Trudeau turns labour vote right

Workers of the world, unite! This is your moment. Across the globe, parties are courting the labour vote as life gets more unaffordable, technology takes over more jobs and everything seems more uncertain. Traditionally enamoured with the left, unionized workers are turning to the right as progressive parties dive down policy rabbit holes that have little to do with improving their members’ working conditions, but much to do with identity politics and social engineering.

Here in Canada, it is no different. Federal and provincial conservative parties are gaining support among blue-collar voters. In the most recent Ontario election, several private sector unions, including the Laborers’ International Union of North America (LIUNA), endorsed Doug Ford’s Conservatives, a first for the party. Federally, Pierre Poilievre’s Conservatives are gaining traction in traditional NDP territory, from British Columbia to Ontario, as workers flip their votes from orange to blue.

But it’s not just the NDP that is feeling the pain. The federal Liberals are losing support too, due to growing working-class opposition to the carbon tax. In what could be the biggest policy reversal of the decade, even the NDP says the tax is too expensive. Why? Because polls show the worse off a voter is, the more likely they are to vote Conservative. Even 36 per cent of public sector union workers would back the Tories, compared with 26 per cent each for the Liberals and NDP.

So the counter-campaign has started. Two weeks ago, the head of the Canadian Labour Congress, Bea Bruske, warned Poilievre is “a fraud” and not to be trusted due to his voting records on workers’ rights.

Then last week, a second salvo: the “milestone” announcement of a new Honda electric vehicle battery plant in Alliston, Ont., set to create “over 1,000 well-paying manufacturing jobs” and boost the Canadian auto industry. Prime Minister Justin Trudeau was all smiles, and no wonder: the plant is right in the Liberals’ sweet spot, producing green energy for cars and good jobs for unionized workers.

Except there’s a fly in the ointment: foreign workers. And it’s turning a good news announcement into yet another boondoggle for the Liberals.

On April 10, Sean Strickland, executive director of Canada’s Building Trades Unions, wrote Trudeau a letter over concerns about foreign workers taking Canadian jobs at another EV project, the Nextstar plant in Windsor, Ont., a venture between Chrysler’s Stellantis and Korean firm LG. Strickland said foreign workers are building the plant while Canadian workers, including 180 local millwrights and ironworkers, “are being sidelined without consequence.” In response, the government says only 70 of the 2,000 workers currently at the site are not Canadian.

But the union says 900 South Korean workers are set to come to Windsor during the installation phase of the battery plant’s development. Asked by Strickland about the new Honda deal on Monday, Trudeau said “it’s part and parcel of it that we expect that the construction, the installation, the maintenance be done by Canadians as much as is humanly possible.”

That answer didn’t satisfy either the NDP or the Conservatives. The same day, the Tories tabled a motion in the House of Commons to get the details of the Honda deal and see just how many Canadian jobs have been guaranteed. The Liberals have said they cannot release the contracts because they contain sensitive business information that could jeopardize future EV plant deals.

But with $5 billion of taxpayers’ money on the line, surely the government could demand that Honda hire local workers? Alas, you would be mistaken. Canada’s history is littered with similar auto deals gone bad, where workers ended up sidelined after public funds piled in. In 2018, General Motors shuttered its Oshawa plant and put 2,500 workers out of work, despite promising in 2016 to keep things running until 2020. At the time, GM still owed the government an undisclosed amount of its $10.5 billion taxpayer bailout received in 2009.

The Liberals should be careful not to oversell the Honda deal and be fully transparent on the terms. Unless Trudeau can satisfy concerns that the plant isn’t just an election-friendly photo op, and will actually employ Canadians, workers may well be asking: who’s the fraud now?