Mr. Chair, members of the committee, thank you for taking the opportunity to meet with us today.
My name is Chris Buckley. I'm the president of CAW Local 222 in Oshawa. I'm also the chairperson of the CAW/GM Master Bargaining Committee, representing all GM members in Canada.
Local 222 in Oshawa represents 15,000 auto workers. If you look at the spin-off jobs created, it amounts to 59,000 jobs created in that region because of the auto workers' jobs.
CAW as a whole represents 265,000 members working in 18 different sectors. Our union is very concerned about the impact of a proposed free trade agreement with South Korea.
Before we get into the specific economics of the deal, I want to provide some concrete local context. The GM facility I come from, where my members work, is recognized by independent experts as the highest quality, highest productivity assembly plant in North America. Last week, once again, they were awarded the J.D. Power Gold Plant Quality Award, and The Harbour Report says it is one of the most efficient and productive plants in the western hemisphere.
Yet incredibly GM plans to close its number two plant in the city of Oshawa. Why? How do we make sense of that irrational result? Only one thing can explain it: a one-way flood of imported vehicles from offshore auto makers.
Mr. Burney mentioned earlier our large trade surplus with the U.S. in auto products. He didn't mention our huge and growing trade deficit with all other countries.
The deficit reached $16 billion last year, the biggest ever. Offshore imports take 25% of our market. We sell virtually nothing back to those offshore markets. Currently in the Polish shipyards they're building vessels capable of carrying 6,100 vehicles at once. Four and a half million imports came into our market last year. Last year, 130,000 Korean vehicles entered our market; we exported 400 vehicles into theirs.
Those imports are significantly harming our industry at a moment when we need to be fighting as hard as we can to save Canadian jobs. My members depend on auto jobs to feed their families. Last year, 145,000 manufacturing jobs left Canada.
Now I'd like to pass to Jim Stanford, our CAW economist to consider some of the economic details.
Thank you.