Prime Minister Mark Carney said Tuesday that Stellantis’ agreement to sell its Brampton auto assembly plant is a “betrayal” to Canadians.
Stellantis, the parent company of Jeep and other automotive brands, announced on Monday a deal to sell its Brampton vehicle assembly plant to Canadian defence and armoured vehicle manufacturer Roshel.
The financial terms of that agreement have not been made public, and although there have been questions about whether some Stellantis workers may be grandfathered into Roshel’s operations, no specifics have been provided.
That deal came as contract talks between Stellantis and the union representing more than 9,000 of its workers in Canada remain at an impasse.
“The situation [with] Stellantis at the Brampton plant is unacceptable. It violates the obligations that Stellantis has under several agreements,” Carney said Tuesday during an event in Montreal.
“But to be more fundamental, it’s a betrayal of the workers, as it is a betrayal of the obligations to Canada and, by extension, to all Canadians. We will fully enforce our rights in protection of those workers and protection of Canadian funds.”
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Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre said earlier on Tuesday that Prime Minister Mark Carney should “fire” his industry minister, Mélanie Joly, after a Stellantis agreement to sell its Brampton plant threatened thousands of job losses.
“This Liberal industry minister, just like Champagne before her and the entire Liberal government, is costing Canadians money and jobs and driving our economy into the ditch,” said Poilievre Tuesday in Brampton.
“She’s been threatening lawsuits for years. She’s done nothing. That is why today the official opposition is calling for the Liberal prime minister to fire his failed, costly job-killing Liberal industry minister.”
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Carney was asked about Poilievre’s earlier comments regarding Joly.
“The issue is not the work, the exceptional work of the minister of industry, Madame Joly and her colleagues, it is the behaviour of the company versus of those workers,” Carney said in response.
“There’ll be a meeting of all stakeholders on Thursday on ways to move forward. But make no mistake, we will enforce our rights, absolutely, in protection of those workers.“
In 2023, Stellantis received a $15 billion joint commitment between the federal and Ontario provincial government over 10 years as a performance incentive to revive an electric vehicle battery facility in Windsor and prevent it from being moved to the U.S. That agreement also required Stellantis to maintain its footprint in the province through 2035, which includes the Brampton plant.
Unifor has previously written to Joly urging the government to block the potential sale and clarify whether Stellantis’ intentions to offload the plant breached its commitments to Ottawa.
The Brampton facility had been slated to be retooled for Jeep production, a process that began early in 2024, before the company paused the plan in early 2025. It later announced it was moving production of the Jeep Compass to Illinois, leaving the plant idled indefinitely.
In October 2025, Joly launched a dispute process and claimed Stellantis breached the terms of its agreement by moving the plant’s production out of the province and to the U.S.
– with files from Global’s Alessia Simona Maratta & Karen Bartko
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Source: globalnews.ca
