Thank you, Chair and members.
I'm always happy to be invited and to be a part of the dialogue at this committee.
The Canadian automotive business is anchored in assembly. Some commentators this week, including the Business Council of Canada, have said that we can survive the current tariff war with the Americans because there will always be a market for automotive parts, and we can give up our fight, if need be, on automotive assembly.
I represent those suppliers, the over 200 companies that manufacture 95% of the independent parts production in Canada. I'll say that we completely disagree with that assessment. Fifty per cent of the parts made in Canadian factories go into Canadian vehicle assembly.
We've seen the bad news over the last couple of weeks, where we have had a discontinuation of production at plants in both Brampton and Ingersoll. In my opinion, it's probably a precursor to permanent closures there because as those assembly opportunities in Canada leave, so does the strength of the foundation for the Canadian auto parts sector.
The parts sector has never asked for handouts. There is a lot of dialogue in and around the automotive discussion to say that these are companies that always need to be supported by the Canadian government, and we're disappointed frequently. Auto parts suppliers have always said that if we anchor assembly opportunities here, they'll work out selling to their customers.
In asking government to focus on assembly, we're also employing 100,000 Canadians to make parts of cars, tools for cars and systems that go into those cars. Those are Canadian entities' or foreign entities' Canadian investments for those Canadian assemblies.
Stellantis is a 100-year partner in Canadian automotive. Of course, it started as Chrysler, Dodge, then DaimlerChrysler, then Fiat Chrysler, and now as Stellantis. The best path forward for that 100-year partnership is to get another product in Brampton to also partner with that product in Windsor.
We heavily support, as APMA, the EV investment in Windsor and the R and D facility in Windsor, but we always said that it has to include an absolute guarantee of assembly in Brampton.
We heard in the last session the angst with which the industry has faced this EV mandate. We've been very clear, front and centre, on realism, on setting the pace of EV adoption in Canada. Most of you have heard me quoted widely as saying that we're never going to make the 100% in 2035, but we should find a pace that works for those companies that co-invested with us and maybe stretch those a little bit, but it could also be realistic.
The White House has taken aim at the sector. It has stripped incentives for American buyers and production subsidies for the companies that are in the space, and it has also hit us with illegal and unprecedented tariffs, hoping, reportedly in the President's words, to end production of vehicles in Canada.
I've spent 20 years in this space advocating for investment in Canadian automotive, and in Ontario, I personally worked with Fiat, pursuing investment in Canada in 2006 and 2007. I then worked directly on the restructuring of DaimlerChrysler in the financial crisis of 2009 and 2010 to pursue new programs, together with their great Canadian leader, Sergio Marchionne, from 2015 to 2020. We then supported, again, the NextStar battery Windsor assembly plant and the Brampton assembly plant investments in 2022 and 2023.
I don't get paid by OEMs. They're not our customers. I only work in the interests of the Canadian suppliers. Most of the time, our interests align with the OEMs, and I'm not shy to say that when it works.
In those hard-fought investments over the last three years, I've spent a lot of time advocating for the math in those investments and in those plants for the suppliers and for the 100,000 workers we employ in those supplier firms. I'm also not shy to say when it isn't true. The companies—Stellantis and, of course, General Motors—have choices that they made, which favoured the U.S.
They are all big boys and girls. There are consequences to those decisions, and they need to defend them—here at committee, in the public sphere and to their workers. They can put products in those plants. They should put products in those plants. They're obligated to put products in those plants. The Canadian taxpayer base, including the companies I represent that pay those taxes that help to make those investments true, need those investments to be whole. The people who show up at work every day and go home every day past television cameras—who didn't sign up to be politicians but are simply hard-working auto workers who have mouths to feed and bills to pay—have obligations that need to be met here.
We have all invested over 100 years in a partnership that should be more reliable than nine months of angst from the White House.
Finally, I'll speak personally on Brampton. I bought a 2005 Chrysler 300C, a 2006 Chrysler 300 SRT8, a 2010 Charger SRT8, a 2018 Challenger Demon and a 2022 Challenger Demon 170. I drive and buy the product that I said the best suppliers in the world and the best workers in the world put together. So, not just in my role as the president of the APMA but also as a consumer, I'd like those companies to keep up their end of the bargain or face the consequences.