According to the wiki they still have a plant, but yeah, it shrank over the decades. Then again, other Aussie industries expanded to take it's place.

We're not trying to build this from scratch, and we only need to guarantee continued operation for the near future, not forever. I don't think it's a totally straight comparison.

It’s that they are right next door + 100 years ahead of us on R&D and progress, not to mention having long established integrated facilities and economies of scale.

Both of those things are equally in Canada, and I'm surprised you don't know that given the current news cycle.

Where is your steel going to come from?

We're a big net exporter of that, too!

and the absence of said product in the marketplace kind of tells you everything you need to know about the viability of it.

That's because crossing the border has been free and was assumed to always be free, so it's integrated with the US. American cars are Canadian cars, basically. Now that's changed, and the market (and politics) will have to adapt.

Organising a new company would be a huge problem, and selling overseas even bigger, but we have all the pieces on the production end.