Prime Minister Mark Carney says that a decision by automaker Stellantis to sell its Brampton, Ont., assembly plant amounts to a “betrayal” of thousands of workers.
Carney made the comment during a press conference in Montreal on Tuesday, one day after Stellantis announced that it would sell the idle plant to Canadian armoured vehicle manufacturer Roshel.
More than 2,200 workers have been on layoff at the Brampton plant since production was halted in December 2023.
During an interview with CP24 Breakfast earlier on Tuesday, the CEO of Roshel said that while his company will prioritize Brampton residents in hiring it “is not going to even consider” taking on any responsibility for rehiring all Stellantis workers.
“The situation at the Brampton plant is unacceptable. It violates the obligations that Stellantis has under several agreements. But to be more fundamental it is a betrayal of the workers as it is a betrayal of the obligations to Canada and by extension to all Canadians,” Carney said on Tuesday. “We will fully enforce our rights in protection of those workers and in protection of Canadian funds.”
In May 2022, the federal government agreed to provide Stellantis with $529 million in funding to retool its Brampton and Windsor plants.
In a statement to CTV News on Tuesday, Stellantis said that it has “offered to voluntarily return the government support received for Brampton Assembly’s original retooling plan,” though it said that it cannot disclose the total amount.
Appearing alongside Carney in Montreal, Industry Minister Mélanie Joly said that she will be meeting with officials from Unifor and Stellantis in Toronto on Thursday to discuss a path forward.
Joly had previously said that the decision by Stellantis to sell the plant “does not erase the commitments they made to workers in Brampton.”
“For more than a year we have been engaging with Stellantis, engaging with Unifor, trying to find a solution for Brampton but Stellantis has decided to go ahead and violate its contract, so that is why, as the prime minister has said, we will use the full force of the law to make sure we protect jobs but also bring justice to these workers that are waiting to just get a job from their employer, which is Stellantis,” Joly said.
‘A much brighter future’
There is a long history of manufacturing at the Brampton assembly plant dating back to 1986.
Most recently, the Dodge Charger and Dodge Challenger were assembled in Brampton but the last of those vehicles rolled off the assembly line in 2023.
At the time, Stellantis said that the plant would undergo improvements to begin manufacturing electric vehicles.
In an interview with CP24 Breakfast on Tuesday, Roshel CEO Roman Shimonov promised a “much brighter” future for the Brampton plant once the deal with Stellantis closes later this year.
“We are talking about an idle plant that wasn’t operating for many years and now we have a new, much brighter future. People that criticized (the sale), they either haven’t been briefed on the facts or are just ignoring them because we are talking about a plant that was idled for many years,” he said.
Shimonov has said that Roshel will look to create thousands of jobs in Brampton but the company has provided few specific details beyond saying that they want to bring a new “centre of excellence for advanced manufacturing” to the former Stellantis site.
In an interview with CTV News Channel on Tuesday, Automotive Parts Manufacturing Association president Flavio Volpe said that the Brampton assembly plant was at one point responsible for thousands of direct jobs and an estimated 10,000 to 12,000 additional jobs at parts suppliers plants.
He predicted that the jobs created by an armoured vehicle manufacturing facility would be a fraction of that.
“He (Shimonov) is standing in and saying, ‘well I can do that.’ Well, you can’t do that. We know you can’t do that,” Volpe said, explaining that many of the armoured vehicles manufactured by Roshel are made using chassis imported from the U.S.
“The difference for your viewers, you think about a hot rod shop or your local mechanic who is doing work on several vehicles a day versus something as big as the Eaton Centre, if not bigger, full with 1,000 vehicles a day and thousands of employees. Making them, shipping them out and doing another 1,000 tomorrow. It is scales different and it is embarrassing that we are even pretending that it’s the same.”
Roshel won’t commit to rehiring workers
Shimonov was asked by CP24 Breakfast whether he would commit to rehiring impacted workers but said that is not something he is willing to do.
He also said that Roshel will not be involved in any negotiations that may take place between Unifor, the federal government and Stellantis.
“I can confirm that we will give a priority to people in Brampton the way we always do. We are in Brampton and there is a reason we are in Brampton. Brampton is an amazing place to develop and to create a competitive business, but a competitive business cannot work by taking obligations of other companies and we are not going to even consider taking any responsibilities of anyone from previous engagements,” Shimonov said.
Tories call for Joly’s job
Unifor has accused Stellantis of betraying its members with an “underhanded deal” that allows it to “walk away from its commitments.”
During a press conference outside the plant on Tuesday, federal Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre called the impending sale “yet another Liberal betrayal of Canada’s working people.”
Poilievre said that despite promises of new jobs, the reality is that Canadian jobs are moving to the U.S. with “nothing but vague promises of a smaller number of jobs for an undefined group of workers.”
The Conservative leader added that he wants the Carney government to launch a lawsuit against Stellantis “to get Canadian tax dollars back.” Separately, he is calling on Carney to fire Joly over her handling of the Stellantis file.
“We need to know the exact sum, every penny that has gone to Stellantis for all of its operations in Canada under this Liberal government and we need every penny to be repaid. Until that happens, we will not relent because our mission is to save money and jobs,” Poilievre said.
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