Prime Minister Justin Trudeau was on hand Friday for the official announcement of a new battery plant that will bring thousands of auto sector jobs to southwestern Ontario — and he accused his main political opponent, Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre, of standing in the way of the deal.
Canada has secured a $7-billion commitment from German automaker Volkswagen to build a massive battery plant in St. Thomas, Ont., an industrial community about 30 minutes south of London.
The factory, which will supply batteries for electric vehicles, has been billed by Trudeau as a “generational investment” in Ontario’s auto sector — a project the government says will create 3,000 direct jobs and ten of thousands of spin-off jobs.
The Trudeau government calls it a coup for Canada. Countries around the world are in a fierce competition to land plants like this.
Volkswagen, the world’s largest automaker by revenue, has only two other such plants under development — in Germany and Spain.
To secure the “gigafactory,” which is expected to eventually produce enough batteries for a million cars a year, Canada has had to commit a lot of public money to the project.
Prime Minister Justin Trudeau arrives to make an announcement on a Volkswagen electric vehicle battery plant at the Elgin County Railway Museum in St. Thomas, Ont., Friday, April 21, 2023. (Tara Walton/Canadian Press)
To start, Volkswagen will get about $700 million from the federal government’s Strategic Innovation Fund to begin construction.
Then there will be production subsidies, which could cost the federal treasury $8-13 billion in total, depending on how many batteries are pumped out in any given year.
Ottawa has said the government’s investment in the plant — Canada’s largest-ever taxpayer investment in an industrial facility of this type — was necessary to stop the plant from going to the U.S., where there are also generous subsidies on offer.
After praising the politicians and workers who secured the deal, Trudeau launched into a pointed partisan attack on Poilievre.
“Pierre Poilievre came out and said this project was a waste of money,” Trudeau said at Friday’s announcement.
Looking directly at local Conservative MP Karen Vecchio, who was in attendance for the announcement, Trudeau said, “Karen, you have your work cut out for you.”
He framed the Volkswagen deal as a bet on a cleaner, greener future by a “confident country.”
Poilievre’s anti-carbon tax rhetoric threatens to derail projects like this, Trudeau said.
“Do we want to see all the anxieties we have and all the challenges around the world and say, ‘This is an opportunity for Canada to step up,’ or do we want to say ‘Canada is broken, we’re never going to succeed, let’s get really mad instead,'” Trudeau said, citing Poilievre’s claim that “Canada is broken” after eight years of Liberal leadership.
“Anger doesn’t deliver this plant in St. Thomas.”
Trudeau takes aim at Poilievre during Volkswagen welcoming event
During a speech welcoming what will be a massive Volkswagen battery plant in St. Thomas, Ont., Prime Minister Justin Trudeau says that while Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre said ‘this project was a waste of money … confident countries invest in their workers.’
Poilievre has expressed scepticism about the government’s investment.
When the project was announced initially earlier this year, Poilievre questioned “how much of Canadians’ money” would be going to a “foreign corporation.”
“This money belongs to Canadians. Not to a foreign corporation. Not to Justin Trudeau,” he said.
Poilievre also wrote to Parliamentary Budget Officer Yves Giroux on Friday calling on him to take a closer look at the deal.
Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre has asked the PBO to evaluate the federal government’s investment in the Volkswagen plant. (THE CANADIAN PRESS/Darryl Dyck)
In his letter to Giroux, he said the $13 billion in subsidies will have to come from taxpayers and he would like to better understand the impact.
“We believe it would be beneficial to calculate the expected impact on jobs in other sectors due to the fiscal measures needed to provide the necessary funds to subsidize these jobs,” Poilievre wrote.
Industry Minister François-Philippe Champagne, who has been credited with closing the deal with Volkswagen, said the country will recoup its investment in only five years’ time.
“Five — that’s the number that matters to Canadians. The number of years for the economic impact to equal the value of our investment,” Champagne said.
“Yes, this investment is a big one but it is an anchor in the supply chains we’re building,” Trudeau added. “We’re expecting the economic impact of the investment to be covered within five years.”
Polievre asked Giroux to fact-check the government’s claims.
“We would ask your office to provide an independent analysis of how long it would be expected to take for taxpayers to see their subsidy returned through increased government revenue from the economic impact resulting from the facility’s construction,” he said.
The federal government has landed other big EV deals as it looks to rebuild a sector that has been hollowed out by disinvestment and globalization.
Stellantis, the parent company of brands like Chrysler, Jeep and Ram, has said it will spend $4.9 billion to build a new electric vehicle (EV) battery plant in Windsor.
It’s also booked $3.6 billion to retool its Windsor and Brampton assembly plants for fully electric vehicles.
Ford Motor Co. has promised to spend $1.8 billion on its Oakville Assembly Complex to turn it into an electric vehicle production hub.
General Motors has also spent tens of millions of dollars — with some financial support from Ottawa and Ontario — to convert its Ingersoll, Ont., plant into an assembly line for electric delivery vans.
VANCOUVER – Contract negotiations resume today in Vancouver in a labour dispute that has paralyzed container cargo shipping at British Columbia’s ports since Monday.
The BC Maritime Employers Association and International Longshore and Warehouse Union Local 514 are scheduled to meet for the next three days in mediated talks to try to break a deadlock in negotiations.
The union, which represents more than 700 longshore supervisors at ports, including Vancouver, Prince Rupert and Nanaimo, has been without a contract since March last year.
The latest talks come after employers locked out workers in response to what it said was “strike activity” by union members.
The start of the lockout was then followed by several days of no engagement between the two parties, prompting federal Labour Minister Steven MacKinnon to speak with leaders on both sides, asking them to restart talks.
MacKinnon had said that the talks were “progressing at an insufficient pace, indicating a concerning absence of urgency from the parties involved” — a sentiment echoed by several business groups across Canada.
In a joint letter, more than 100 organizations, including the Canadian Chamber of Commerce, Business Council of Canada and associations representing industries from automotive and fertilizer to retail and mining, urged the government to do whatever it takes to end the work stoppage.
“While we acknowledge efforts to continue with mediation, parties have not been able to come to a negotiated agreement,” the letter says. “So, the federal government must take decisive action, using every tool at its disposal to resolve this dispute and limit the damage caused by this disruption.
“We simply cannot afford to once again put Canadian businesses at risk, which in turn puts Canadian livelihoods at risk.”
In the meantime, the union says it has filed a complaint to the Canada Industrial Relations Board against the employers, alleging the association threatened to pull existing conditions out of the last contract in direct contact with its members.
“The BCMEA is trying to undermine the union by attempting to turn members against its democratically elected leadership and bargaining committee — despite the fact that the BCMEA knows full well we received a 96 per cent mandate to take job action if needed,” union president Frank Morena said in a statement.
The employers have responded by calling the complaint “another meritless claim,” adding the final offer to the union that includes a 19.2 per cent wage increase over a four-year term remains on the table.
“The final offer has been on the table for over a week and represents a fair and balanced proposal for employees, and if accepted would end this dispute,” the employers’ statement says. “The offer does not require any concessions from the union.”
The union says the offer does not address the key issue of staffing requirement at the terminals as the port introduces more automation to cargo loading and unloading, which could potentially require fewer workers to operate than older systems.
The Port of Vancouver is the largest in Canada and has seen a number of labour disruptions, including two instances involving the rail and grain storage sectors earlier this year.
A 13-day strike by another group of workers at the port last year resulted in the disruption of a significant amount of shipping and trade.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Nov. 9, 2024.
The Royal Canadian Legion says a new partnership with e-commerce giant Amazon is helping boost its veterans’ fund, and will hopefully expand its donor base in the digital world.
Since the Oct. 25 launch of its Amazon.ca storefront, the legion says it has received nearly 10,000 orders for poppies.
Online shoppers can order lapel poppies on Amazon in exchange for donations or buy items such as “We Remember” lawn signs, Remembrance Day pins and other accessories, with all proceeds going to the legion’s Poppy Trust Fund for Canadian veterans and their families.
Nujma Bond, the legion’s national spokesperson, said the organization sees this move as keeping up with modern purchasing habits.
“As the world around us evolves we have been looking at different ways to distribute poppies and to make it easier for people to access them,” she said in an interview.
“This is definitely a way to reach a wider number of Canadians of all ages. And certainly younger Canadians are much more active on the web, on social media in general, so we’re also engaging in that way.”
Al Plume, a member of a legion branch in Trenton, Ont., said the online store can also help with outreach to veterans who are far from home.
“For veterans that are overseas and are away, (or) can’t get to a store they can order them online, it’s Amazon.” Plume said.
Plume spent 35 years in the military with the Royal Engineers, and retired eight years ago. He said making sure veterans are looked after is his passion.
“I’ve seen the struggles that our veterans have had with Veterans Affairs … and that’s why I got involved, with making sure that the people get to them and help the veterans with their paperwork.”
But the message about the Amazon storefront didn’t appear to reach all of the legion’s locations, with volunteers at Branch 179 on Vancouver’s Commercial Drive saying they hadn’t heard about the online push.
Holly Paddon, the branch’s poppy campaign co-ordinator and bartender, said the Amazon partnership never came up in meetings with other legion volunteers and officials.
“I work at the legion, I work with the Vancouver poppy office and I go to the meetings for the Vancouver poppy campaign — which includes all the legions in Vancouver — and not once has this been mentioned,” she said.
Paddon said the initiative is a great idea, but she would like to have known more about it.
The legion also sells a larger collection of items at poppystore.ca.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Nov. 9, 2024.
