Trudeau blasts Poilievre at Volkswagen plant announcement
John Paul Tasker | CBC News | Posted: April 21, 2023 8:11 PM | Last Updated: April 21, 2023
Poilievre has questioned spending billions of taxpayer dollars on EV battery plant
Prime Minister Justin Trudeau was on hand Friday for the official announcement of a new battery plant that will bring thousands of auto sector jobs to southwestern Ontario — and he accused his main political opponent, Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre, of standing in the way of the deal.
Canada has secured a $7-billion commitment from German automaker Volkswagen to build a massive battery plant in St. Thomas, Ont., an industrial community about 30 minutes south of London.
The factory, which will supply batteries for electric vehicles, has been billed by Trudeau as a "generational investment" in Ontario's auto sector — a project the government says will create 3,000 direct jobs and ten of thousands of spin-off jobs.
The Trudeau government calls it a coup for Canada. Countries around the world are in a fierce competition to land plants like this.
Volkswagen, the world's largest automaker by revenue, has only two other such plants under development — in Germany and Spain.
To secure the "gigafactory," which is expected to eventually produce enough batteries for a million cars a year, Canada has had to commit a lot of public money to the project.
To start, Volkswagen will get about $700 million from the federal government's Strategic Innovation Fund to begin construction.
Then there will be production subsidies, which could cost the federal treasury $8-13 billion in total, depending on how many batteries are pumped out in any given year.
Ottawa has said the government's investment in the plant — Canada's largest-ever taxpayer investment in an industrial facility of this type — was necessary to stop the plant from going to the U.S., where there are also generous subsidies on offer.
After praising the politicians and workers who secured the deal, Trudeau launched into a pointed partisan attack on Poilievre.
"Pierre Poilievre came out and said this project was a waste of money," Trudeau said at Friday's announcement.
Looking directly at local Conservative MP Karen Vecchio, who was in attendance for the announcement, Trudeau said, "Karen, you have your work cut out for you."
He framed the Volkswagen deal as a bet on a cleaner, greener future by a "confident country."
Poilievre's anti-carbon tax rhetoric threatens to derail projects like this, Trudeau said.
"Do we want to see all the anxieties we have and all the challenges around the world and say, 'This is an opportunity for Canada to step up,' or do we want to say 'Canada is broken, we're never going to succeed, let's get really mad instead,'" Trudeau said, citing Poilievre's claim that "Canada is broken" after eight years of Liberal leadership.
"Anger doesn't deliver this plant in St. Thomas."
WATCH: Trudeau takes aim at Poilievre during Volkswagen welcoming event
Poilievre has expressed scepticism about the government's investment.
When the project was announced initially earlier this year, Poilievre questioned "how much of Canadians' money" would be going to a "foreign corporation."
"This money belongs to Canadians. Not to a foreign corporation. Not to Justin Trudeau," he said.
Poilievre also wrote to Parliamentary Budget Officer Yves Giroux on Friday calling on him to take a closer look at the deal.
In his letter to Giroux, he said the $13 billion in subsidies will have to come from taxpayers and he would like to better understand the impact.
"We believe it would be beneficial to calculate the expected impact on jobs in other sectors due to the fiscal measures needed to provide the necessary funds to subsidize these jobs," Poilievre wrote.
Industry Minister François-Philippe Champagne, who has been credited with closing the deal with Volkswagen, said the country will recoup its investment in only five years' time.
"Five — that's the number that matters to Canadians. The number of years for the economic impact to equal the value of our investment," Champagne said.
"Yes, this investment is a big one but it is an anchor in the supply chains we're building," Trudeau added. "We're expecting the economic impact of the investment to be covered within five years."
Polievre asked Giroux to fact-check the government's claims.
"We would ask your office to provide an independent analysis of how long it would be expected to take for taxpayers to see their subsidy returned through increased government revenue from the economic impact resulting from the facility's construction," he said.
The federal government has landed other big EV deals as it looks to rebuild a sector that has been hollowed out by disinvestment and globalization.
Stellantis, the parent company of brands like Chrysler, Jeep and Ram, has said it will spend $4.9 billion to build a new electric vehicle (EV) battery plant in Windsor.
It's also booked $3.6 billion to retool its Windsor and Brampton assembly plants for fully electric vehicles.
Ford Motor Co. has promised to spend $1.8 billion on its Oakville Assembly Complex to turn it into an electric vehicle production hub.
General Motors has also spent tens of millions of dollars — with some financial support from Ottawa and Ontario — to convert its Ingersoll, Ont., plant into an assembly line for electric delivery vans.