Stellantis faces pushback over potential Chinese EV assembly at Brampton plant

Some Canadians say they’re optimistic that adding Chinese EVs to the market will create new manufacturing jobs at home. Kamil Karamali reports.

There has been a lot of pushback against the possibility of Stellantis turning its idle Brampton assembly plant into a Chinese electric vehicle manufacturing hub since Bloomberg first reported that the global automaker was in talks with its Chinese partner, Zhejiang Leapmotor Technology.

Ontario Premier Doug Ford and federal Industry Minister Melanie Joly have rejected the plan, while Unifor national president Lana Payne said Stellantis must stick to its promise of reopening the plant to its original capacity.

Much of that opposition stems from concerns that the Brampton plant would be making “knockdown kits” — electric vehicles with parts made and largely assembled in China, then shipped to Canada for final assembly.

• READ MORE: Stellantis in talks to build Chinese EVs at Canadian plant, Bloomberg News reports
• READ MORE: Potential for Chinese EV production at Stellantis plant in Brampton raises concerns

“These vehicles are completely manufactured in China with Chinese components, then partially disassembled and brought here to be reassembled by several hundred workers, like IKEA furniture kits,” said Flavio Volpe, president of the Automotive Parts Manufacturers’ Association (APMA) in an interview with CTV News Saturday.

“That’s completely different from making cars here and buying $3-billion worth of parts a year in Canada and employing 10,000 to 12,000 employees.”

He added that such a model would offer little economic benefit to Canadians.

“This idea where we’d have several hundred workers with wrenches and screwdrivers to put together pre-manufactured cars and sell them to Canadians ... Canadians would have no benefit of the spend that they were doing on cars and why would we do that?” he said.

But according to Volpe, there is an appetite for Chinese-made EVs if the parts are manufactured in North America and the vehicles are fully assembled in Canada.

Volpe said regaining access to the U.S. market and restoring full production at the plant — including a model like the Jeep Compass — could return it to a full operation “like it has been since 1962,” putting 12,000 people back to work and bringing $3 billion a year in purchases back into the Ontario economy.

The Brampton plant has been closed for more than two years, leaving thousands of employees in limbo as it was retooled with support from Ottawa. But in October, Stellantis announced it was moving production of the Jeep Compass, the model manufactured at the plant, to Illinois to increase production.

Earlier this year, Prime Minister Mark Carney made a deal with China to import up to 49,000 Chinese EVs at a heavily reduced tariff. Volpe argues that if they are going to send knock-down kits, then those should count against that quota since they are almost completely manufactured in China.

“I think the federal government needs to be clear that knock-down kits and sales from knock-down operations are imports. They need to clarify that so that the Chinese understand the rules of the game here” added Volpe.

“We know that Chinese EVs and Chinese investments are inevitable in this country. Let’s make sure that we hold them to the same rules that they (applied to) Canadian investments when we wanted to invest in China. They said do joint ventures and we have to share the IP. We want to protect it and we want to protect Canadian workers.”