OTTAWA — After more than a month and a half of fighting, a Commons committee finally received an unredacted copy of a controversial funding agreement worth hundreds of millions of dollars from Ottawa to auto giant Stellantis Thursday.
On the same day, Industry Minister Mélanie Joly told another Commons committee that the government is serving Stellantis with a notice of default due to its announced shift in production of a Jeep model from Brampton, Ont., to the U.S.
The company furloughed thousands of employees in the process as it announced an “operational pause” of the Ontario assembly plant in October.
Sending a notice of default suggests the federal government is preparing to file a lawsuit against Stellantis, which it accuses of breaching
the contract signed in 2022 promising up
to $529 million in public funds to “support” the company’s plants in Windsor and Brampton, Ont.
A physical copy of the unredacted contract was provided to MPs on the government operations committee by the Industry department (ISED) suddenly on Thursday. It was not made available to the public or media.
The handover put an end to a brewing Parliamentary Privilege debate and a battle between ISED, the company and the committee since it requested the full contract on Oct. 20.
Up until Thursday, ISED had only accepted to hand over a redacted copy of the 2022 agreement with Stellantis, arguing it was necessary to protect the company’s “commercially sensitive” information.
But the agreement and the company have come under fire by both government and opposition parties after Stellantis announced the pause of its Brampton plant, the move of its Jeep Compass production line to the U.S. and then a $13 billion investment in its U.S. operations.
Since then, the Liberals have accused the company of breaching its commitments in the contract and launched a dispute resolution process on Nov. 3 in the hopes of recovering some of the hundreds of millions given to the auto giant.
Speaking to the government operations committee Thursday, Stellantis executive Teresa Piruzza was repeatedly asked by Liberal and opposition MPs why the company appeared to be reneging on its Canadian presence.
Liberal MP Vince Gasparo even questioned if the company’s recent announced it was investing $13 billion in the U.S. was “blowing Canadian taxpayer dollars.”
“Does Stellantis have a values problem, that they say one thing at one time to get whatever capital they need, and then change their messaging when the environment is convenient for them?,” he asked Piruzza.
Piruzza responded that the company’s commitment to Canada is “fairly clear, given the billions that have been invested over the last number of years and the advancements that we’ve made.”
She added that the company is working to find a “solution” for its Brampton plant and repeatedly denied that the plant was closed by insisting it was only on an “operational pause”.
“We will honour our agreement,” she said.
National Post
cnardi@postmedia.com
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