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The federal government had been made aware for months about the possibility that Stellantis would sell its Brampton, Ont., assembly plant to a light armoured vehicle manufacturer, a source has told CBC News.
The automaker announced on Monday that it plans to sell the plant to Roshel Inc., a move Prime Minister Mark Carney characterized as a “betrayal of the workers as it is a betrayal of the obligations to Canada.”
A source with direct knowledge of the sale of the Stellantis Brampton plant said the federal government had been engaged regularly on the deal since August. The source said both the Prime Minister’s Office and Industry Minister Mélanie Joly’s office had been briefed on the details of what was going to be announced. CTV News first reported the government’s involvement in the talks.
More than 2,000 workers were laid off from the Brampton plant when Stellantis halted operations in 2023 to refit the facility to produce the Jeep Compass.
Both Carney and Joly have blasted the potential sale to Roshel. The minister is expected to hold a meeting of all stakeholders in Toronto on Thursday in an attempt to find a way forward for the laid-off Stellantis workers.
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Ottawa didn’t facilitate deal, minister’s office says
A spokesperson for Joly said she “had no part in negotiating the deal with Stellantis or Roshel.”
“The minister didn’t meet with Roshel regarding this issue,” Mathis Denis said.
“Reporting that the minister was involved in the Roshel deal is false.”
“The minister, the department and the team would never have approved or agreed to a deal that lacked the union’s approval. The minister would never have agreed to something the union doesn’t accept,” Denis said.
In a deal announced by the former Trudeau government in 2022, Ottawa said it would inject up to $529 million in Stellantis plants in Brampton and Windsor, Ont., to help them retool to increase production of electric and gas-powered vehicles.
Denis also said Joly or her team wouldn’t approve a deal with Roshel if it broke Stellantis’s commitments under that 2022 deal.
That same agreement also saw Ontario Premier Doug Ford’s government pledge to support the plants with an investment of up to $513 million.
CBC News confirmed on Tuesday that Ontario has not provided the company with any funding for its Brampton retooling initiative because it didn’t meet conditions related to job creation and project milestones.
Ford cautions against Chinese ‘knock-down kits’
Ford wrote a letter to Carney on Tuesday, a copy of which has been obtained by CBC News, warning against the possibility that the plant would be used to assemble “Chinese-made knock-down kits” — where a Chinese auto manufacturer imports parts from overseas just to be assembled in Canada.
“We cannot undermine the future of Canada and Ontario’s automotive sector by allowing the introduction of Chinese-made knock-down kits at the Stellantis Brampton facility,” Ford wrote in the letter, adding that he is pleased the federal government is aligned on that position.
“The economic impact of introducing kits to Ontario’s automotive sector would be devastating to Canadian automotive workers and to the thousands of businesses and workers across the Canadian automotive and auto parts supply chain.”
Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre blamed the Liberal government for failing to prevent the closure of the Stellantis auto plant in Brampton, Ont., and called on Prime Minister Carney to fire Industry Minister Mélanie Joly for her handling of the file.
Ford has come out aggressively against the idea of the Brampton plant being used as an assembly station for Chinese vehicles since the possibility was first suggested in a February report by Bloomberg News. The outlet suggested Stellantis was in talks with Zhejiang Leapmotor Technology, a Chinese automobile manufacturer with headquarters in Hangzhou, China, at that time.
Asked about the Stellantis sale during an unrelated news conference on Monday, Ford again raised concerns about Chinese assembly kits.
“We can’t bring in kits from China. Can’t happen,” the premier said. “That will bastardize the whole sector. Unacceptable. We need them to find a vehicle, a model that works.”
