Ontario offering more money to automaker Stellantis, Ford says | 24CA News

Politics
Published 19.05.2023
Ontario offering more money to automaker Stellantis, Ford says  | 24CA News

Ontario is providing more cash in a bid to maintain automaker Stellantis from pulling out of constructing an electrical car battery plant in Windsor, Ont., Premier Doug Ford mentioned Friday.

Stellantis and LG Energy Solution introduced final yr that they have been constructing the $5-billion plant, however have in latest days stopped building and warned they have been implementing contingency plans as a result of the federal authorities hasn’t lived as much as an settlement.

The CEOs of the 2 corporations wrote final month to Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, saying Ottawa had confirmed in writing 5 occasions that it might match manufacturing incentives underneath the United States’ Inflation Reduction Act, however has not delivered on these commitments.

But the federal authorities has been pressuring Ontario to pitch in as nicely, saying the province additionally has to pay its “fair share.”

Ford has mentioned he’s disillusioned with how the federal authorities has dealt with the problem because the province didn’t make these manufacturing subsidy commitments, however mentioned he’s working with officers in Ottawa.

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“I will confirm we’re putting more money on the table,” he mentioned after an unrelated announcement in St. Catharines, Ont.

“This is all about saving jobs and giving people the quality of life they deserve in southwestern Ontario.”

Stellantis has mentioned the battery facility to provide vegetation in North America will make use of about 2,500 individuals. Auto components makers anticipate the entire influence to be about 10,000 oblique jobs.

The deal Ontario beforehand signed with Stellantis dedicated the province to a $500-million capital contribution, which is similar quantity it promised to Volkswagen to construct an electrical car battery plant in St. Thomas, Ont.

Canada supplied Volkswagen a $700-million capital contribution and as much as $13 billion in manufacturing subsidies for the batteries it makes over the primary decade, to match what the corporate would get in manufacturing tax credit underneath the Inflation Reduction Act.

Stellantis and LG despatched the letter to Trudeau across the identical time the phrases of the Volkswagen deal have been made public.

Finance Minister and Deputy Prime Minister Chrystia Freeland has mentioned that MPs from different provinces and different provincial governments have been asking what their provinces are going to get as they watch Ottawa pour billions into auto offers in Ontario, so provinces that profit from the federal authorities’s $120-billion-plus inexperienced industrial technique ought to “pay their share.”

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