Thank you, Mr. Chair.
The executive director of Canada's Building Trades Unions wrote his letter to the Prime Minister on April 10. The last paragraph says, “Fifty additional international workers are expected to arrive and begin work that was previously indicated would be performed by Canadian workers tomorrow.”
The CBTU has also said:
Canadian workers are being sidelined without consequence. This is a slap in the face to Canadian workers and utterly unacceptable from LG and Stellantis, particularly when their shareholders stand to benefit from more than $15 Billion in generous tax incentives from the Government of Canada.
This has never been a case of knowledge transfer or specialized knowledge.
This is a brazen displacement of Canadian workers in favour of international workers, by major international corporations thumbing their noses at both the Government of Canada, taxpayers, and our skilled trades workers.
For our...members in Essex-Kent, the current state of affairs is intolerable.
As such, the Canadian Executive Board has authorized all necessary measures required to remedy the situation. We require your personal intervention with the executives of these corporations.
Tell Stellantis and LG to cease and desist their use of sub-contractors who are employing international workers to displace Canadian workers on tasks which can be performed by local workers.
Instruct your Ministers to halt the flow of new international workers to the EV Battery Plant in Windsor. Require the companies to sign new agreements with labour conditionality on tax incentives. End this intolerable situation for Canadian workers.
Canadian building trades unions are united in our request and we require action.
That's a pretty condemning letter from the head of Canada's Building Trades Unions regarding what's going on in Windsor right now. It shines a light on the concern we've expressed about the validity of claims by the government that there are no foreign replacement workers who aren't specialized. In fact, there are workers being brought into Windsor from both South Korea and Mexico for the construction of this plant who are doing jobs like operating a forklift. Now, there's nothing specialized there, other than the Canadian skills and training needed for operating a forklift. Yet, these Liberals allowed this contract to go ahead.
Initially, when we asked questions in the House of Commons, the government claimed there was only one foreign worker permit. Now there are 72 and Canada's Building Trades Unions say there are another 50 coming in. It exposes the disconnect. I can tell you that it's a disconnect because I can tell you what's not in the contracts. At no point in the Stellantis contract and the VW contract does it say, “You have to hire Canadian workers.” I would challenge the government there. If they think I'm wrong in my reading of it—it's pretty simple language and the VW contract is only 28 pages.... It would have been pretty simple to put in those contracts, “Hire Canadians only”. Those words are not in the contract.
If the government is going to dispute what I'm saying as wrong—government members who haven't read the contracts—and dispute what's actually happening on the ground, they could put their money where their mouth is and release the contracts. Show us the money. Show us the commitment. Is the company breaching the contracts? I expect the government would be yelling bloody hell if it said, “Canadians only in both the construction and full-time equivalents”, but they're not. They're defending the company and saying, “Oh, it's only one or two. Oh, no. It's 10. Oh, it's 12. Oh, now it's only 72.”
Well, what is the final number of allowable foreign replacement workers in this contract? How much are Canadians going to have to pay to employ these foreign replacement workers while 180 people are sitting unemployed in Windsor who are certified to do these jobs and are members of Canada's Building Trades Unions?
I would ask that all members, in all sincerity—and we've been through this a lot with various motions here—if they are sincere and want to defend this, please support this motion that calls for the release of all these contracts.
There is also a contract with Northvolt in Quebec, and that's the third. Now we have the Honda one. Release the information. Prove me wrong. I dare you. Prove me wrong. Release them.
Transparency, the Prime Minister used to say before he was elected in 2015, is the greatest thing that this new “sunny ways” government was going to do. It was a disinfectant, yes. Well, we need some disinfectant now. I wasn't in the House then, but we need some disinfectant now on the government on this, because clearly what's happening on the ground, what the union is saying is happening, is totally different from what the government claims and totally different from what it says is in the contract.
If it was in the contract, then, of course, they would.... If they had job guarantees, they'd be preventing forklift operators and others—which are not specialized skills that are required—from coming from Korea to do that work in Windsor.
What else do we not know that the government has claimed in these contracts that it's been unwilling to share with the public? What else is it hiding? It's not commercial sensitivity, since they're all on the gravy train. It was all, apparently, done on the basis of President Biden's Inflation Reduction Act, which, as we know—because that's public—says that between now and the end of 2029, 100% of the cost of every battery assembled will be subsidized by taxpayers. One hundred per cent is the public number in the IRA, so obviously that must be the number that's in these contracts if they mirror it. Then it's 75%, and then it's 50%, so it's some deal. If you're a foreign business, you're saying, “Yeah, sign me up.”
The Government of Canada, taxpayers, are going to pay 100% of the cost of the assembly of these batteries. The government is bragging that somehow this is some great revelation. Well, I'm not sure that there are any foreign multinational companies that wouldn't come here if what they produced was 100% subsidized by taxpayers, so that they got essentially 100% profit from everything they could do. This includes the Volkswagen case, where the batteries will be assembled and shipped to Tennessee for cars sold in the United States.
I will leave it there, Mr. Chair. I'm sure some other members have something to say. However, I would encourage all of us to ensure that the now $52 billion of Canadian taxpayer money committed to these contracts be made public, because I don't trust the government. What the union and others are saying is happening is not what the government is saying, so let's get some disinfectant and release the contracts.