Premier confident Stellantis plant will be saved

Ford reiterates that Ottawa will have ‘to step up’ with funds

Premier Doug Ford is hopeful an agreement to salvage the $5-billion Stellantis-LG Energy Solution electric vehicle battery plant in Windsor can be reached as early as this week.

“I’ve been speaking with the CEO of Stellantis over the weekend,” Ford said Tuesday referring to Carlos Tavares at the parent company of Chrysler, Jeep and Fiat. “We’re going to move forward on it. There’s just a couple things that we have to straighten out … and just move forward on that.”

“I think we have to move quickly on this,” he said at the opening of the expanded Kensington Health Hospice in Toronto.

On Friday in St. Catharines, Ford announced Queen’s Park was increasing its $500-million subsidy to the auto giant for the massive EV battery factory.

But he reiterated on Tuesday that Ottawa will have “to step up” with additional funding.

Asked if he thought the federal government would enrich its subsidies to the firm, Ford said, “I hope so. They’ve been good partner. They came to the table. We’ll be there to work with them and make sure that we bring certainty to the people of southwestern Ontario and in Windsor.”

Hiking public payments to the firm is seen as vital to preventing the plant — already under construction and slated to open next year and employ 2,500 workers — from being lured across the border.

U.S. President Joe Biden’s Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) gives automakers huge subsidies to manufacture green vehicles stateside.

Stellantis halted construction on its Windsor facility on May 15, three days after the Star revealed the company was in talks with Ottawa to match the federal subsidies to Volkswagen for its EV battery plant in St. Thomas.

The federal government’s production tax credits of up to $13.2 billion for VW are equal to what the German firm would have received under the IRA — and are far higher than the $1billion in aid that Ottawa and the province announced for the Stellantis EV battery plant in March 2022.

That VW tax deal is credited with luring its plant to Canada, which will employ 3,000 people when it begins production in 2027.

Sources, speaking confidentially in order to discuss internal deliberations, have said the federal government is considering concessions to make it easier for the province to do preliminary work on the proposed 60-kilometre Highway 413 linking Milton to Vaughan, in exchange for additional provincial funding.

As well, Ottawa is looking at ways to boost co-operation on the Ring of Fire chromite mining project in northern Ontario.