Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre is demanding the dismissal of Industry Minister Mélanie Joly due to her inability to avert a wave of layoffs at automotive and steel companies throughout Ontario.
“The Liberal approach has failed to protect jobs from Stellantis to Stelco,” Poilievre remarked outside the Stellantis auto-assembly facility in Brampton, Ontario, on Tuesday. “In both instances, the Liberals assured they would restore the jobs.”
“Today, the Official Opposition is urging the Liberal prime minister to terminate his ineffective, costly, job-eliminating industry minister.”
While standing alongside Joly in Montréal on Tuesday, Prime Minister Mark Carney praised his industry minister for performing “an outstanding job under very challenging circumstances,” asserting that she will persist in her efforts to “advocate for these workers.”
“The issue at hand is not the exceptional work of Minister of Industry Joly and her team, but rather the actions of the company in relation to those workers,” Carney stated.
Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre is calling for Industry Minister Mélanie Joly to be fired, criticizing her management of Ontario’s struggling steel and automotive industries, claiming the Liberal strategy has been ineffective in preserving jobs.
Joly responded that her office has been in discussions with Stellantis and Unifor, the private-sector union representing workers at the Brampton facility, for over a year in an effort to reach a resolution, but to no avail.
“Stellantis has chosen to breach its contract, and that is why we will … utilize the full extent of the law to ensure we protect jobs while also restoring justice for these workers,” she stated.
In a deal revealed by the previous Trudeau administration in 2022, the federal government pledged to invest up to $529 million in Stellantis facilities in Windsor, Ontario, and Brampton to assist in retooling for increased production of electric and gas-powered vehicles.
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The agreement prohibited Stellantis from shutting down its assembly plant in Brampton prior to 2035 unless faced with circumstances beyond the automaker’s “reasonable control” that rendered the facility “commercially unviable.”
Over 2,000 workers were let go from the Brampton Stellantis plant when it ceased operations in 2023 to upgrade the facility for the production of the Jeep Compass.
However, Stellantis delayed the retooling project in early 2025, announcing in October that the Jeep Compass would instead be manufactured at the Belvidere Assembly Plant in Illinois.
The future of the plant in Brampton remained uncertain until Monday, when Stellantis revealed it was selling the facility to Canadian armored vehicle manufacturer Roshel Inc. in a transaction that may involve Stellantis leasing some of the land back.
Prime Minister Mark Carney stated that the situation at Stellantis is ‘unacceptable’ as the assembly plant in Brampton, Ontario, is about to be sold to a Canadian armored vehicle manufacturer. ‘We will fully enforce our rights,’ in safeguarding workers and Canadian investments, he added, without providing additional details.
“The conditions at the Brampton plant are intolerable,” Carney stated on Tuesday. “It breaches the commitments that Stellantis has under multiple agreements, but fundamentally, it is a betrayal of the workers and the obligations owed to Canada.”
The prime minister assured that his government plans to “fully assert our rights in order to protect those workers and safeguard Canadian funds.”
Feds allocated $222 million to Stellantis
In December, CBC News confirmed that the federal government had provided $222 million to Stellantis’ Canadian division between 2023 and 2025. CBC News inquired with the federal government for the latest total on Tuesday but has not yet received a reply.
“We are demanding that the government take legal action against Stellantis to recover Canadian taxpayer money,” Poilievre stated on Tuesday.
While the federal government has not yet addressed Poilievre’s requests, Stellantis released a statement indicating it would voluntarily repay the subsidies.
“We understand that Canadians expect accountability for public funding, which is why Stellantis has offered to voluntarily return the government support received for Brampton Assembly’s initial retooling plan,” the company mentioned on Tuesday.
The company further noted that “confidentiality clauses” in its agreements with the federal government limit its ability to disclose further information.
No Ontario funding went to Brampton: Ford
That 2022 agreement also included a commitment from Ontario Premier Doug Ford’s government to invest up to $513 million to support the plants.
CBC News confirmed on Tuesday that Ontario has not allocated any funding to the company for its Brampton retooling project because it failed to meet the job creation and project milestone conditions.
However, the company did receive $55 million for the Windsor facility from the Ford government.
Poilievre reiterated that the federal industry minister should also be removed from her position for her failure to stop layoffs at Hamilton steel producer Stelco.
Cleveland-Cliffs, the American firm owning the steel manufacturer, laid off hundreds of workers in September, despite assurances to maintain the number of unionized positions at 2024 levels through 2029.
