Industry and Technology Committee on Oct. 29th, 2025

[Sonia Sidhu, Liberal, Brampton South, ON]

Will Stellantis commit to maintaining a manufacturing presence in Brampton? I want to know.

When you're asking for relocation, are you paying for relocation or supporting the workers in their new role? Do you know that it's not right, Mr. Hines, to ask them to relocate? There are 3,000 workers who are there in the plant day in and day out. They work hard for your plant. Is that fair for them?

[Jeff Hines]

It's certainly challenging. It's certainly something that may not work for all the employees who are there. At the same time, if that does work, we're working with our union colleagues to work on what a relocation for one of the Brampton employees looks like and how we can make that work for them.

Clearly, it's a challenging time for our Brampton workers.

[Sonia Sidhu, Liberal, Brampton South, ON]

Finally, Mr. Hines, I want to say that you should honour those Bramptonian auto workers who built your company's reputation.

Thank you.

I want to pass the rest of my time to Mr. Bardeesy.

[Karim Bardeesy, Liberal, Taiaiako'n—Parkdale—High Park, ON]

Thank you.

Just to follow up on that question, will relocation assistance be made available by the company for those workers who seek to apply for and get those jobs in Windsor?

[Jeff Hines]

It's something that we're working through with our union colleagues, but we want to support them in their move. We certainly do.

[Karim Bardeesy, Liberal, Taiaiako'n—Parkdale—High Park, ON]

How many transfer openings are currently available?

[Jeff Hines]

Right now we have interest from between 100 to 200 of the Brampton employees. If they continue to expand, we'll make those jobs available as necessary.

[Karim Bardeesy, Liberal, Taiaiako'n—Parkdale—High Park, ON]

Is the Brampton plant a productive plant in the Stellantis family of plants?

[Jeff Hines]

Historically, Brampton has been a great plant. It's been a very quality plant. That's why we want to get to a situation where we can get back to building vehicles at Brampton under an environment and a trade policy that make those vehicles viable. We want to get back to work. We want our employees back to work.

[Karim Bardeesy, Liberal, Taiaiako'n—Parkdale—High Park, ON]

In her letter to Mr. Filosa, Minister Joly wrote, “It is imperative that you extend the worker's transition program, agreed to with Unifor, until at least 2027.”

What is the state of that workers' transition program?

[Jeff Hines]

We want to continue to support our workers in this challenging time. We're working through that with our union colleagues as we speak. We certainly want to try to take care of the employees as best we can moving forward, and support what you said.

[Karim Bardeesy, Liberal, Taiaiako'n—Parkdale—High Park, ON]

I want to pick up on some of the questions of my colleague Mr. Erskine-Smith with relation to tariffs. I know that you're not in this capacity anymore as Stellantis Canada president, but when you were in that capacity, did you advocate to U.S. officials in Canada around the necessity of getting to a deal that minimized tariffs?

[Jeff Hines]

That's been a consistent point of conversation with the government. That's something we need. I think the industry needs it. Again, I think it's not just a Stellantis concern. We need to come to an agreement so that we can all move forward.

[Karim Bardeesy, Liberal, Taiaiako'n—Parkdale—High Park, ON]

More specifically, have you advocated to the U.S. ambassador to Canada that we need to have an expedited deal with minimal to no tariffs?

[Jeff Hines]

We've had a consistent conversation on that throughout all levels of government.

[The Chair, Liberal, Ben Carr]

Thank you.

Mr. Ste‑Marie, go ahead, please.

[Gabriel Ste-Marie, Bloc, Joliette—Manawan, QC]

I have a point of order, Mr. Chair. I'd like to come back to what was discussed a little earlier regarding the showing of a video. I think it would have been appropriate to show it, but I fully understand your comments and Mr. Bardeesy's comments about ensuring that French-speaking elected officials have the same rights as English-speaking elected officials.

Mr. Chair, I would suggest that you and my colleagues plan ahead next time to make sure that a translation is available for the interpreters. That would protect the hearing of our interpreters and make the committee more efficient.

I understand that interventions were made to defend the rights of French-speaking elected officials, but I would still have liked all of that to be done in advance. That way, we could have gotten a response from the president of Stellantis Canada to this video.

I'm saying this for next time, I guess.

[The Chair, Liberal, Ben Carr]

Thank you, Mr. Ste‑Marie.

Madam O'Rourke, is this on the same point of order?

[Dominique O'Rourke, Liberal, Guelph, ON]

Yes, Mr. Chair.

I agree: It's important to respect official languages.

Clearly, it's important to be able to respect the official languages status of this committee.

I would also invite Ms. Borrelli to submit the transcript in English and in French so that it can actually be part of the record of these hearings and be part of the proceedings and the consideration going forward. I think we need to be cautious about playing just any random clip from social media without having it screened through the chair. It's a good discussion to have in terms of a governance conversation. Certainly, nobody wants to hear about a job loss that way. It's tragic. It's really devastating for the families.

In terms of this committee and the transparency, there's no concern about the content but rather the way in which it was brought to committee that I think we can work through for the future. Certainly, feel welcome to submit it through our regular process. People send letters to committee all the time and are treated as a witness.

[The Chair, Liberal, Ben Carr]

Thank you for raising that as a point of order.

Thank you for that.

Just as we conclude the first hour here I will clarify again that of course, Ms. Borrelli, you are certainly welcome to provide for the record of the committee the transcript in both official languages.

Colleagues, this is perhaps just an opportune moment to remind everybody that we have an obligation, it is not a courtesy it is an obligation, to provide in both official languages all documents. We usually ask for this when for example a motion is being put forward on the floor, unless it's something that's happening spontaneously like a subamendment.

It makes my life easier. It makes the clerk's life easier. It makes the analysts' life easier. Perhaps most importantly it makes life easier for the interpreters. Can we do our best moving forward? As a general practice, if we intend to bring something to the floor of the committee, we provide it to the clerk or myself in advance in both official languages so that we aren't getting into a debate about content but we're making sure that the technical administration is upheld.

Having said that, Mr. Hines, thank you for appearing before us today.

Colleagues, we're going to suspend and we will head into the second hour in a few moments.

[The Chair, Liberal, Ben Carr]

Colleagues, we are going to get into the second hour of questioning here. We've turned over witnesses, so I will just repeat, for those who may not have been here, that this is the second hour in the second meeting of our conversation in relation to the extenuating circumstances facing Canada's auto sector—Stellantis specifically—and then the broader conditions facing the industry around that.

For witnesses who are joining us here in the room, please make sure that your earpiece is on the sticker in front of you if it's not on your ear. Otherwise, you should be good to go. All witnesses have completed the required connection tests in advance of these meetings.

Colleagues, we have three witnesses with us here today. Joining virtually from the Automotive Parts Manufacturers' Association, we have Flavio Volpe, president. From Unifor, we have Lana Payne, national president, and Angelo DiCaro, director of research.

Mr. Volpe, I'm going to turn the floor over to you for your introductory remarks.

[Flavio Volpe, President, Automotive Parts Manufacturers' Association]

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.

[The Chair, Liberal, Ben Carr]

Thank you very much, Mr. Volpe.

Ms. Payne, the floor is yours for up to five minutes.

[Lana Payne, National President, Unifor]

Thank you very much. Good afternoon, Chairman Carr and members of the committee. I really appreciate this invitation, and I also appreciate that you let Flavio go before me, because I needed a bit of time for my blood pressure to come down after your previous testimony.

As you all know, my name is Lana Payne, and I'm the national president of Unifor, Canada's largest private sector union. We represent 320,000 workers in 25-plus sectors of the economy, including 40,000 in the auto sector—and we are Canada's auto union.

As you know, this past week has delivered devastating news to tens of thousands of workers, both in Canadian assembly plants and across the supply chain. All of this, of course, is tied to Donald Trump's trade war. I'd like you to consider this: In the past 15 days our union has received news that Quebec's Paccar plant would reduce production at its Sainte-Thérèse facility, just as new, heavy truck tariffs are set to hit on November 1. This brings the total number of layoffs, at that plant this year, to 775.

General Motors ended its BrightDrop electric delivery van program, leaving 1,100 workers indefinitely out of work. As of today, there is no announced replacement vehicle program for Ingersoll, although we, as a union, are very committed to working with the company on a new product and future for that plant.

Stellantis, as you all know, moved its promised and committed Jeep Compass vehicle program, which also includes the platform for that program, from Brampton to the United States, putting the future of this 3,000-worker facility at risk. This, of course, is in addition to the planned elimination of GM Oshawa's third shift, scheduled for January, as well as numerous auto parts plant closures that we are also currently dealing with as a union.

Let's not forget that what's happening in the auto sector is also happening in steel mills; in pulp, paper and sawmills; in aluminum fabrication plants; and to furniture makers—critical value-added industries in Canada, all suffering loses. It's brutal out there right now for working people, and I need this committee to understand this. Our industrial economy is in a major crisis, and we must do everything in our power to save it. Our entire trade strategy right now must be in defence of it and the more than two million Canadians whose lives and jobs depend on it.

Now, in the time I have left, I want to talk about Brampton and Stellantis, the reason you asked me to appear here today. In 2023, our union negotiated a commitment with that company, clear as day, in black and white. The Jeep Compass program was coming to Brampton. In fact, 3,000 Unifor members ratified a collective agreement on that promise of the program coming to Brampton and, when ratifying that agreement, they knew that they would be out of work for a considerable period of time during the retool.

I understand that very few of us could have foreseen, in 2023, the disaster of a second Trump presidency and the weaponization of tariffs. I get it. This is all hard for everybody right now, but I'm going to be clear about something: It doesn't matter because commitments were made to workers, our union, this government and the people of Canada, and a deal is a deal.

I want to say, for the record, that our union was blindsided by this decision. For eight months since the Brampton plant retooling was paused, our union sought assurances. We demanded answers from the company because our members deserve answers. If a plan needed to change, then we could discuss it, problem-solve and find ways to make it work, because we always do. All we ever received from Stellantis during that period were false reassurances.

We were told in no uncertain terms that Stellantis was committed to Brampton and committed to the program. We were told over and over again. We were told this right to the very end when apparently Stellantis, at that time, was no longer committed.

You have to understand that to our members, this is a betrayal of the highest magnitude. To our membership, their collective agreement has now been violated and broken. Three thousand workers, 3,000 families and an entire community were strung along for eight long months. That plant has been retooling and those workers have been without work since January 2024.

Stellantis says now that it wants to move quickly to get the Compass built and into showrooms, yet by moving the program to the United States, it will only delay its production until at least 2027, whereas Brampton is almost ready to build right now. That's why we are calling on the company to resume its retool immediately.

This is the worst of corporate behaviour and it cannot be tolerated. There can be no situation where a corporation decides to cut production in this country, ship our jobs to the United States and expect a free ride back in Canada. This cannot happen.

I want to take a moment to thank Industry Minister Joly and her team. The quick and decisive actions that they took last week in holding Stellantis to account for its actions and demanding a resolution in Brampton were outstanding. Similar action was taken, as you know, with General Motors.

I also want to thank our finance minister and his team for the notice that they sent the companies to reduce their tariff remission quotas. It was, in our opinion, the exact right move that was needed.

We don't need corporate excuses. We need plans. We need products. We need commitments to be upheld and everyone needs to learn that there are consequences to broken promises and broken commitments.

As far as our union is concerned, that Jeep Compass program must stay right here in Brampton where it was committed. We will be working toward that end; I can guarantee you that.

Today in Brampton, at this very moment—and tomorrow, too—our members are outside that plant standing up for their jobs, for their futures and for their community, just as they are in Ingersoll. This is the fight of our lives and we need our political leaders to be there with us each and every step of the way.

Thank you very much.

[The Chair, Liberal, Ben Carr]

Thank you very much, Ms. Payne.

We're going to move to questioning.

Mr. Guglielmin, the floor is yours for six minutes.