Joly says it’s time to “stop whining” about Stellantis contract

Industry Minister Mélanie Joly thinks it’s time to “stop whining” about the billions in taxpayer dollars that the Liberals gave to electric vehicle manufacturer Stellantis after the company announced

Source: Wikimedia Commons

Industry Minister Mélanie Joly thinks it’s time to “stop whining” about the billions in taxpayer dollars that the Liberals gave to electric vehicle manufacturer Stellantis after the company announced it would move thousands of jobs out of the country to a plant in the United States.

Joly was pressed on the issue of whether she’d read the contract with Stellantis before giving them the subsidies during an exchange in the House of Commons on Monday, which has turned into much confusion in recent weeks.

She was not the industry minister at the time of the deal; François Philippe Champagne, who now serves as the finance minister, was. However, no one was initially willing to confirm whether it was read.

Ottawa began a formal dispute resolution process against the automaker after it relocated Jeep Compass production from Brampton, Ont., to Illinois, resulting in the loss of approximately 3,000 Canadian jobs in October.

Joly was supposed to appear at the Commons’ government operations committee last week to explain why there weren’t provisions in the Stellantis contract to ensure that Canadian jobs would be protected for receiving taxpayer money.

However, she did not show. Instead, Joly sent Deputy Industry Minister Philip Jennings in her place, who testified that he hadn’t ever read the “fully unredacted version” of the contract.

“We have sort of a new minister who was not involved in the negotiations. There is no need for her to see the entire contract. We brief her as needed in terms of some elements of the contract,” said Jennings.

“It is a contract between the Department of Industry and the company,” said Jennings. “At the end of the day, the contractual obligation is to the department.”

However, Joly testified before the committee last month, claiming she did have knowledge of the contract and that Parliament would “be able to see it when we will be producing it.”

“Just look at the contracts,” she said on November 3. “Then you will be informed.”

When presented, however, the contract was heavily redacted.

“Apparently, nobody in this government bothered to read the Stellantis,” said Conservative MP Kelly McCauley on Monday.

“The minister of industry did not read it. The deputy minister of industry and the past deputy minister for industry did not read it. Finance Canada lawyers did not read it. They all pointed their fingers at the former industry minister, who is, of course, the finance minister now. So, before giving billions in taxpayers’ dollars to jobs now fleeing to the U.S., did the finance minister read the contracts?”

Joly responded by saying that “the entire team read it” before blaming former prime minister Stephen Harper for “bailing out GM and Chrysler” in 2009.

“We saw that there was no jobs protection in that deal,” said Joly. “So you know what we’ll do now? We’ll make sure we fight for these jobs. We will make sure that we put maximum pressure and they should stop just whining and get on board.”