Canada Sues Stellantis Over Brampton Auto Plant Betrayal, and They Are Playing DIRTY! | Canada News

Welcome to the Bill Kelly podcast.

Critical discussions in critical times.

Here's your host, Bill Kelly.

Welcome to another edition of the Bill

Kelly podcast. Critical discussions in

these critical times. I'm your host,

Bill Kelly. Good to have you with us

today. Well, we all know how important

the auto industry is to Canadian

economy, uh especially in light of

what's going on with the Trump people

and everything else. which is why I'm

troubled and I know an awful lot of

people have been troubled by uh the

antics of Stalantis over the last little

while. Uh it looks like they're trying

to do an end run around a very lucrative

deal that they signed with our federal

government. To their credit, so far

Canadian politicians uh don't seem to

want to let them get away with it. So,

let me let you know what's going on

here. Uh but to do that, let's just have

a quick recap here. Stellatis, who of

course used to be Chrysler some time

ago, uh had made a commitment and there

was a deal made with the federal

government and a a pretty lucrative deal

as we mentioned. Uh they signed a deal a

couple years ago uh to keep the Bmpton

auto plant open, $529 million deal with

Stellantis and the Canadian government.

And uh that was good news for everybody.

It's a lot of money and it's a big

investment, but you know, we want to do

what we can for the Canadian auto

industry. Uh and they said uh part of

the deal was going to be that uh the

folks at Stellantis had committed to

keeping that auto plant open till at

least at least 2035.

And Stellantis said, "Yeah, yeah, we'll

do that. Matter of fact, we'll start

building the Jeep Compass there in

Bmpton." So that's great news. It's got

great situation going on. Well, uh a

funny thing happened on the way to the

deal. Um Donald Trump got re-elected of

course in the United States and started

acting like Trump tariffs and threats

about this and that and taking the auto

industry and penalizing uh American

automakers. So Stellantis caved in and

all of a sudden made this announcement

that yeah, you know what that that plant

we're going to do in B we're not doing

that anymore. They decided to move their

whole production of the Jeep Compass

down to Illinois someplace and they they

said they haven't closed the Bmpton

plant but it's it's it's not working. it

hasn't worked for quite a long time and

everybody's been laid off. Um, so

Melanie Jolie, of course, the minister

in charge of this portfolio, says that,

okay, we're going to call them on this.

We gave you the money. We want the money

back. We're going to sue you for the

money. And she seemed pretty adamant

about that. And they're drawing papers

up to take legal action about that.

You're not just going to let these guys

walk out the door with that kind of

money, right? Well, now we find out that

Stellantis is uh doing some negotiating

on the side and we don't know all the

details because we're told it's in the

preliminary stages, but uh Bloomberg

News has reported now that there have

been talks with Stalantis and a company

called Xi Jing Leap Motor Technology.

That's a Chinese automobile

manufacturer. And according to Rey

Reuters that is uh Stellantis had bought

about 21% stake in Leap Motor uh a

couple of years ago and they've worked

together on a couple of other projects.

Sleep Motor International, I guess, is a

joint venture. So, here's what they're

talking about, and this is what

Bloomberg is reporting, is that what

they're thinking of doing here is

working with this uh Chinese EV

automaker and simply moving, in other

words, building the things over in

China, but shipping them over here,

shipping all the parts over to the

Bmpton plant, and it would be the job of

the people at the plant uh to basically

put all the parts together. Yeah. Kind

of like when you buy something at IKEA,

right? It all comes in a box and you get

a little Allen key and then you put it

together and bingo, you've got yourself

a a dresser or whatever. And they say,

"Yeah, that's that's kind of like

automaking, isn't it?" Well, no, it's

not. Okay. Uh absolutely not. Uh now, we

are told that this is an a discussion

that's very much in the preliminary

stages right now, but I'm hoping that

Minister Jolie and others put the kaibos

on this right away for the reasons that

seem to be obvious to us on this side of

the border. I don't know if folks at

Stellinis fully understand that. Uh

Ontario Premier Doug Ford uh was down in

Texas of course a couple of days ago

trying to whip up some some trade deals

down there and he got word of this and

he says absolutely not going to happen.

And here's why. The people who are

trained in the auto industry and many of

them of course have been generationally

working at this Bmpton plant are are

trained people in different expertise.

So you know there's painters, there's

body workers etc. putting cars together.

All you'd need now is somebody's low

tech job and probably a fraction of the

workforce would have come back to work

simply to assemble these cars. We're

talking about 3,000 people that got laid

off when the Stellitis folks decided to

screw around with this deal. And and

we're told that it'd be probably less

than a thousand would actually come back

to work because there's not much for

them to do. It's just tightening some

bolts here and there and bingo bango,

you get yourself a Chinese EV. Now, I I

did a little investigating into this,

and to be fair, this is not how China, I

guess, is supposedly going to make this

deal with Canada to send the EVs over

here, uh, which we're told is going to

happen in the next little months. This

is a a unique situation. However,

however, what we had hoped was going to

happen, uh, was that at some point maybe

the Chinese automakers would say, you

know what, there's a lucrative market

here. uh you know maybe we'll start

building them over there not unlike what

the Japanese automakers did some years

ago you know initially you know when

Toyota and Honda and others was being

sold over here they were still being

manufactured in Japan and they came over

here in a boat and you know that

happened and the the market looks so

good that all of a sudden they decided

hey you know let's start building plants

and of course Toyota's got a a footprint

here in Canada uh so does Honda others

are thinking about doing that now that's

how you grow the Canadian auto industry

and the hope was is that maybe the

Chinese EV market would start to build

stuff here on in this country. There's

no commitment to that yet, but the the

deal was, you know, build a plant here

in Canada, uh use Canadian workers to

assemble these and Canadian auto parts.

I mean, there's a supply chain here has

been for years and years and years. and

all the other people that are building

cars in this country um including the

automakers from America and the ones

from from Asian countries comply with

that. They use Canadian parts. They use

Canadian automakers that parts that are

manufactured here and it worked well.

Now Trump has really screwed everything

up here of course with his idiotic, you

know, tariff deals and everything else.

We've got to stand strong here and stand

strong and simply say this is the way

things are going to have to be to to

simply say this is going to be all

Chinese parts, all Chinese labor except

for the people that are going to, you

know, put the bolts in here and tighten

them up. Uh that's not a deal by any

stretch of the imagination. A very

fraction of the workforce is still going

to be working, but they're probably not

going to be even paid what they were

getting before. So, it's it's a

lose-lose situation all the way around.