Industry and Technology Committee on Oct. 29th, 2025

[Lana Payne]

We do a lot of work in the skilled trades space, as you can imagine. We have about 50,000 members who work in the skilled trades in thousands of workplaces across the country. We negotiate skilled trades apprenticeships in many of our workplaces. We encourage and use any ability that we can in terms of trying to make sure that women have access to those opportunities as well.

For example, I just spoke to a number of our women in the skilled trades with our Suncor facility in Fort McMurray. This is something that we do: we work together with employers. We've done this robustly with the shipyard in Halifax as well where we've seen the number of women in the skilled trades increase by leaps and bounds because of the partnership between our union and the employer, and government and colleges. We do it across the spectrum. We use collective bargaining obviously as a tool to be able to do that. We also have an education program in Port Elgin where we teach several times a year and introduce women to the skilled trades, to make sure that we're doing that. Our locals do a tremendous job in the community, including in your community of Windsor, to hold skilled trades fairs and make sure that women see that this is a place for them.

[Kathy Borrelli, Conservative, Windsor—Tecumseh—Lakeshore, ON]

Thank you.

Mr. DiCaro, based on your policy modelling, what long-term productivity or wage gains can Windsor expect from Stellantis's EV transition, and what risks remain if demand for EVs underperforms?

[Angelo DiCaro]

I don't know how much modelling I have to share with you on this. I can give you just my assessment and analysis of it.

I think you can take your question, and you can expand that to any transitioning auto factory. There is a very unstable market right now, and part of it is consumer-driven in early phases of what is going to be a very monumental and significant change in the technology of vehicles. Part of it is consumer-driven, but a lot of it is policy-driven, mostly from the United States. We have a president who campaigned to upend momentum in the electric vehicle market, which I will say, if I can be so bold, is maybe the biggest mistake and the biggest tragedy of this period right now that we're facing. I worry, because we were already behind in this transition in the face of countries like China that are far more advanced. If we don't move forward, we'll be having a very different conversation, I think, at this industry committee in 15 years. It will be “are we still building cars”, because it's a different landscape.

I worry about that quite a bit. I think that the Windsor assembly plant has already made moves to address some of the market dynamics. They've resequenced their rollout of some of the Charger EVs that they have. Now they're moving back into the gas-powered version. I think they're adapting, but yes, there are going to be some concerns that go along with that.

[Lana Payne]

Can I just add one point to this?

One thing we did through collective bargaining was make sure we're looking at platforms in our plants that are flexible, so they can produce the ICE and they can produce full EV models or hybrids. Really, what you need are facilities that are putting in platforms that are able to shift based on shifts in the market demand.

The more flexible our workplaces are to be able to do that, the more they're able to adapt to market changes.

[Kathy Borrelli, Conservative, Windsor—Tecumseh—Lakeshore, ON]

Mr. Volpe, Windsor's economy depends heavily on parts manufacturing, with thousands of jobs tied to Stellantis and feeder plants.

What percentage of the Windsor-Essex supply chain currently stands to benefit directly from the NextStar project? Are local suppliers being prioritized in the procurement?

[Flavio Volpe]

That's a very specific question. I don't have the exact percentage for you, but I would say it's a material amount. It's the most important local investment in assembly or major sub-assembly.

The local suppliers are advantaged by being close to the plant. The logistics of supplying a facility like that means the biggest items that cost the most to move and ship are usually located close by.

I'm not sure there's anything in their procurement strategy that says, “Hey, by the way, we have to do Windsor-Essex suppliers first.” That's why it's important to note that those Windsor-Essex suppliers are extremely productive, efficient and aggressive in business development because they need to be. It's a dog-eat-dog world and we have a globally relevant cluster of suppliers there.

[The Chair, Liberal, Ben Carr]

Thank you very much, Ms. Borrelli.

Ms. Sidhu, you have five minutes.

[Sonia Sidhu, Liberal, Brampton South, ON]

Ms. Payne and Mr. DiCaro, I got a chance to meet you in Windsor. Thank you for standing up with the workers.

Mr. Volpe, thank you so much for looking after 250 companies and for supporting 90% of the workers.

I was at the Unifor rally last month in Brampton because I'm from Brampton. I feel the pain and how the workers are feeling that their rights are violated. They feel betrayal.

We were listening to Mr. Hines when I asked a question and he said that they'll give them the chance to move to Windsor.

What is your thought about that? How can they be supported in Windsor if they're working in Brampton and their life is in Brampton? What kind of support system is that?

[Lana Payne]

Our members in Brampton want to work in Brampton. That is their home. That is their community. That's where they've raised their families. That's not to say that we haven't seen auto workers go from one community to another, given the history of the industry—particularly what we went through in 2008 to 2010.

Again, this isn't a gift. We negotiate transfers in our collective agreement. This is something that is available to our members in Brampton, should they wish to do it. It isn't something the company is making available; it is because we have collective agreement language that allows it to occur.

Their priority and my priority would be to get the retooling back on track and get people working. Then that plant is ready on the other side of this trade war—because there is going to be another side to it—and they can produce vehicles immediately.

That is where the priority of our union is.

[Sonia Sidhu, Liberal, Brampton South, ON]

Thank you.

Mr. Chair, I want to pass my time to my colleague.

[Nathaniel Erskine-Smith, Liberal, Beaches—East York, ON]

You said you were blindsided by the deal. Up to the eleventh hour there was false assurance after false assurance. We heard assurances today, if you could call them that, saying, “Oh, we're still committed to Brampton. We're still committed to building something. We don't know what, we don't know when, but trust us, we're still committed”.

Do you trust them?

[Lana Payne]

Let's just say I know the power of our union and what we are going to be doing to make sure they live up to Brampton and to our members. We're going to be relentless here. We have to be. We're fighting for those jobs and so many others across our country.

The reality is that Stellantis continues to want to sell vehicles in Canada. This is an important market to them. That should mean something at the end of the day.

I can tell you what I know we will do. We're going to put every effort and everything we can into making sure they live up to the commitment to our membership.

[Nathaniel Erskine-Smith, Liberal, Beaches—East York, ON]

They made a commitment to your membership, and you've talked about betrayal. They also made a commitment to Canada, though.

[Lana Payne]

They did.

[Nathaniel Erskine-Smith, Liberal, Beaches—East York, ON]

They made a commitment to the federal government and to the provincial government here in Ontario, and they accepted dollars. They accepted taxpayer dollars, public dollars, to say that they're committed to this place, that they will stay here and that they're committed to this plan. You heard him. He said, “It's a home.” He said that they have a “proud” history here and that they hope to have a proud future here.

Workers, I understand, feel betrayal. However, if you're a Canadian sitting there watching Donald Trump's unjustified attacks against our country, against auto workers and beyond, and you have a company that then turns heel, effectively, and says that it's going to put its short-term economic interests—country be damned—ahead of our national interests, what should you, as a Canadian, be thinking?

[Lana Payne]

I appreciate that you raise this question because it is something that I have been saying to automakers since February or March, when all of this started. I've been telling them to be very careful here in this environment. Canadians are still very angry. They're very angry at the situation that we find ourselves in, and their neighbours are now losing their jobs. The reality is that Canadians have been organically acting with their pocketbooks. This is the environment that we're in. Automakers and all corporations need to understand that.

[Nathaniel Erskine-Smith, Liberal, Beaches—East York, ON]

Thanks very much.

[The Chair, Liberal, Ben Carr]

Thank you very much, Mr. DiCaro, Ms. Payne and Mr. Volpe.

I think that all of us, in a non-partisan capacity here, can empathize very much with those you represent and with how difficult a moment we are in as a country. Certainly, you are all on the front lines of this. To make yourselves available to this committee on short notice and at a time when your attention and your energy is demanded in a variety of different places at the same time.... We are extremely appreciative of the insight and the guidance you provided us with today. Thank you very much for that.

Witnesses, you are dismissed.

Colleagues, we are now going to, as committed, get into the motion that was moved by Madam Dancho earlier in the hour.

Mr. Falk, the floor is yours.

[Ted Falk, Conservative, Provencher, MB]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

I want to thank my colleague, Ms. Dancho, for putting forward this motion. I think she's clearly given the rationale as to why this motion should be adopted by this committee.

For those people watching the committee I would like to reiterate what the ask is without reading the entire motion.

The ask is very simple: that the committee report to the House, that being the House of Commons, its recommendation that the federal, Liberal, electric vehicle mandate be abolished.

If we go back in time a little bit to 2021 when Justin Trudeau and the Liberal government first announced their plan for an EV mandate, that's when things actually began to happen. The Liberal government obviously didn't do its homework properly and didn't realize what the impact of an electric vehicle mandate would do to the auto industry here in Canada.

Today we're seeing the fallout of that. Multiple witnesses at committee have told us that a substantial impact on the decision that Stellantis will have made in shutting the Brampton plant and moving production of the Jeep Compass to Illinois was the fact that there was an EV mandate here.

Instead of giving Elon Musk billions of dollars in carbon tax offset credits.... For those who followed the industry a little bit, in the last quarter Tesla received $600 million in carbon tax credits from other automakers, and the quarter that we just came through, or prior to that, it was $700 million in carbon tax credits. That's over $2 billion a year the industry is giving to Tesla that is leaving Canada and padding the pockets of Elon Musk.

I think the necessity of this motion is also brought on by the fact that Prime Minister Carney and his ministers, Minister Joly, Minister Champagne and Minister LeBlanc, have failed to negotiate tariff relief with the United States government. Every time that they seem to communicate with the Americans things seem to get worse here in Canada. When they tried to implement a counter-tariff, it lasted about 48 hours, and when they tried to bring in a tax on the tech giants, it lasted less than 24 hours.

What we see over and over again is Prime Minister Carney backing down to President Trump and every time it seems to cost us more money. After the last visit that Mr. Carney had with President Trump, we see that he came back having made half-a-trillion-dollar investment commitment into the United States. He did this knowing that $60 billion of capital had already fled our country into foreign markets. Then he promised Donald Trump a $500-billion investment in the United States coming from Canada. He should be worried about Canadian investment, not investing in the United States.

Yesterday we learned that the only winner from this last visit was Brookfield with an $80-billion contract two weeks after our Prime Minister visited with President Trump. Wow. That's a big thank you to Canadians and to Canadian auto workers.

Conservatives stand strongly in the corner of the Canadian auto workers, with the workers of Stellantis who were anticipating that they would have a plant reopening and that they would be producing the Jeep Compass. For years and years they produced the hallmark muscle cars of the Stellantis brand with the Dodge Charger and the Dodge Challenger. These were excellent products and the workers were extremely proud. While we sat here in committee listening to testimony I googled the picture of the employees standing beside the last Dodge Challenger that was made in the Brampton plant, which was a Dodge Challenger Demon 170, a totally black car. The workers stood around, they took pictures, they applauded, and they celebrated the workmanship of that plant in producing a phenomenal muscle car.

These were proud auto workers, proud of the work they had done, proud of the product they had produced, and they should be. Now they're faced with this. Why are they faced with a robocall advising them that they wouldn't have work? It's because this Liberal government failed to deal with the trade situation that we have with the United States.

They failed to get any elimination of tariffs. They failed to get any concessions. This wasn't a decision that was made last month by Stellantis. We heard from President Hines of Stellantis that he had been in discussions with both Unifor and the Liberal government the last nine months. This wasn't a decision that was made overnight. They had nine months to come up with a solution, but the Liberal government failed. Now there are 3,000 workers in the Stellantis plant that are looking towards Christmas and wondering how they're going to make that a celebration for their families. This isn't fair to those auto workers. This Liberal government has hugely failed them, and it needs to make things right.

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

[The Chair, Liberal, Ben Carr]

Thank you, Mr. Falk.

Ms. Borrelli, the floor is yours.

[Kathy Borrelli, Conservative, Windsor—Tecumseh—Lakeshore, ON]

Thank you, Chair.

Colleagues, I want to be clear right from the start: This motion is not about opposing electric vehicles. Conservatives support innovation, consumer choice and Canadian-made technology. What we do oppose is a federal Liberal EV mandate, a policy that punishes workers and families, undermines our manufacturing competitiveness and threatens the livelihoods of thousands of Canadian auto workers, particularly in Windsor, the heart of Canada's automotive industry.

We heard it loud and clear from our witnesses: The average electric vehicle costs $15,000 more than a comparable gas-powered vehicle. As Huw Williams told this committee just days ago, it's "a pending disaster", and he's right.

This mandate doesn't help the average family; it helps foreign corporations and the ultrawealthy who can afford a $70,000 car and a home charging station.

When the government tells automakers what to build instead of letting consumers decide what to buy, the result is simple: fewer cars on lots, fewer choices and higher prices. That means more families priced out of owning a vehicle altogether. In Windsor, where our local economy was built on auto manufacturing, this mandate represents yet another threat to good-paying union and non-union jobs. Right now, unemployment in Windsor is 10.4%, which is the highest in the country. We've seen Stellantis move production of the Jeep Compass from Brampton to Illinois, putting 3,000 Canadian jobs at risk. Our parts manufacturers, many of them small and family-owned, are struggling under the uncertainty created by this government's industrial policy.

For Windsor, it isn't just about cars; it's about the survival of an entire regional economy that depends on the freedom to build, sell and export vehicles that Canadians actually want to buy. Ending the federal mandate sends the right signal: that we believe in market-driven innovation, not government coercion, and that we trust consumers, not bureaucrats, to chose what works best for them.

Abolishing this mandate doesn't mean walking away from clean technology; it means replacing ideology with practicality and ensuring the transition to cleaner transportation happens with Canadian workers, not at their expense.

Mr. Chair, this motion is about standing up for affordability for families, choice for consumers and jobs for workers, especially in Windsor-Essex and Brampton. It's about saying yes to innovation but no to mandates that drive prices up and jobs out. If the government truly stands firmly with its auto workers, it should prove it by scrapping this failed policy and replacing it with a made-in-Canada plan that protects both our environment and our manufacturing heartland.

Thank you.

[The Chair, Liberal, Ben Carr]

Thank you, Ms. Borrelli.

Mr. Guglielmin, you have the floor.

[Michael Guglielmin, Conservative, Vaughan—Woodbridge, ON]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Colleagues, we're here at an emergency debate about the auto sector. We're here because unjustified, unprovoked tariffs are slaughtering our auto industry and, frankly, our broader manufacturing industry. I'm hearing from businesses connected to the auto industry in the supply chain that they're already starting shift reductions. They're cutting hours. They're cutting shifts.

Like I've said multiple times, and it's definitely worth repeating here at this committee, these aren't just numbers. They aren't just statistics. These are people. These are families. That's why we've put this motion before the committee today. For the record, the motion we're putting forward to the committee is that this committee would report to the House that we cancel the EV mandate immediately.

We've heard expert witness testimony at this committee. We've had the Canadian Automobile Dealer Association head here, Huw Williams, who said that the EV mandate is “a pending disaster”. We have had Brian Kingston of the Canadian Vehicle Manufacturers Association here. Brian Kingston said that this is the one simple thing we could do to breathe some life into the automotive industry. We could do it right now. He also called the EV mandate “a direct challenge” to our competitiveness. Mr. Volpe, who just testified at this committee this evening, said EV that mandates are “not based in reality”.

A study by the Canadian Journal of Economics found that Prime Minister Carney's EV mandate would kill 38,000 jobs by its fifth year and would likely cause the collapse of Canada's automotive sector. Can you imagine that, on top of these unjustified tariffs and all the issues surrounding the trade policy environment vis-à-vis the United States?

So far, we've seen that it doesn't seem like our government is able to get a deal on auto with the Americans. We've heard them signal as much south of the border. The question would become, why would we have an ideologically driven EV mandate that has no practical benefit to the auto sector? Clearly the game has changed. Clearly we're under threat. Clearly we need to take a common-sense approach to this.

It's not just auto industry executives and people connected to the industry who are saying this. Almost 50 mayors across Ontario have called for the EV mandate to be scrapped.

Conservatives want to scrap this mandate because it's the right approach. It's the right thing to do. It's based on expert testimony. It's a common-sense approach to restore affordability. More importantly, it's an approach that will protect workers. That's why we're here. We're here for the auto industry. We're here to protect auto workers, and we stand firmly on the side of auto workers. We'll continue to advocate to ensure that they have a safe future, that their families can feel assured that the government is doing everything it can to protect their security, their job and, by default, their family.

That is why I'd like to end by saying that clearly, based on the witness testimony we have heard at this committee, we need to scrap this EV mandate immediately. I fully support this motion, and I hope that all members can agree that it's time to move forward. End this destructive, disastrous policy for the benefit of all Canadian workers.

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

[The Chair, Liberal, Ben Carr]

Mr. Ste‑Marie, go ahead, please.

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

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

The federal EV mandate is currently suspended. We in the Bloc Québécois have spoken out against this choice. We think the most important crisis right now is climate change, which is increasingly affecting people's lives in many ways. Adaptation measures will be needed. However, my party and I believe that strong measures and policies are needed now to fight climate change. The issue of electric vehicles won't solve the climate crisis, far from it. We need a whole set of strong measures. However, we support the idea that the government should impose EV targets on manufacturers; otherwise, their adaptation will be far too slow to respond to the current crisis.

Obviously, I won't be able to support the motion. Again, I want to reiterate that we think the obligation should not simply be suspended, let alone repealed, but rather maintained. Next, we must be pragmatic, of course, and look at what the Americans, in this case President Trump, are doing. There was a strategy in place when former President Biden was in power. We need to be smart and manage to successfully readjust. However, we have to keep in mind that the climate change crisis is of the utmost importance among the crises that threaten us.

Furthermore, President Trump may make speeches and implement policies against environmental measures, but the fact remains that states have the power to act, and some are doing so. I want to remind committee members that, for example, California has a carbon market partnership with Quebec. In terms of the economy, the GDPs of California and Quebec combined are greater than the GDPs of Canada as a whole. The states of Washington and the Oregon want to join this carbon market. Even if the current president doesn't want to take action to limit climate change, it is still possible to take action, whether at the North American level or, more broadly, at the global level.

For our part, we're asking government representatives not to suspend this obligation, but to reinstate it in a pragmatic way. I will therefore vote against the motion.