The federal government is giving Stellantis a blunt choice on its idled Brampton assembly plant. Build a new vehicle there, or hand back the public money that was meant to keep the factory running.
Federal Industry Minister Melanie Joly said Ottawa is applying “maximum pressure” on the automaker to commit a new model to the site. If that does not happen, she said, the government intends to recover its funds.
“We want a new model from Stellantis at the Stellantis plant and we’ll put maximum pressure to make that happen, and if they don’t, we’ll get our money back,” Joly told reporters at a news conference in Toronto on Wednesday.
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The demand follows Stellantis signing a memorandum of understanding last Friday with Canadian armoured vehicle maker Roshel on a potential sale of the Brampton plant. Any sale to another company would come with protections for Canadian workers, Joly said, but she made clear the government’s preference is to see production resume rather than the facility passed to a new owner.
At the centre of the dispute is a $15-billion performance incentive from Ottawa and Ontario. In exchange for that support, Stellantis had agreed to fulfill a production mandate at Brampton. The government has already warned it could pursue legal action if the automaker fails to honour the deal.
Ontario Premier Doug Ford backed Joly’s position. “We need a model, a new model, to go in there. We have some of the best auto workers in the entire world,” Ford said. He noted Stellantis employs more than 11,000 people in Ontario and said the province wants to build on that base.
Idle since 2023, the plant was first meant to be retooled for Jeep Compass production. Stellantis put that plan on hold in early 2025 and eventually relocated the model to the United States, a decision that provoked a sharp reaction from Ottawa amid the Canada-U.S. trade war.
Unifor, which represents the plant’s workers, is pushing the government to block any sale. In a letter to Joly, National President Lana Payne warned that more than 2,000 workers would be affected by a sale and argued that a deal with a non-automaker “should be met with fierce resistance.”
Talks between Stellantis and the union have reached an impasse, with their current collective agreement set to lapse Sept. 20 at 11:59 p.m. Stellantis has not commented.
