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Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre says he wants Industry Minister Mélanie Joly to be sacked for failing to prevent a series of layoffs at auto and steel manufacturers across Ontario.
“The Liberal strategy has failed to save jobs from Stellantis to Stelco,” Poilievre said outside the Stellantis auto-assembly plant in Brampton, Ont., on Tuesday. “In both cases the Liberals promised they would get the jobs back.”
“Today the Official Opposition is calling for the Liberal prime minister to fire his failed, costly, job-killing Liberal industry minister.”
Standing next to Joly in Montréal on Tuesday, Prime Minister Mark Carney said his industry minister is doing “an exceptional job in very difficult circumstances,” and she will continue to “fight for these workers.”
“The issue is not the exceptional work of Minister of Industry Joly and her colleagues, it is the behaviour of the company versus those workers,” Carney said.
Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre is calling for Industry Minister Mélanie Joly to be fired, calling out her handling of Ontario’s hard-hit steel and automotive sectors, and saying the Liberal strategy has failed to save jobs.
Joly said that her office has been engaging with Stellantis and Unifor, the private-sector union representing the workers at the Brampton plant, for more than a year to try and come to a solution to no avail.
“Stallantis has decided to go ahead and violate its contract and so that is why we will … use the full force of the law to make sure that we protect jobs but also bring back justice to these workers,” she said.
In a deal announced by the former Trudeau government in 2022, the federal government said it would inject up to $529 million in Stellantis plants in Windsor, Ont., and Brampton to help them retool to increase the company’s production of electric and gas power vehicles.
The contract barred Stellantis from closing its assembly plant in Brampton before 2035 unless it was subject to circumstances beyond the automaker’s “reasonable control” that made the facility “commercially unviable.”
More than 2,000 workers were laid off from Brampton’s Stellantis plant when it halted operations in 2023 to refit the facility to produce the Jeep Compass.
But Stellantis paused the retooling plan in early 2025, announcing in October of that year that the Jeep Compass would be built at the Belvidere Assembly Plant in Illinois instead.
The plant’s future in Brampton had been left in limbo until Monday, when Stellantis announced it was selling the facility to Canadian armoured vehicle maker Roshel Inc. in a deal that could see Stellantis lease some of the property back.
Prime Minister Mark Carney said the situation at Stellantis is ‘unacceptable’ as the assembly plant in Brampton, Ont., is set to be purchased by a Canadian armoured vehicle maker. ‘We will fully enforce our rights,’ in the protection of workers and Canadian funds, he said, without offering specifics.
“The situation in the Brampton plant is unacceptable,” Carney said Tuesday. “It violates the obligations that Stellantis has under several agreements, but to be more fundamental it’s a betrayal of the workers as it is a betrayal of the obligations to Canada.”
The prime minister said his government intends to “fully enforce our rights in protection of those workers and protection of Canadian funds.”
Feds gave $222 million to Stellantis
Last December, CBC News confirmed that the federal government had given $222 million to Stellantis’ Canadian arm between 2023 and 2025. CBC News asked the federal government for the most recent total Tuesday but has yet to receive a response.
“We’re calling for the government to sue Stellantis to get Canadian tax dollars back,” Poilievre said Tuesday.
The federal government has yet to respond to Poilievre’s demands, but Stellantis did issue a statement saying it would voluntarily pay the subsidies back.
“We recognize that Canadians expect accountability for public funding, and that is why Stellantis has offered to voluntarily return the government support received for Brampton Assembly’s original retooling plan,” the company said Tuesday.
The company added that “confidentiality provisions” in its agreements with the federal government prevent it from disclosing further details.
No Ontario money went to Brampton: Ford
That 2022 deal also saw Ontario Premier Doug Ford’s government pledge to support the plants with an investment of up to $513 million.
CBC News confirmed Tuesday that Ontario has not provided the company with any funding for its Brampton retooling initiative because it didn’t meet conditions related to job creation and project milestones.
The company did, however, get $55 million for the Windsor plant from the Ford government.
Poilievre also said the federal industry minister should also be fired for failing to prevent layoffs at Hamilton steel manufacturer Stelco.
Cleveland-Cliffs, the U.S. company that owns the steel producer laid off hundreds of workers in September despite promising to keep the number of unionized workers at 2024 levels through to 2029.
