Juno News - Ottawa’s $15B Stellantis gamble just BLEW UP

00:00:00.000 Are Canadian taxpayers bankrolling the move by automaker Stellantis from Canada to the United

00:00:11.300 States? The federal government handed Stellantis $15 billion of our money to grow its operation

00:00:17.100 in Canada, only to see the company shift production to the United States. This post by

00:00:22.520 conservative leader Pierre Polyev on X. Liberals gave $15 billion to Stellantis, which then

00:00:29.040 announces it will invest almost exactly that same amount in the United States. Last

00:00:36.220 October, the company announced its shifting production of the Jeep Compass to Illinois.

00:00:42.280 Company CEO Antonio Foloso went to the White House touting his company's investments in

00:00:47.440 the United States.

00:00:48.440 It's a great day for us at Stellantis today because it's the day where we see

00:00:53.180 cafe regulation reconciled with real customers' demand. That's why at Stellantis we decided to

00:00:59.860 invest through Jeep, Ram, Dodge and Chrysler $13 billion in the next four years, increasing

00:01:07.080 production by 50 percent, delivering to the market five new vehicles and creating 5,000

00:01:13.360 additional jobs. That's because we believe in what you, Secretary Tafi, and all your team

00:01:18.960 is doing in this country. President Trump, meantime, says the tariffs are doing exactly

00:01:23.520 what they were intended to do. He also says the current free trade agreement with Canada

00:01:28.460 and Mexico could soon be over. It expires in about a year and we'll either let it expire

00:01:34.820 or we'll maybe work out another deal with Mexico and Canada. But look, Mexico and Canada have

00:01:42.140 taken advantage of the United States, like just about every other country.

00:01:45.960 Getting back to Stellantis, there was no jobs guarantee in the contract that handed the

00:01:50.380 company $15 billion in tax money. The Conservatives say the same thing happened with Algoma when

00:01:57.240 the Carney government gave the steelmaker a $400 million loan.

00:02:01.740 The Prime Minister promised he would negotiate a win and have a deal by July 21st. Still no

00:02:05.600 win, still no deal, still no elbows. And now a thousand workers at Algoma Steel are losing

00:02:10.200 their jobs. We now learn that the Prime Minister gave $400 million to the corporate executives of

00:02:14.740 that company without any job guarantees. How is it the Prime Minister could have been so incompetent?

00:02:21.460 I quote the CEO of Algoma Steel that there would be an even darker day if this government hadn't acted.

00:02:28.180 Exactly. That loan, that support, save two thirds of those jobs. That loan, that support gives Algoma

00:02:34.900 a bridge to the future. A bridge to the future that we are building strong in this country and that they

00:02:40.260 voted against. As long as the CEO is happy with the $400 million gift he got from the Prime Minister,

00:02:47.780 that's all that matters to these Liberals. This week Algoma announced it's laying off a third of its

00:02:53.220 workforce in Sault Ste. Murray, Ontario. Well, after first saying he would not quit as leader of the

00:02:59.140 British Columbia Conservative Party, John Rustad is now doing just that. This comes after the party's

00:03:05.700 board members voted to remove the leader. A statement released this week says the majority

00:03:11.620 of caucus no longer has confidence in Rustad to continue on as leader. The party has named Trevor

00:03:18.100 Holford MLA for Surrey White Rock as its interim leader. Joining me now is Franco Terrizano, the

00:03:24.980 federal director of the Canadian Taxpayers Federation. Welcome to the show, Franco.

00:03:29.940 Hey, thanks for having me on, Mark.

00:03:32.340 All right. We've got corporate welfare run amok, really. I mean, if you look at

00:03:36.900 what Stellantis got in terms of $15 billion and then beyond that, of course, Algoma and both of these

00:03:43.780 companies announcing layoffs, huge layoffs. And then coupled with that, you've got Stellantis going

00:03:49.300 to the White House and saying, isn't it great that we're building out a huge network, auto plants here

00:03:56.340 in Illinois and Michigan? I mean, what's going on here? It looks to me like the Canadian taxpayers got

00:04:01.940 fleeced to the point where we're actually bankrolling Stellantis' rollout in the United States.

00:04:08.260 Well, yeah, you're right. Corporate welfare run amok, right? Look,

00:04:13.460 you know what we need here in Canada? A no more business boondoggles law. That's what we need.

00:04:18.820 Because it seems like it never ends, right? The bad news for taxpayers where you have the federal

00:04:23.860 government, at least in the case with Stellantis, with Volkswagen, with Honda, taking money from

00:04:30.020 Canadian taxpayers and then giving buckets of cash to the boardrooms of multinational corporations,

00:04:36.180 right? It's corporate welfare, plain and simple. Stellantis, some of the estimates on how much

00:04:42.180 taxpayer subsidies when you look at all levels of government. I've even heard the parliamentary

00:04:46.340 budget officer say it could be like $18 billion, right? Algoma Steel. This year, the federal

00:04:52.420 government announces them, what, up to $400 million? But that's not even all of it, right? In 2021,

00:04:59.300 the federal government announces $420 million for Algoma Steel. This absolutely never ends. And look,

00:05:07.300 like these politicians, these government bureaucrats, they don't know how to play investment banker,

00:05:12.980 right? When they're trying to spend taxpayers money, you might as well just send them to the casino.

00:05:18.740 Apparently, they don't even know how to read a contract because apparently the Minister of

00:05:24.820 Industry, Melanie Jolie, did not. And why can't we have a built-in jobs guarantee with these contracts?

00:05:32.820 I mean, before handing over any money and say, look, there has to be some kind of commitment here

00:05:37.940 by your company to stick it out, no matter what, and keep people employed. But we didn't see that

00:05:42.820 in either case, either in the Stellantis case or with Algoma. Well, no, I've even seen some media

00:05:50.260 reporting that the federal government may have known about potential plans for layoffs at Algoma Steel,

00:05:57.060 right? So it's almost worse than that. Look, we're seeing just a complete lack of due diligence from

00:06:03.700 our politicians or government bureaucrats. Sometimes you have to wonder if they even know

00:06:08.100 what's going on. But look, we shouldn't have corporate welfare at all, right? Because look,

00:06:13.700 even if these jobs materialize and the federal government has a very poor track record of even

00:06:19.940 keeping track of whether or not jobs materialize from corporate subsidy deals, but even if they were to

00:06:25.700 materialize, that money that the federal government or provincial government gives to a business,

00:06:30.980 that's not falling out of the sky, right? That's money that is taken out of the economy,

00:06:35.540 out of the productive sector of the economy, and then handed to a select business or businesses,

00:06:42.340 right? We should end corporate welfare and go on a massive tax cutting and red tape cutting campaign,

00:06:48.900 right? Because look, at best, at best, it's a shell game, right? These new jobs aren't net new jobs,

00:06:55.540 because that money is all being taken out of the economy in the first place.

00:06:58.580 Yeah, absolutely. And these companies, you're right, have a terrible track record. I mean,

00:07:04.900 how many times have you seen this? We've got this t-shirt over and over again, companies getting all

00:07:09.700 sorts of money in the way of subsidies. You know, you always see the great photo op and leaders, of course,

00:07:16.420 love those opportunities to trumpet what a great job they are doing in terms of creating jobs. And then,

00:07:21.780 oof, you get what happened with Stellantis. I mean, don't they understand that, you know,

00:07:26.260 the free market works in a way that incentivizes companies to go where the best deals are in terms

00:07:33.140 of low taxation, low levels of regulation. We have high taxes and high regulation in Canada, so that's

00:07:40.180 going to work against any companies that want to come here. All you have to do is just look at the sheer

00:07:45.380 amount of outflow in investment that's happened in Canada since the Liberals got in power.

00:07:51.380 I think billions of dollars are left in the country.

00:07:54.820 I mean, even just look at natural resource sector, right? Since 2015, we've seen almost

00:08:00.260 $670 billion of natural resource projects being stalled or cancelled. $670 billion in a decade?

00:08:09.220 Like, come on, folks, to get back to corporate welfare for a second. Look,

00:08:12.820 corporate welfare doesn't make sense, regardless of how you look at it, right? Look,

00:08:18.260 first of all, why should taxpayers be subsidizing a profitable company? Well,

00:08:23.940 we shouldn't be, right? But also, why should taxpayers be subsidizing a failing company?

00:08:30.020 Either way, taxpayers' money should not be going for corporate welfare. But, you know, another point

00:08:35.860 here, and I'm so glad you brought it up, Mark, is we are not competitive, right? And we are going to

00:08:41.140 see, continue to see worse investment results. We're going to continue to see businesses being

00:08:46.980 pushed south of the border if we continue to have an uncompetitive tax system. Look, the Tax Foundation,

00:08:53.060 this international think tank, they rank tax competitiveness across other industrialized

00:08:58.100 countries. Okay? On corporate tax competitiveness, Canada is 22nd out of 38 industrial countries.

00:09:06.500 Awful. On income tax competitiveness, Canada is 27th out of 38. Again, awful. Mark, on both of those

00:09:15.380 measures, we are behind the United States. Where do you think the money's going to go?

00:09:20.020 To the United States. And that's where it is going. Because of course, they're also pulling

00:09:24.980 back, way back on the so-called green incentives, you know, the EV mandates. They're all going out

00:09:31.540 the window of the United States. So all of a sudden, America has become strong magnet for investment.

00:09:37.780 And so, it's an easy choice to make. If you're in Canada, you're struggling because of government

00:09:43.620 regulation. You can't get things done. It takes forever to get decisions made. And of course,

00:09:49.540 they pile on these environmental measures that make your products more costly. You know,

00:09:56.740 it doesn't have to be a case where, you know, you have to be a genius to look south of the border and

00:10:02.180 go, you know, all these states, a lot of these states have much better environments where I can

00:10:06.500 make real money. Why do I have to stay here any longer? And rather than making the changes that need

00:10:12.580 to be made, the liberals are doing what? They're just saying, no, let's throw more money at companies

00:10:18.100 orders that they come here. It's crazy. Or higher taxes, right? Look, the perfect

00:10:24.900 proof point of this is Carney's industrial carbon tax, right? Carney's hidden carbon tax on Canadian

00:10:31.140 businesses like steel companies, oil and gas companies, fertilizer plants, among others.

00:10:36.260 Well, like we've already heard Carney talk about, remember in this agreement with Alberta,

00:10:41.300 right? The memorandum of understanding. After signing that agreement with the premier Daniel

00:10:45.460 Smith, he holds his own press conference and he brags about increasing his industrial carbon tax

00:10:51.060 by more than six times, right? He bragged to reporters about that. Well, guess who doesn't

00:10:56.500 impose an industrial carbon tax? The US government, right? So if you're this entrepreneur, if you're this

00:11:03.140 investor, well, where do you want to increase production and where do you want to cut production?

00:11:08.580 In the place that is hammering you with carbon taxes or just south of the border where they're

00:11:13.380 saying, come on in, right? Set up shop here. We're not going to hammer you with carbon taxes,

00:11:18.180 right? That's a perfect case proof. Canada, our federal government continues to shove carbon taxes

00:11:24.260 down our throats while the US government, regardless of who's in the White House,

00:11:29.300 aren't imposing carbon taxes. Yeah. And they love it, but it's an easy way for us to blame Trump,

00:11:35.380 blame the tariffs, but there are obviously other factors involved. The outflow of money

00:11:41.140 has been going on for years now, even before the tariffs came into place. And so now we have the

00:11:47.460 Carney government getting roasted in the House of Commons and to the point where they're being

00:11:53.460 humiliated for handing out so much money to these companies and getting so little return. But I don't

00:12:00.100 think that they could change because ideologically, these people are fixated. You know, they don't like

00:12:05.380 the idea of companies coming over here simply because they like the economic environment in the

00:12:12.260 country because they can't really take credit for it. And so that's the real problem. They only like,

00:12:17.860 they only like economic growth to happen. It seems when they can come out and say, look at us,

00:12:24.180 you know, we brought this company over, we gave them X number of dollars and they're going to set up

00:12:28.500 shop here. You know, if they can't take credit for something, they don't want it to happen or don't

00:12:33.380 care. You know, I think that's partially the problem here. What do you think? Oh, it's a huge

00:12:38.580 problem. Yeah. I mean, hey, they love the press conferences. Hey, oh, gather around, bring your cameras.

00:12:44.260 We're going to take out these big scissors and cut that big red ribbon, right? Like that's what they 0.98

00:12:49.380 want. But again, folks, remember, at best, this is a shell game. And it's really worse than that

00:12:53.380 because these politicians, these bureaucrats, when they're spending your money, not their own,

00:12:57.780 they don't have the skin in the game, right? They are thinking about the political incentives,

00:13:02.900 not the economic incentives. Now, let me break down just how much this corporate welfare is costing

00:13:08.580 the average Canadian. Okay. Because you hear these big numbers, right? You hear that federal

00:13:13.220 corporate welfare alone every year costs taxpayers $11 billion. What does that mean?

00:13:19.300 It means the government is taking $1,100 from your family of four every year and giving your money

00:13:27.860 to businesses, right? $1,100 per year taken from a Canadian family of four given to businesses,

00:13:36.340 right? $1,100, that would go a long way. And yet politicians are taking that money from you

00:13:41.540 and handing it over to select businesses. Look, we need to have an environment where businesses can

00:13:46.740 succeed, right? Based on their own merit and their ability to meet consumer demand.

00:13:51.700 But that means cutting taxes, cutting red tape, cutting the out of control bureaucracy,

00:13:57.140 and cutting, eliminating corporate welfare. 0.89

00:14:00.260 Absolutely. Franco Terrazano, thank you so much for coming on the show today.

00:14:04.980 How do people support your organization, the Canadian Taxpayers Federation?

00:14:10.180 Well, thank you, Mark. I'm fired up. But you can support us. You can follow us. Just head over to

00:14:15.540 taxpayer.com. Taxpayer.com. That's the best place that you can check out the CTF.

00:14:21.140 Thank you so much for coming on the show. We appreciate it.

00:14:23.380 Thanks, Mark.

00:14:24.980 Joining me now is Wyatt Claypool. He is a worker with the 1BC Caucus. Welcome, Wyatt.

00:14:32.500 Well, thanks for having me on, Mark. All right. Your reaction to a decision by John

00:14:37.780 Rustad to call it quits after saying that he would not?

00:14:41.300 Oh, I feel like I've aged like 10 years since this whole controversy started. Maybe like five

00:14:47.140 months ago. It might have even been before that. I think obviously John was going to resign at some

00:14:53.620 point. I actually thought he might try and stick it out and sue the board for saying that he was

00:14:58.340 professionally incapacitated because technically they didn't have the authority to do that. But

00:15:03.220 eventually you have, you know, too many arrows in your butt from your own people. And then you have 0.99

00:15:08.340 to just kind of call it quits or, you know, what really is this? It was almost kind of turning into a

00:15:13.060 Joe Biden situation where everyone knows he has to go. He probably knows he has to go, but he wants to

00:15:20.260 leave on a more triumphant note of proving himself correct. But there was just no more capacity

00:15:25.540 for him to actually buy back any of the things that he had done.

00:15:28.820 I mean, he hung on as long as he possibly could. I thought it was kind of funny that in the letter

00:15:34.740 that was released to the public that the party thanked him for his services. I mean, they couldn't

00:15:39.460 wait to get rid of the guy. Maybe you could fill us in. Exactly what did he do that angered the party?

00:15:46.020 The thing is that this is where different people with different agendas will kind of draw the line of

00:15:54.100 where it started going wrong at different times. And this is where I think some people

00:15:59.300 can be dishonest about it. A lot of the problems started effectively around the election.

00:16:05.220 Those who were appointed as candidates and those who were rejected or those who

00:16:09.460 were even given nominations for the BC Conservative Party then had them taken away and given to

00:16:14.500 somebody else, oftentimes an old BC Liberal MLA or somebody who at least more aligned with that party.

00:16:21.540 So things were never probably going to coherently hold together from the start because there was

00:16:27.220 people from the old establishment mixed in with the new establishment of, you know, the more

00:16:33.460 populist, more right wing kind of elements. And the old guard didn't seem to like that very much.

00:16:39.940 And that's what led to the AGM in March of 2025, where the party just objectively rigged the whole

00:16:47.060 thing in order to install, ironically, the board that eventually got rid of John Rustad himself,

00:16:52.660 you know, revoking people's memberships before it started so that they couldn't show up and vote,

00:16:57.060 bussing people in, in order to vote for John Slate and vote through his constitution,

00:17:01.300 the constitution that made it impossible in theory to get rid of him, that has led us up to this point.

00:17:06.740 So as on a personal note, because I was with the BC Conservatives back then, that's where I would have

00:17:12.020 drawn the line that they just ended up creating a party that wasn't properly balanced. It was kind

00:17:17.860 of like when the PC Party and the Wild Rose Party originally merged back in 2019 and or 2018, 2017,

00:17:26.420 emerged before the election. But you know, I mean, there was just too much of a PC Party influence.

00:17:31.460 There's a lot of Wild Rose people around. The issue was, is that they tended to be more in

00:17:36.580 backbench positions where the old PC types were at the front. That's still, even to this day,

00:17:42.740 now with Trevor Halford as the interim BC Conservative leader, is that you have a heavy slant towards the

00:17:51.460 BC Liberal, BC United side of the party in executive positions, in leadership positions. And so I think

00:17:59.460 John Rustad was always more of a symptom of a party that didn't know what, know what it wanted to be.

00:18:04.820 And I, I'm not sure if they know what they want to be yet. And I think that's what the leadership

00:18:08.260 race will end up taking care of. So where did they go from here? I mean, 1.00

00:18:12.660 the party came really close to winning the last election. And so with him gone, where does it go from

00:18:20.580 here? It depends again, what the members want to do. The thing is that the fundraising, and again,

00:18:26.900 this is actually where a lot of people say, it started going wrong was when the fundraising

00:18:31.060 started drying up. It always, always be mistrustful of someone who only thought things were bad when

00:18:36.020 the money started drying up. And it wasn't because of unprincipled things happening. But now we are

00:18:40.900 probably going to be seeing a leadership race, where unfortunately, just based on who is experienced

00:18:47.460 enough, who has enough clout to run, I think that you're gonna find that the sort of people running

00:18:53.460 are also going to be more on the left side of the party, because the new right populist section

00:18:59.540 of the BC conservatives tend to be the new people. You know, it's like on a federal level,

00:19:04.340 Pierre Polyev is the leader, and he's very likely to remain leader at the national convention in

00:19:08.660 January. But hypothetically, if he dropped out, and they had a new leadership race, I like Jamil

00:19:14.180 Giovanni, but he is still extremely new. And he probably couldn't run for leader with so many

00:19:18.740 people who still don't know who he is, you know, a lot of people like him, including myself,

00:19:22.260 but he would have to go build up the clout. That's the same problem for many of the more conservative

00:19:27.220 MLAs in the current party, like, you know, Harmon Bangu, or Brian Tepper, or, you know, Heather Maas,

00:19:34.340 or, you know, someone like Macklin McCall. Those four people, if any of them hypothetically ran,

00:19:39.940 they would probably hit the barrier where not that many people outside their own regions know about them.

00:19:44.500 Whereas the people who are well known are your Peter Milibars, it's going to be Eleanor Sturko,

00:19:49.940 it's going to be Bruce Bandman, it's going to be the more liberal section of the party that has the

00:19:54.660 name recognition to potentially put together a campaign that can win.

00:19:58.100 David Eby I'm wondering if David Eby, the premier, might try to engineer a snap election now,

00:20:06.740 catching the conservatives off guard between leaders. Is that a possibility? And how will voters

00:20:14.420 react now, considering what just happened to the party? Those who voted for the conservatives of

00:20:20.180 the past? I mean, is that support still there to the same degree as it was during the election?

00:20:24.980 David Eby Here's the problem for David Eby. One, I actually just don't think from having been in

00:20:30.900 BC politics now for not that long, but long enough to kind of size up David Eby. I don't think he has

00:20:36.900 the killer instinct to actually call a snap election. If he did, we wouldn't have had a fall 2024

00:20:42.740 provincial election. We would have had a spring 2024 provincial election when the conservatives

00:20:48.260 and BC United were still pretty divided up in the polls, like they were almost 50-50 between each

00:20:54.100 other. And so if he actually had political instinct, he would have called that election earlier. He said

00:21:00.740 at a press conference yesterday that British Columbians do not want an election and he's not thinking about

00:21:05.860 having one. Plus, he currently has a majority and he's been, frankly, not doing a great job,

00:21:13.140 but that shouldn't surprise anybody who has seen the NDP operate. There's a lot of broken promises

00:21:19.780 from them there. We have sawmill closures, ER closures. The education system is not very popular

00:21:26.660 with voters right now. So they would have to be scared that even if they called a snap election right now,

00:21:32.580 how many, how much, how many people in the BC NDP base would even bother showing up at this point

00:21:38.180 when they didn't do the grocery, the $1,000 grocery rebate, they said they were, all the problems are

00:21:43.380 getting worse. And all they seem to be able to do is blame Trump more with an ascendant green party to

00:21:49.060 their left. That's being run by for far more aggressive leader right now, Emily Lohan, when in 0.99

00:21:54.740 comparison to their leader in the last two elections, Sonia, first to know. There's also the nutrient

00:22:01.220 issue as well, which turned out to be a major fiasco for Eby and, you know, the loss of that terminal

00:22:08.660 would have been a great economic boost to the province. And of course, there's the ongoing

00:22:14.260 fractious relationship with Alberta over the issue around a pipeline. There's plenty going on for Eby,

00:22:21.380 so I can see why he would not want to have an election right now, unless as to your point,

00:22:26.660 maybe he develops a killer instinct. What's going to happen to the future of the conservative

00:22:30.580 movement in British Columbia? Because people look at BC as being this kind of different province. I

00:22:37.380 mean, most provinces have their liberal party and their PC party or something resembling a conservative

00:22:43.940 party. BC has a very fractured conservative movement. Of course, you would know that being with

00:22:50.100 that particular part of BC won. What's the future look like? I mean, will it consolidate

00:22:56.660 behind a conservative and, you know, get ready for the next election? Or will it continue to kind of

00:23:03.140 be fractured the way it is?

00:23:04.820 I probably couldn't exactly comment on if, like, you're going to have a right-wing movement that's

00:23:10.580 all going to consolidate together. The problem right now is, again, many of the people in charge of the

00:23:15.620 BC Conservative Party, for instance, are absolutely happy when Rustad kicked out Dallas Brody and when

00:23:22.180 people like Tara Armstrong and Jordan Keeley left. They're fine with that. They didn't like them.

00:23:26.580 They don't want to be controversial. I have MLAs texting me, because I know a lot of them,

00:23:32.660 and they're already very wary that the party is moving in a more BC liberal direction once again,

00:23:38.980 because, well, the people who ousted Rustad were actually made up of the people who thought he was

00:23:44.260 too right-wing and that it was a mistake for him to let in Dallas Brody in the first place and whatnot,

00:23:49.300 who, of course, right now is the one BC leader. The thing is that for BC, the thing I think that

00:23:54.980 people can rest easy on is that it's actually probably becoming a less left-wing province,

00:23:59.940 because we've hit the critical mass point where all the policies have so clearly failed that many of

00:24:07.060 the, yeah, you know, Victoria and downtown Vancouver will remain NDP, and you'll get some of these

00:24:12.820 pockmarked green areas around. The problem, though, is that there's too many blue-collar,

00:24:19.060 former NDP trade union voters who just can't stand it anymore. You can't be a sawmill worker and think

00:24:24.820 you can cast another ballot for the NDP. If you live in any of the deprived parts of the province,

00:24:30.020 which is becoming a majority of them, you really can't vote NDP anymore. And then the green,

00:24:35.060 the NDP have the problem of they've become such a radical party, they've almost kind of

00:24:40.180 tacitly endorsed the greens because of what the NDP is doing is great. Why not put it on steroids

00:24:45.620 with the green party? And so I think next election, you're going to see the greens end up ripping away

00:24:51.620 some more seats from the NDP or end up splitting their vote. Whereas I think there's going to be

00:24:56.100 more vote than ever for both the Conservatives and the 1BC party to share.

00:25:00.420 Why Claypool? How do people find you online?

00:25:04.020 Well, they can just look up my YouTube channel, The National Telegraph, and I would be amiss to not

00:25:10.500 tell people that they should go check out the 1BC caucus documentary, Making a Killing,

00:25:15.140 that goes over the Kamloops grave hoax and the reconciliation industry that currently controls

00:25:20.980 the province.

00:25:21.620 Great work. Thanks for coming on the show, Wyatt.

00:25:24.900 Absolutely. Thanks for having me.

00:25:25.860 And that is it for this edition. Appreciate you tuning in, my friends. Let's do it again

00:25:31.540 real soon, shall we? Bye-bye for now.

Juno News - December 04, 2025

Ottawa’s $15B Stellantis gamble just BLEW UP

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