A day after a government commissioned report about the auto industry surfaced, Ontario Premier Dalton McGuinty told reporters that he would seek ways to help assist the auto industry as a thank you to the province’s “…leading goal scorer”.
Despite Ontario’s increasingly bleak economic situation (the government has been compelled to make significant budget cuts, and the province’s credit rating has been downgraded by major ratings firms), both Ontario and Canada’s federal government are investigating Ford’s plan to spend $1.2 billion upgrading the Oakville, Ontario assembly plant. Ford wants government assistance for the plan, otherwise they say they won’t go ahead with the upgrades. McGunity credited the resilience of the auto industry during the recession because “…because his government has worked hand in hand with it.”
Meanwhile, the head of the CAW is already going on about their “national auto strategy” as the CAW prepares to enter into contract talks with the OEMs this summer. With plants running at well over capacity across Ontario, the CAW is in a good position to bargain with automakers. Any injection of government funds will happen some time down the road. The CAW negotiations will be the more interesting story in the short term.
Dalton McGuinty is a sociopathic liar who has shown time and again that he will say anything and waste any amount of money to win votes. If he’s says ‘investing’ all he really means is spending taxpayer dollars to get votes. Any financial upside is probably a fiction.
That is categorically false. Mr. McGuinty does not win votes; he buys them.
…with our own money, to boot.
with sales skills like that, i’m surprised he hasn’t pulled us out of our economic doldrums…
He doesn’t actually mean “auto industry”. He meant GM/Ford/Chrysler, the 3 foreign (to Canada) auto makers that need Canadians to bail out again and again.
@wsn….Sooooo, Honda, and Toyota didn’t get any Canadian/Ontario government help at all? They just set thier factories up here because they just like us eh?
Toyota did go on-record saying that Canadian workers trained up faster than their American equivalents.
So, you know…
Canada’s a special case. I don’t think many Americans regard the GM’s from Oshawa, the Chryslers from Bramford and the Fords from Oakwille as “imported” cars and likewise, I think that many Canadians are attached to “American” brands in ways that they are not with Japanese, Korean and German companies. Ford’s been building cars in Canada since 1904. The McLaughlin Buicks go back almost as far – there have been GM products built in Oshawa for almost a century. Chrysler also has longstanding Canadian operations. The Canadian plants of the Big 3’s subsidiaries have been a critical part of their North American operations for generations.
Dalton McGuinty is the dolt who borrows money from the Chinese in order to employ vast new numbers of government workers/loyal voters. Last year he transformed poor daycare providers into well-paid public school teachers. This year he’ll turn CAW beer swillers into “partners for industrial action.”
And he’ll turn the rest of us into paupers.
@CrapBox… I’m a retired former UAW and CAW member. I don’t pay dues anymore. Is it okay if I just drink beer now, or do I need to “swill” it ?
Swilling it enhances the flavour. Like decanting wine.
Very seldomly is it that I see a user name that so perfectly matches the message.
LOL! OTOH, sometimes one man’s interpretation of a situation hits mighty close to the truth and the way the ‘silent’ majority view it.
Of course, if someone is PRO-union anything that is said that is even remotely close to the way non-union tax payers see the world is offensive.
No trolling about it!
I imagine the comments to this thread are going to go off the rails… does TTAC enjoy trolling its readers, I wonder?
Since ol’ Dalty buddy used hockey references for this, I can’t help but be for it!
Was the use of a photo-op in front of a GO train (you know, Ontario’s public transit of choice/necessity for suburbanites) an accident, or are you being ironic?
Doesn’t matter…Dalton probably can’t tell a train from a car anyway. He’s wrong about everything else, so why not transportation.
Is that guy on the left with the safety glasses a beer swilling union goon or a member of the Canadian Secret Service (if there is such a thing) protecting the Premier?.