The fight over the future of Stellantis’ Brampton Assembly Plant is escalating, but questions remain about what the dispute means for workers and taxpayers in Windsor.
The federal government is giving Stellantis 30 days to address what it calls a breach of its funding agreement, after the automaker confirmed plans to sell its idled Brampton plant to Canadian defence contractor Roshel.
On Friday, Industry Minister Melanie Joly says Ottawa is still hoping to prevent the sale, but is prepared to take legal action to recover hundreds of millions of dollars in taxpayer funding.
The federal and Ontario governments committed a combined $1-billion to help retool the Brampton and Windsor facilities for electric vehicle production.
Stellantis has offered to voluntarily return just $24-million in federal funding it received for the Brampton plant.
University of Windsor political science professor Lydia Miljan told CTV News that even if the government succeeds in court, that won’t provide much comfort to workers worried about their future.
“We know that litigation can take years to resolve, and so that is not much of a solution given what we know now that the minister was very much apprised of this sale going through well in advance of what we heard about last week.”
Miljan says the government needs to answer the questions about what happened behind the scenes.
She says Canadians deserve to know what assurances Stellantis provided in exchange for the public money.
“It’s always that, who knew what, when. And what were the terms of the agreement in the first place? We have both the federal and provincial governments giving each of them $500-million apiece to Stellantis for these plants. What was the terms of the contracts?”
Miljan says people are starting to lose faith in the way the government is handling a number of situations.
“Canadians are going to start to judge Mark Carney not on his credentials, but on whether or not he’s been able to deliver. And so far, all we’ve been getting from him this week is more word salads, which is very much in keeping with the previous government.”
Stellantis says the sale will put the Brampton facility back into productive industrial use, create new jobs and secure a long-term future for the site.
Meanwhile, the future of the Windsor Assembly Plant remains a major concern after being on production shutdown for seven of the last nine weeks. All three shifts are expected to return to work on Monday.