Mr. Chair, I am honoured to wrap this debate up tonight.
Coming from the Niagara region, which was literally built on the auto sector, I am grateful that my friend from Niagara Falls—Niagara-on-the-Lake is here tonight to contribute to this debate. As I mentioned earlier, he worked at GM while he was going to university, as did many of my friends and many of my colleagues. I grew up in the small town of Port Colborne, and the ambition of a lot of people who grew up in my town was to get a job at GM or Ford, because it was a well-paid job with good benefits, a future and stability that would enable them to raise their family and enjoy their life.
A friend of mine, Alan Davis, who will probably be upset with me for saying this, recently said to me in Port Colborne that he was so grateful to have had the job he had for so many years. They closed the plant in St. Catharines early in his career, but every day, a group of people from St. Catharines and the Niagara region would take a bus from Niagara to Oshawa, so that they could finish their career and have a solid pension. It was a hardship for them to do that, but they did it, and he says that he is forever grateful for the job and the opportunity he had to work for that company. However, those jobs have disappeared over the years.
For a little perspective, as I said earlier, Niagara was a hub for the automotive sector. In 1969, 47% of all the jobs in Niagara were in the auto sector. Almost one in two jobs in Niagara was in the auto sector. In 2008, that number was reduced to 4,000. By 2014, it further decreased to about 2,900 but still represented about $2.5 billion of economic impact for the Niagara region. Today, as I think my colleague for Niagara Falls—Niagara-on-the-Lake said, there are only 700 direct jobs in the auto sector left in Niagara, so we went from 18,000 jobs in Niagara down to about 700 today.
The Ford glass plant has disappeared and closed. The GM engine plant is gone, as is the GM foundry. I used to be in the homebuilding business in the 1980s, and I remember building a first house for an individual. It was a brand new house for him. He had just recently retired from the foundry, and had learned before his last day that the foundry was closing forever.
I am in a situation today where I have two EV plants in my riding. One was built about two or three years ago. It was for Linamar, which built a plant in Welland to support the Ford F-150. It was going to be providing parts that would support the EV side of the Ford F-150 in Canada. However, that plant never opened. It sits about a mile and a half from where I live. It is a beautiful turnkey plant, if anyone is interested in buying it. It is on the market.
This is an example of what a Yale professor refers to as narrative economics. The government created an economic environment based on a narrative that did not have a solid foundation under it, which is the danger when governments get into the idea of narrative economics: They create something that does not exist. In this case, the company put up over $1 billion to build a plant on the basis of an economic strategy and narrative that just never materialized.
Canada is not in a position today, on any level, to support the EV sector. The EV mandate, while seemingly logical at the time, has turned out to be completely illogical, because not only are Canadians not interested in buying EV vehicles in the capacity that the government had, in its narrative, created, but we do not have the infrastructure to support that EV mandate.
The sooner the government gets rid of that mandate, the better off the narrative in the economy will be because it will give some certainty within the economy for companies to plan, including in the auto sector. That needs to happen.
The other plant in my riding is in my hometown of Port Colborne. It is the Asahi Kasei plant, which is an ion battery separator plant. It has been touted as the largest single industrial investment in the Niagara region. It is still under construction, and there is still a lot of uncertainty in the market. Hopefully, in this instance, because it is not manufacturing automobiles, it can pivot.
Asahi Kasei is one of the largest manufacturing companies in the world. It manufactures a large number of different products from Japan. I am hopeful that at least this company will be able to pivot in the event that the narrative does not happen and the economy does not support that kind of investment in the sector.
During the summer, I had the opportunity to sit down for lunch with the American ambassador to Canada—