Mr. Speaker, I am thankful for the opportunity to speak to the motion, which I will be opposing because it would roll back 50 years of environmental progress and protection. It embraces not the last era, but three eras before of automotive production in Canada. It also rejects a strategy that we know is already working to bring modern vehicles, with a modern means of construction, to a modern workforce, which is the best workforce in the world, as recognized by so many. Investing in that and in the capacity we have to build the cars and the technologies of the future is what our strategy does.
Again, the motion harkens back to the era of the auto pact. If we follow the history of this file, my constituent Dimitry Anastakis, the renowned automotive historian in Canada, has written about the different eras of automotive production in Canada. We started with the pre-auto pact era policy. Then policy-makers came together, from Canada and the United States, to create the auto pact, which resulted in a real golden age of production and new facilities. With new pressures and new opportunities, policy-makers on different sides adapted.
The third era of auto production in this country involved the invitation of Japanese automakers in the 1980s, with governments co-operating to do that at a time when a lot of people thought this was something of a risk and that the entry of non-North American automakers was something that was a threat to auto workers and a threat to auto production. Were those naysayers correct? No. In fact, right now, Toyota and Honda manufacture approximately three-quarters of the assembled vehicles in Canada. That was the right move at the time, despite the naysaying. Policy-makers adjusted and adapted.
In the 2000s, during the financial crisis when the competition for investment heightened and there were deep financial issues, especially with the North American auto companies, what did policy-makers do? The party on the other side, when in government, was a bit slow on this, but eventually it joined with the Government of Ontario and the U.S. administration to invest in auto companies, including those here. We had a rich tradition for most of the 2000s and 2010s of Ontario and Canada co-operating to attract new investment, and the attraction continues to this day.
However, we are now in a new era of automotive production because of this disruption that the chief government whip so articulately pointed out. It is a disruption that we had not been hearing much about from the opposition until lately.
First, I want to say that, I think in April 2025, the Canadian people had a choice about who they were going to trust to have these kinds of negotiations and discussions with the U.S. administration. Quite clearly, they chose that it was going to be this party on this side of the House that was going to be conducting those negotiations.
I do recall that many questions from the other side of the House, when we got questions about trade from the other side of the House, were generally encouragement to rush to a deadline. In fact, the Conservatives continue to repeat a deadline they think we should have adhered to in the service of any deal. The motion before us is calling for something that would not have been deliverable if we had listened to that party's advice. Instead, we came up with, and we continue to work on, a strategy. It is an important five-part strategy, and I just want to outline it here briefly, because I think it is important for the House to hear the full extent of what this strategy is doing.
First, the strategy is focusing on attracting investment, with $3 billion allocated from the strategic response fund and up to $100 million from the regional tariff response initiative to attract new investment. I will talk a bit about what is happening in different parts of Canada when it comes to investment, which is, in some cases, prompted by some of these government investments, but it is also prompted by the choices of U.S. and international automakers to invest here.
Let us look at some communities, such as Woodstock, Cambridge and Alliston, which is where Toyota and Honda do their manufacturing. Again, three-quarters of manufacturing in Canada is currently done in those plants. The Cambridge and Woodstock plants recently received their 23rd J.D. Power Plant Quality Award, including 13 that are gold or platinum, which is a testament to the quality of the plant. A number of members joined the roll-off of the 2026 RAV4 in Woodstock, which is plant recognized by the home office as one of the best in the world, or the best in the world. It is a plant that is attracting new investment.
In Windsor, we have the third shift that was announced at Stellantis. The NextStar plant, with government investment, has recently churned out one million new fuel cells, and the engine plant at which Unifor Local 200 is based is making engines for the very vehicles that my colleague, the member for Dufferin—Caledon, wants to be made. There was a bit of dismissal around the Unifor 200 plant facility in Windsor, but that is an essential plant.
At a plant in Oakville, there has been multi-billion dollar retooling done by Ford. In St. Thomas, a new PowerCo battery plant is rejuvenating a part of Ontario that includes the riding of my colleague, the deputy government House leader. That area has not had auto investment in a while after the departure of the Ford Crown Victoria St. Thomas plant.
As we know, there are plants and facilities where there have been some struggles and some challenges in Brampton, Ingersoll and Oshawa. I think colleagues have heard the government, the Minister of Industry and the local MPs in those areas who are working on behalf of those workers in those plants to fight for that investment, making it very clear to the companies that if they do not honour their commitments, then we will take legal action.
However, the broader space of auto investment in Canada goes far beyond any individual plant. The plants are key core parts of production. We cannot have an auto sector that is thriving without those plants, but there is a lot more to it. We have world-leading parts manufacturers, many of whom are employing more people outside Canada than in Canada. However, that benefits Canada. The intellectual property is here. The profits return here. The workers are here benefiting. Those parts plants exist all across southern Ontario and beyond.
We also have the broader set of sectors that benefit from this strategy: electric facilities, battery supply chains, electrification and software developers. The very modern vehicles, the very modern methods that are now in cars these days, are part of a sector that is being built here in Canada and is growing in Canada. We cannot have that sector without, first, the investments that I talked about at the beginning, but it takes more than just those investments in the plants themselves. It also takes an investment in the electrical strategy and the connectivity that we need for vehicles, for plants and for consumers to be able to access the new modern vehicles. That is a key part of our strategy.
Our strategy involves an investment in electric charging infrastructure of over $1.5 billion through the Canada Infrastructure Bank to create a charging and hydrogen refuelling infrastructure initiative. We need a national EV charging network to benefit from the vehicles of the future, vehicles that Canadians want to buy now, but they have some issues around range anxiety and they have some issues around accessing these vehicles. We also realize as a government that there is an economy to be built around electrification. There are distributed benefits that go far beyond southern Ontario when we take electrification seriously and when we make those investments. It is a common good. It is a shared good. It is something that requires government investment. Through our investments we are doing just that.
Our strategy also includes a real important focus on sustainability. I think it is really important to point out how disruptive the opposition party is when opposition members use perhaps the more generic words in the motion to talk about “harmonizing tailpipe emissions reductions with our North American partners”. What they are doing when they say this is rejecting 50 years of increasingly stringent auto emissions standards, which have cleaned our air, helped adapt the vehicles and helped adapt the technologies, so that new investment is in the cleanest vehicles. New investment is in those things that consumers want, but that are also good for the climate.
Increasingly stringent vehicle emissions standards are good for our climate. They are good for consumers and they are good for Canada. What the opposition party is doing is aligning itself with a radical, far-right idea, which has been embraced by elements of the U.S. administration, to say it wants no vehicle emissions standards whatsoever. It is an abandonment of 50 years of progress, and it is something that we cannot accept on this side of the House.
We are going to align with jurisdictions and places like California and Europe. We are going to adapt our Canadian standards, but we are going to make sure they are increasingly stringent because this is what Canadians want and because it will clean our air. We know from history that when this was done, manufacturers have adapted. Manufacturers will adapt to cleaner vehicles.
There was an era when seat belts were not required in vehicles in Canada. There was an era in which eight-track tapes were playing in our vehicles. There was an era in which the K-car was being driven around. There were eras when engines—
