
Holcomb added, "All these individual one-on-one meetings were very productive and bode well just not for Indiana but for our relationship with Canada."