Mr. Speaker, as always, it is an honour to rise this morning on behalf of my neighbours in Oshawa about a great concern that touches so many of our lives.
I would like to take a brief moment, though, to thank those of this House, as well as those of the Christian community who joined us this morning at the 60th National Prayer Breakfast. I was honoured to be in attendance.
In my community, the auto industry is not just another sector of the economy; it is part of who we are. It is early mornings at the assembly line. It is generations of families who have built their lives around honest, skilled work and parents who put food on the table because of a job at the Oshawa assembly plant. Right now, those workers are worried. They are watching their jobs disappear to the United States. They are watching shifts at plants get cut. They are watching uncertainty in an industry they fought hard to rebuild. They are asking a simple question: Who is fighting for us? It is as simple as that. Who is fighting for us?
The facts are hard to ignore. Since the Liberal government took office in 2015, auto production has fallen by half, from over two million vehicles to just 1.2 million. Since last year alone, under the current Liberal Prime Minister, it is down 7.8%. Thousands of auto workers have already lost their jobs, including in Oshawa.
Let me remind the House that it was this Prime Minister who said while he was campaigning that he was the man with the plan and the one to get a deal, and that he was the one Oshawa could apparently trust to do the job. Exports are down, plants are under threat, and entire communities are feeling consequences. This is not just an economic issue; it is a personal one.
What has been the Liberal government's response? Well, the Liberals seem to have accepted it. They have accepted unjustified tariffs imposed by Donald Trump, the decline in Canada's proud auto industry, and the idea that Canada should settle for less. They seem to simply be content trying to manage the decline of our Canadian auto sector, rather than reinvigorating it.
That is not good enough for Oshawa, and it is not good enough for Canadian auto workers. For months now in question period, I have asked the Prime Minister and the Minister of Industry a simple question: When will the government start standing up for Oshawa and all Canadian auto workers? Every single time, we get excuses. The minister tells me to talk to General Motors or to talk to Unifor. I have done exactly that. What I hear on the ground tells me a very different story from the one the Liberals are proclaiming here in this House.
Just last week in Oshawa, I met again with representatives from General Motors from Canada and the United States. They welcomed our Conservative auto plan, specifically as it clearly aligns our regulatory, emissions and safety standards with those in the United States. They acknowledge that this is exactly what the Canadian auto industry needs to grow, because right now we are asking Canadian workers to compete under a different and often heavier set of rules than their American counterparts. That does not strengthen our industry; it simply holds it back.
As was mentioned, local Oshawa Unifor president said, “Finally, a commonsense plan to protect the livelihood of thousands of Ontario Auto sector workers.” More importantly, he also said, “A plan that restores past production levels and secures a long-term future”.
They are not content to sit on their hands and wait to see if the Liberal government will ever stand up for auto jobs here in Canada. I know many of my neighbours in Oshawa are afraid of the decisions and uncertainty coming out of the United States from the current President, and I share their concerns. However, we cannot simply pretend that we can walk away from the United States and replace that market with somewhere else. It is geographically impossible. Canada's auto industry was built on partnerships with the United States. For decades we built cars together, we built supply chains together, and we built prosperity together. The United States buys about 90% of the vehicles we make here in Canada, whereas the rest of the world buys almost none. Even today, Canada exports less than 2% of its vehicles to Europe, so when the Prime Minister suggests that we can just pivot away from North America, that is not a plan. It is wishful thinking, and auto workers in Oshawa cannot build their future on wishful thinking.
Therefore, the question before the House is simple: Do we accept that future and continue to live in the fear and the uncertainty coming out of the White House, or do we as Canadians take a stand and fight for something better? Conservatives are choosing to fight. We will not just sit and wait and hope that the Liberals come up with some way of getting a deal. We are putting forward a plan, and we and our leader have asked the Prime Minister to feel free to steal some pieces of it or all of it, should he so choose, to rebuild Canada's auto industry and bring jobs back home. It is a plan built on a simple idea: If they sell here, they should build here.
The Conservative auto plan would make it easier to build and buy Canadian by removing the GST, and the GST portion of the HST, on Canadian-made vehicles, and to add up to 30,000 new sales a year. That means lower prices for Canadians and more demand for vehicles built by Canadian auto workers. We would also implement a clear rule that, for every vehicle a company builds in Canada, they would sell one vehicle in Canada, duty-free, from a North American partner, one for one. This is about fairness and about balance, and it is about sending a clear message that if they want access to Canadian consumers, they need to invest in Canada and in Canadian auto workers.
The approach is not new, and we have received some criticism that we are moving back to the past, but my argument is this: The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result. Perhaps we should look to a strategy that has worked for us in the past and brought our production from 700,000 vehicles to three million vehicles. Perhaps it can work for us again during these times. We know what works. The problem is that we walked away from it, and now we are paying the price.
Our plan would also protect supply chains. Despite what others may imply, we would maintain the 75% North American content requirement. We would support the parts workers who make the engines, the transmissions and the components that keep this industry running. Canada's auto industry is not just assembly lines, and it comes back to this: It is thousands of jobs across the entire supply chain, and each job is a person and a family.
The Conservative auto plan also focuses on protecting our security and our future. We would establish a North American cybersecurity and data standard and ensure that vehicles connected to hostile regimes would not operate in sensitive environments in Canada. That is because our auto industry is about more than economics. It is also about sovereignty, by combining Canadian excellence with Canadian independence.
Finally, we would stand firm against unfair trade. We would work with our North American partners to push back against unfair practices. We would fight for what Canadian workers most need: tariff-free access to the United States market. Some will say this plan is too ambitious, but what is truly unrealistic is believing that doing nothing and not negotiating with the U.S. administration, despite promising to negotiate a trade deal with the United States by July 21 of last year, will somehow make things better. Right now, Canadians buy about 1.9 million vehicles every year, but we build only 1.2 million vehicles. Our plan is about closing that gap, rebuilding what we once had and getting back to producing two million vehicles a year.
Oshawa has a proud tradition of producing automotive excellence built by generations of skilled men and women who believe that if something is made in Canada, it should be made to compete with the best in the world. That same standard must guide our Canadian auto industry today and into the future as we fight to protect jobs, grow production and restore pride, because R.S. McLaughlin, the founder of General Motors of Canada, believed this: “One grade only, and that the best”.