Mr. Chair, it is an honour to rise on such an important issue, which not only affects my riding but Canadians right across our country. Canada's auto sector is the backbone of our country. We have over 100,000 auto sector jobs here in Ontario. We are very proud of our auto workers, who have done a fantastic job. They give $14 billion to our economy. That is a lot of money. That is a lot of workers. That is a very positive impact on our local economy.
My riding of Oxford is also home to a strong auto sector. We have Toyota and we have CAMI. We have all heard the news coming out of CAMI that 1,200 jobs will be terminated, recently announced by GM. This has devastated my community. In Ingersoll, 1,200 workers means 1,200 families. It affects our businesses. It affects the thousands of spinoff jobs that support our local economy. It also hurts our township. The CAMI plant is 12% of Ingersoll's tax base. When we lose that, that is going to have some serious ramifications for the citizens in my riding.
I have always said this. I have always said that in Oxford County, our farmers are the heart of our community, but our auto workers are the backbone. They are very hard-working, highly skilled people who roll up their sleeves and get things done. What we have seen in the last few years is a government that is failing our auto workers and that is failing our auto industry at large. It continues to fail. It continues to let them down. It continues to sell out our workers.
We have had a great discussion on EV mandates. The Liberal government is driven by ideology, an ideology that does not work. The Liberals are forcing their radical views on manufacturing with the EV mandates, which will have serious implications. Brian Kingston, the CEO of the Canadian Vehicle Manufacturers' Association, has said very clearly it is “a direct challenge to our competitiveness as an auto manufacturing jurisdiction because it is levying punitive costs on companies that do not achieve these arbitrary sales targets.”
They are not feasible either. Electric vehicles are not working. The CAMI plant BrightDrop project was an electrical vehicle project. Hundreds of millions of dollars were put into that plant's retooling. A lot of things happened, but it does not survive because there are no sales right now. The demand for electric vehicles has gone down. I am a big believer of the free market. The market should decide where a product should go. Canadians should decide what cars they should be driving. It should not be forced by a top-down government that is pushing its own agenda.
In rural Ontario, those EV cars do not work. Electric vehicles do not work because of bad weather, no infrastructure and not enough towing capacity. The Liberals failed on EVs, and that is hurting our auto industry. Second, they failed on our trade situation. The Prime Minister has travelled across the world and has talked a big game, but when it comes to one of our most serious partners, he is missing in action.
Ninety-two per cent of our vehicles are shipped to the U.S. This is a big part of our industry. The Prime Minister needs to work and get to the table to get a good deal for our auto workers. Everywhere he goes, tariffs go up. It is the same in the auto industry. Toyota, whom I met with last week, said the same thing to me. If the tariffs do not come down from 10%, they will have to re-evaluate their situation as well.
The industry will be destroyed, yet the Liberals are missing in action once again. When they are handing out taxpayer dollars, hard-earned taxpayer dollars, they are not even reading contracts. The latest news we heard was that they gave $15 billion of hard-earned taxpayer money, and they did not even read the contract to see if there were any job securities. They are signing blank cheques to executives while our workers are the ones paying the price.
This has to change. We must stand for auto workers. We must protect our auto industry . The Liberals are missing in action. They are pointing fingers everywhere else. It is they themselves who should be looking in the mirror and knowing they are the problem and that they have to get out of the way.