Evidence of meeting #11 for Industry and Technology in the 45th Parliament, 1st session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was workers.
A recording is available from Parliament.
Liberal
Conservative
Ted Falk Conservative Provencher, MB
Thank you, Mr. Chair.
Thank you, Mr. Hines, for your testimony here at committee today.
As you can see, we're very concerned about the 3,000 workers who received that robocall, and are finding themselves on an extended layoff with no certainty as to when they're going to be returning to work.
Certainly some of the phrases that you've used continually in your remarks and your responses have been “market dynamics”, “unknowns”, “uncertainty”. Can you help me understand a little bit what you mean by that? You've identified trade tariffs that are ongoing with the United States' challenges, but can you identify any other unknowns or market dynamics?
President, Stellantis
The number one challenge that we have to overcome today is to come to some level of agreement, and that will give us some certainty. We need something in Brampton that's commercially viable. We want to have something in Brampton that works for Canada and for Canadian customers, but we also need it to work for customers outside Canada today as well. That's number one. If we can get that and get to some level of agreement, we all think that there's great opportunity for our Brampton employees to get back to work.
Conservative
Ted Falk Conservative Provencher, MB
A company like Stellantis doesn't make a decision overnight to spend $13 billion on a plant in Illinois, and to temporarily abandon the Brampton facility. You've obviously been in touch and communicating with Unifor and the Government of Canada. On what date did those discussions begin on the possible extended closure?
President, Stellantis
I won't get into specifics, but I think some of those are, again, commercially important for us. I would say that we've had conversations over the last nine months, and certainly some of the challenges...our expectations, I think, over the last nine months, are that we'd be in a better spot than we are today from an agreement—
Conservative
Ted Falk Conservative Provencher, MB
Mr. Hines, some of these discussions that the Brampton plant would continue to remain dormant have been ongoing with the Government of Canada for the past nine months.
President, Stellantis
No, the conversation with the government has been consistent over the past nine months in regard to the challenges that the current tariff situation brings to us going forward. As you can imagine, at a large company like Stellantis, we look at a lot of different options, a lot of ways to go, and a lot of things that are reviewed—
Conservative
Ted Falk Conservative Provencher, MB
You've been communicating regularly with our government over the past nine months about some of the challenges you're facing and the options you're looking at.
Conservative
Ted Falk Conservative Provencher, MB
Okay, thank you.
Some of the previous witnesses we've had at committee here for this study have indicated that one of the uncertainties you're probably talking about is the fact that our EV mandate has only been paused. I sit on our Conservative auto caucus, and we've had a presentation from industry there before, and they've said that the mandate has created a real challenge for you as manufacturers.
How much did that play into your decision? President Trump removed that mandate, and here you're still faced with that mandate.
President, Stellantis
That's an excellent question. I'll make a few comments as I digest your question.
We are one of, if not the only, manufacturer that builds an electric vehicle in Canada. We also build traditional ICE vehicles here as well. What we believe in is freedom of choice for the customer, so we do support the pause on the ZEV mandate. We think customers need to be able to choose what they like and choose what they want. That said—
Conservative
President, Stellantis
That said, we build electric vehicles here in Canada, we build ICE vehicles here in Canada, and we want to give our customers across Canada the choice they want to make.
Conservative
Ted Falk Conservative Provencher, MB
We've heard from previous testimony that demand has dropped to 8%. Is that consistent with your sales?
Conservative
Ted Falk Conservative Provencher, MB
Some have used the word “tanked”.
If you had a choice today based on what the customer, the consumer is asking for, what kind of vehicle would you be building?
President, Stellantis
What we want to build for the Canadian customer is something that provides great value and great dependability, something that fits their lifestyle needs and something that works across all of Canada. That's—
October 29th, 2025 / 5:20 p.m.
President, Stellantis
It could be a gas-powered vehicle. It very well could be.
As you mentioned before, 90-plus per cent today are gas-powered vehicles, and that's the vast majority of the market today.
Conservative
Ted Falk Conservative Provencher, MB
From my knowledge, you could have sold a lot more Challenger 170s had you built them.
Liberal
Sonia Sidhu Liberal Brampton South, ON
Thank you, Mr. Chair.
As a Bramptonian and the member of Parliament for Brampton South, I'm deeply disturbed by this Stellantis decision, Mr. Hines.
When you said that you're committed to Canada, you're committed to Canadians as well.
Through you, Mr. Chair, I would ask Mr. Hines to share what he has to say to my Bramptonians who are losing their jobs, auto workers and their families. What do you want to say when you said that you are committed to Canada and committed to your home?
President, Stellantis
I would say directly to the Brampton employees that it is certainly a challenging message to deliver and even harder, probably, to receive, for sure.
We want to first offer them employment opportunities. They get first choice at these additional Windsor jobs. That may work or may not work for some. We would offer first choice to them directly.
Second, in the short term, we'll provide additional benefits and extend the benefits they receive today. Clearly, from your comments earlier and from the committee, we want to make sure we do that.
The last thing I would say to them is that we want to continue to build vehicles in Brampton, and we want to bring something that's going to work, but we need an environment that allows us to do that.
