Mr. Chair, I appreciate the interventions from my colleague from Winnipeg North, my colleague from Kildonan—St. Paul and my colleague from Guelph.
I want to pick up on where my colleague from Winnipeg North left off in terms of what has sustained and made this sector resilient over so many years.
We are all probably aware of the general ballpark of the current state of the sector. In 2024, we produced, as a country, about 1.3 million light-duty vehicles, of which about 1.1 million vehicles were exported to the U.S., and we know that there is a specific interest for my colleague from Joliette—Manawan in the heavy vehicle sector as well, which is an important sector, in particular in Quebec. That manufacturing and the related sectors that are involved result in approximately 125,000 direct jobs, 80% of which are located in Ontario, comprising approximately 8% of manufacturing GDP and 0.7% of overall GDP.
Those are the overall numbers, but in each of those jobs there is a family that is sustained or helped to be sustained. There are also downstream benefits from that within communities all across the country, in particular in southern Ontario. As well, I will reference the fact that the EV future we are experiencing and growing has an even broader distribution of jobs across Canada, which is something we should appreciate as we look to the future success of this sector.
On the history of this sector, we have been building cars in some way in Canada for over 100 years. It is really a history of adaptation and change, responding to either economic pressures or policy pressures, but constantly building the industrial base, the talent base and the innovation that purchasers of vehicles expect, that the market expects and that Canada and Canadians have been able to deliver.
There have been different eras, as my colleague mentioned. There was the key role of the auto pact and how that really set the pace for the kind of trading relationship we have in this country with the United States, allowing us to manufacture and sell into the American market while also having a good market here that was growing at a time of great prosperity for our country. In the 1980s, we had some perceived trade threats from east Asia, but we responded and were able to attract Asian investment in the form of Japanese automakers from Honda and Toyota.
There were the free trade negotiations and the NAFTA agreement, and the pretty significant recession that was experienced at that time, yet workers continued to adapt and investment continued to flow in. It was also in that period that the Canadian Auto Workers split away from the United Auto Workers, creating a proud Canadian-based union that became a founding partner of Unifor.
The global auto parts footprint, so much of which is based in Canada, was founded by people who in many cases were immigrants, tool and die makers, and people coming to this country from a variety of places in Europe in the 1950s and 1960s. They were building these global champions that not only served the Canadian auto sector and created jobs in Canada but also exported jobs and investment around the world and brought those benefits, those returns and that profit back to Canada.
We then had the era that began in the early 2000s. I was associated with a government that was a key participant when there were concerns about whether the auto footprint in Ontario could be sustained. It was not just Canada or the Ontario government but governments around the world that started to play an important role in partnering with companies and unions to attract new investment. We have been in that era for quite some time now.
It has been recalled in this House a few times that the era of the financial crisis of 2007-08 created a real rupture and a need for governments to go in, in an urgent fashion. We have already expressed our concern on this side of the House about how delayed the government of the day was in participating in that. Luckily, in the end, those investments were made, and we were able to sustain, retain and continue to grow some of those plants, jobs and sectors.
We are now in this new era, where there is perhaps the most existential trade challenge to the sector, yet we continue to grow and we continue to invest. That model of partnering is paying off. It is paying off with the NextStar plant in Windsor. It is paying off with the gigafactory in St. Thomas, a town that used to have a Ford manufacturing facility and now has a promise of not one but two major new manufacturing facilities to support the electric vehicle future.
To conclude, with sustained commitment, with policy alignment, and with real dedication and attention to the workers, to the quality, to the innovation and to the need to anchor this manufacturing footprint in Canada, this industry can stay very strong.