Juno News - December 04, 2025Ottawa’s $15B Stellantis gamble just BLEW UP
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Summary
The federal government handed a company $15 billion to grow its operation in Canada, only to see the company shift production to the U.S. This week, Algoma Steel laid off a third of its workforce in Sault Ste. Marie, Ontario.
Transcript
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Are Canadian taxpayers bankrolling the move by automaker Stellantis from Canada to the United
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States? The federal government handed Stellantis $15 billion of our money to grow its operation
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in Canada, only to see the company shift production to the United States. This post by
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conservative leader Pierre Polyev on X. Liberals gave $15 billion to Stellantis, which then
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announces it will invest almost exactly that same amount in the United States. Last
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October, the company announced its shifting production of the Jeep Compass to Illinois.
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Company CEO Antonio Foloso went to the White House touting his company's investments in
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It's a great day for us at Stellantis today because it's the day where we see
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cafe regulation reconciled with real customers' demand. That's why at Stellantis we decided to
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invest through Jeep, Ram, Dodge and Chrysler $13 billion in the next four years, increasing
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production by 50 percent, delivering to the market five new vehicles and creating 5,000
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additional jobs. That's because we believe in what you, Secretary Tafi, and all your team
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is doing in this country. President Trump, meantime, says the tariffs are doing exactly
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what they were intended to do. He also says the current free trade agreement with Canada
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and Mexico could soon be over. It expires in about a year and we'll either let it expire
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or we'll maybe work out another deal with Mexico and Canada. But look, Mexico and Canada have
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taken advantage of the United States, like just about every other country.
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Getting back to Stellantis, there was no jobs guarantee in the contract that handed the
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company $15 billion in tax money. The Conservatives say the same thing happened with Algoma when
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the Carney government gave the steelmaker a $400 million loan.
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The Prime Minister promised he would negotiate a win and have a deal by July 21st. Still no
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win, still no deal, still no elbows. And now a thousand workers at Algoma Steel are losing
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their jobs. We now learn that the Prime Minister gave $400 million to the corporate executives of
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that company without any job guarantees. How is it the Prime Minister could have been so incompetent?
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I quote the CEO of Algoma Steel that there would be an even darker day if this government hadn't acted.
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Exactly. That loan, that support, save two thirds of those jobs. That loan, that support gives Algoma
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a bridge to the future. A bridge to the future that we are building strong in this country and that they
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voted against. As long as the CEO is happy with the $400 million gift he got from the Prime Minister,
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that's all that matters to these Liberals. This week Algoma announced it's laying off a third of its
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workforce in Sault Ste. Murray, Ontario. Well, after first saying he would not quit as leader of the
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British Columbia Conservative Party, John Rustad is now doing just that. This comes after the party's
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board members voted to remove the leader. A statement released this week says the majority
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of caucus no longer has confidence in Rustad to continue on as leader. The party has named Trevor
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Holford MLA for Surrey White Rock as its interim leader. Joining me now is Franco Terrizano, the
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federal director of the Canadian Taxpayers Federation. Welcome to the show, Franco.
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All right. We've got corporate welfare run amok, really. I mean, if you look at
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what Stellantis got in terms of $15 billion and then beyond that, of course, Algoma and both of these
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companies announcing layoffs, huge layoffs. And then coupled with that, you've got Stellantis going
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to the White House and saying, isn't it great that we're building out a huge network, auto plants here
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in Illinois and Michigan? I mean, what's going on here? It looks to me like the Canadian taxpayers got
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fleeced to the point where we're actually bankrolling Stellantis' rollout in the United States.
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Well, yeah, you're right. Corporate welfare run amok, right? Look,
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you know what we need here in Canada? A no more business boondoggles law. That's what we need.
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Because it seems like it never ends, right? The bad news for taxpayers where you have the federal
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government, at least in the case with Stellantis, with Volkswagen, with Honda, taking money from
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Canadian taxpayers and then giving buckets of cash to the boardrooms of multinational corporations,
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right? It's corporate welfare, plain and simple. Stellantis, some of the estimates on how much
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taxpayer subsidies when you look at all levels of government. I've even heard the parliamentary
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budget officer say it could be like $18 billion, right? Algoma Steel. This year, the federal
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government announces them, what, up to $400 million? But that's not even all of it, right? In 2021,
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the federal government announces $420 million for Algoma Steel. This absolutely never ends. And look,
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like these politicians, these government bureaucrats, they don't know how to play investment banker,
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right? When they're trying to spend taxpayers money, you might as well just send them to the casino.
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Apparently, they don't even know how to read a contract because apparently the Minister of
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Industry, Melanie Jolie, did not. And why can't we have a built-in jobs guarantee with these contracts?
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I mean, before handing over any money and say, look, there has to be some kind of commitment here
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by your company to stick it out, no matter what, and keep people employed. But we didn't see that
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in either case, either in the Stellantis case or with Algoma. Well, no, I've even seen some media
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reporting that the federal government may have known about potential plans for layoffs at Algoma Steel,
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right? So it's almost worse than that. Look, we're seeing just a complete lack of due diligence from
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our politicians or government bureaucrats. Sometimes you have to wonder if they even know
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what's going on. But look, we shouldn't have corporate welfare at all, right? Because look,
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even if these jobs materialize and the federal government has a very poor track record of even
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keeping track of whether or not jobs materialize from corporate subsidy deals, but even if they were to
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materialize, that money that the federal government or provincial government gives to a business,
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that's not falling out of the sky, right? That's money that is taken out of the economy,
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out of the productive sector of the economy, and then handed to a select business or businesses,
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right? We should end corporate welfare and go on a massive tax cutting and red tape cutting campaign,
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right? Because look, at best, at best, it's a shell game, right? These new jobs aren't net new jobs,
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because that money is all being taken out of the economy in the first place.
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Yeah, absolutely. And these companies, you're right, have a terrible track record. I mean,
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how many times have you seen this? We've got this t-shirt over and over again, companies getting all
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sorts of money in the way of subsidies. You know, you always see the great photo op and leaders, of course,
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love those opportunities to trumpet what a great job they are doing in terms of creating jobs. And then,
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oof, you get what happened with Stellantis. I mean, don't they understand that, you know,
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the free market works in a way that incentivizes companies to go where the best deals are in terms
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of low taxation, low levels of regulation. We have high taxes and high regulation in Canada, so that's
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going to work against any companies that want to come here. All you have to do is just look at the sheer
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amount of outflow in investment that's happened in Canada since the Liberals got in power.
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I think billions of dollars are left in the country.
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I mean, even just look at natural resource sector, right? Since 2015, we've seen almost
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$670 billion of natural resource projects being stalled or cancelled. $670 billion in a decade?
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Like, come on, folks, to get back to corporate welfare for a second. Look,
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corporate welfare doesn't make sense, regardless of how you look at it, right? Look,
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first of all, why should taxpayers be subsidizing a profitable company? Well,
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we shouldn't be, right? But also, why should taxpayers be subsidizing a failing company?
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Either way, taxpayers' money should not be going for corporate welfare. But, you know, another point
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here, and I'm so glad you brought it up, Mark, is we are not competitive, right? And we are going to
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see, continue to see worse investment results. We're going to continue to see businesses being
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pushed south of the border if we continue to have an uncompetitive tax system. Look, the Tax Foundation,
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this international think tank, they rank tax competitiveness across other industrialized
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countries. Okay? On corporate tax competitiveness, Canada is 22nd out of 38 industrial countries.
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Awful. On income tax competitiveness, Canada is 27th out of 38. Again, awful. Mark, on both of those
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measures, we are behind the United States. Where do you think the money's going to go?
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To the United States. And that's where it is going. Because of course, they're also pulling
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back, way back on the so-called green incentives, you know, the EV mandates. They're all going out
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the window of the United States. So all of a sudden, America has become strong magnet for investment.
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And so, it's an easy choice to make. If you're in Canada, you're struggling because of government
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regulation. You can't get things done. It takes forever to get decisions made. And of course,
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they pile on these environmental measures that make your products more costly. You know,
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it doesn't have to be a case where, you know, you have to be a genius to look south of the border and
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go, you know, all these states, a lot of these states have much better environments where I can
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make real money. Why do I have to stay here any longer? And rather than making the changes that need
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to be made, the liberals are doing what? They're just saying, no, let's throw more money at companies
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orders that they come here. It's crazy. Or higher taxes, right? Look, the perfect
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proof point of this is Carney's industrial carbon tax, right? Carney's hidden carbon tax on Canadian
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businesses like steel companies, oil and gas companies, fertilizer plants, among others.
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Well, like we've already heard Carney talk about, remember in this agreement with Alberta,
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right? The memorandum of understanding. After signing that agreement with the premier Daniel
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Smith, he holds his own press conference and he brags about increasing his industrial carbon tax
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by more than six times, right? He bragged to reporters about that. Well, guess who doesn't
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impose an industrial carbon tax? The US government, right? So if you're this entrepreneur, if you're this
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investor, well, where do you want to increase production and where do you want to cut production?
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In the place that is hammering you with carbon taxes or just south of the border where they're
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saying, come on in, right? Set up shop here. We're not going to hammer you with carbon taxes,
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right? That's a perfect case proof. Canada, our federal government continues to shove carbon taxes
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down our throats while the US government, regardless of who's in the White House,
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aren't imposing carbon taxes. Yeah. And they love it, but it's an easy way for us to blame Trump,
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blame the tariffs, but there are obviously other factors involved. The outflow of money
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has been going on for years now, even before the tariffs came into place. And so now we have the
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Carney government getting roasted in the House of Commons and to the point where they're being
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humiliated for handing out so much money to these companies and getting so little return. But I don't
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think that they could change because ideologically, these people are fixated. You know, they don't like
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the idea of companies coming over here simply because they like the economic environment in the
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country because they can't really take credit for it. And so that's the real problem. They only like,
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they only like economic growth to happen. It seems when they can come out and say, look at us,
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you know, we brought this company over, we gave them X number of dollars and they're going to set up
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shop here. You know, if they can't take credit for something, they don't want it to happen or don't
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care. You know, I think that's partially the problem here. What do you think? Oh, it's a huge
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problem. Yeah. I mean, hey, they love the press conferences. Hey, oh, gather around, bring your cameras.
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We're going to take out these big scissors and cut that big red ribbon, right? Like that's what they
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want. But again, folks, remember, at best, this is a shell game. And it's really worse than that
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because these politicians, these bureaucrats, when they're spending your money, not their own,
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they don't have the skin in the game, right? They are thinking about the political incentives,
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not the economic incentives. Now, let me break down just how much this corporate welfare is costing
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the average Canadian. Okay. Because you hear these big numbers, right? You hear that federal
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corporate welfare alone every year costs taxpayers $11 billion. What does that mean?
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It means the government is taking $1,100 from your family of four every year and giving your money
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to businesses, right? $1,100 per year taken from a Canadian family of four given to businesses,
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right? $1,100, that would go a long way. And yet politicians are taking that money from you
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and handing it over to select businesses. Look, we need to have an environment where businesses can
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succeed, right? Based on their own merit and their ability to meet consumer demand.
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But that means cutting taxes, cutting red tape, cutting the out of control bureaucracy,
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Absolutely. Franco Terrazano, thank you so much for coming on the show today.
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How do people support your organization, the Canadian Taxpayers Federation?
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Well, thank you, Mark. I'm fired up. But you can support us. You can follow us. Just head over to
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taxpayer.com. Taxpayer.com. That's the best place that you can check out the CTF.
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Thank you so much for coming on the show. We appreciate it.
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Joining me now is Wyatt Claypool. He is a worker with the 1BC Caucus. Welcome, Wyatt.
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Well, thanks for having me on, Mark. All right. Your reaction to a decision by John
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Rustad to call it quits after saying that he would not?
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Oh, I feel like I've aged like 10 years since this whole controversy started. Maybe like five
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months ago. It might have even been before that. I think obviously John was going to resign at some
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point. I actually thought he might try and stick it out and sue the board for saying that he was
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professionally incapacitated because technically they didn't have the authority to do that. But
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eventually you have, you know, too many arrows in your butt from your own people. And then you have
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to just kind of call it quits or, you know, what really is this? It was almost kind of turning into a
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Joe Biden situation where everyone knows he has to go. He probably knows he has to go, but he wants to
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leave on a more triumphant note of proving himself correct. But there was just no more capacity
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for him to actually buy back any of the things that he had done.
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I mean, he hung on as long as he possibly could. I thought it was kind of funny that in the letter
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that was released to the public that the party thanked him for his services. I mean, they couldn't
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wait to get rid of the guy. Maybe you could fill us in. Exactly what did he do that angered the party?
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The thing is that this is where different people with different agendas will kind of draw the line of
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where it started going wrong at different times. And this is where I think some people
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can be dishonest about it. A lot of the problems started effectively around the election.
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Those who were appointed as candidates and those who were rejected or those who
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were even given nominations for the BC Conservative Party then had them taken away and given to
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somebody else, oftentimes an old BC Liberal MLA or somebody who at least more aligned with that party.
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So things were never probably going to coherently hold together from the start because there was
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people from the old establishment mixed in with the new establishment of, you know, the more
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populist, more right wing kind of elements. And the old guard didn't seem to like that very much.
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And that's what led to the AGM in March of 2025, where the party just objectively rigged the whole
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thing in order to install, ironically, the board that eventually got rid of John Rustad himself,
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you know, revoking people's memberships before it started so that they couldn't show up and vote,
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bussing people in, in order to vote for John Slate and vote through his constitution,
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the constitution that made it impossible in theory to get rid of him, that has led us up to this point.
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So as on a personal note, because I was with the BC Conservatives back then, that's where I would have
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drawn the line that they just ended up creating a party that wasn't properly balanced. It was kind
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of like when the PC Party and the Wild Rose Party originally merged back in 2019 and or 2018, 2017,
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emerged before the election. But you know, I mean, there was just too much of a PC Party influence.
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There's a lot of Wild Rose people around. The issue was, is that they tended to be more in
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backbench positions where the old PC types were at the front. That's still, even to this day,
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now with Trevor Halford as the interim BC Conservative leader, is that you have a heavy slant towards the
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BC Liberal, BC United side of the party in executive positions, in leadership positions. And so I think
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John Rustad was always more of a symptom of a party that didn't know what, know what it wanted to be.
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And I, I'm not sure if they know what they want to be yet. And I think that's what the leadership
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race will end up taking care of. So where did they go from here? I mean,
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the party came really close to winning the last election. And so with him gone, where does it go from
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here? It depends again, what the members want to do. The thing is that the fundraising, and again,
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this is actually where a lot of people say, it started going wrong was when the fundraising
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started drying up. It always, always be mistrustful of someone who only thought things were bad when
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the money started drying up. And it wasn't because of unprincipled things happening. But now we are
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probably going to be seeing a leadership race, where unfortunately, just based on who is experienced
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enough, who has enough clout to run, I think that you're gonna find that the sort of people running
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are also going to be more on the left side of the party, because the new right populist section
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of the BC conservatives tend to be the new people. You know, it's like on a federal level,
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Pierre Polyev is the leader, and he's very likely to remain leader at the national convention in
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January. But hypothetically, if he dropped out, and they had a new leadership race, I like Jamil
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Giovanni, but he is still extremely new. And he probably couldn't run for leader with so many
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people who still don't know who he is, you know, a lot of people like him, including myself,
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but he would have to go build up the clout. That's the same problem for many of the more conservative
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MLAs in the current party, like, you know, Harmon Bangu, or Brian Tepper, or, you know, Heather Maas,
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or, you know, someone like Macklin McCall. Those four people, if any of them hypothetically ran,
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they would probably hit the barrier where not that many people outside their own regions know about them.
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Whereas the people who are well known are your Peter Milibars, it's going to be Eleanor Sturko,
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it's going to be Bruce Bandman, it's going to be the more liberal section of the party that has the
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name recognition to potentially put together a campaign that can win.
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David Eby I'm wondering if David Eby, the premier, might try to engineer a snap election now,
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catching the conservatives off guard between leaders. Is that a possibility? And how will voters
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react now, considering what just happened to the party? Those who voted for the conservatives of
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the past? I mean, is that support still there to the same degree as it was during the election?
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David Eby Here's the problem for David Eby. One, I actually just don't think from having been in
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BC politics now for not that long, but long enough to kind of size up David Eby. I don't think he has
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the killer instinct to actually call a snap election. If he did, we wouldn't have had a fall 2024
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provincial election. We would have had a spring 2024 provincial election when the conservatives
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and BC United were still pretty divided up in the polls, like they were almost 50-50 between each
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other. And so if he actually had political instinct, he would have called that election earlier. He said
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at a press conference yesterday that British Columbians do not want an election and he's not thinking about
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having one. Plus, he currently has a majority and he's been, frankly, not doing a great job,
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but that shouldn't surprise anybody who has seen the NDP operate. There's a lot of broken promises
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from them there. We have sawmill closures, ER closures. The education system is not very popular
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with voters right now. So they would have to be scared that even if they called a snap election right now,
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how many, how much, how many people in the BC NDP base would even bother showing up at this point
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when they didn't do the grocery, the $1,000 grocery rebate, they said they were, all the problems are
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getting worse. And all they seem to be able to do is blame Trump more with an ascendant green party to
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their left. That's being run by for far more aggressive leader right now, Emily Lohan, when in
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comparison to their leader in the last two elections, Sonia, first to know. There's also the nutrient
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issue as well, which turned out to be a major fiasco for Eby and, you know, the loss of that terminal
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would have been a great economic boost to the province. And of course, there's the ongoing
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fractious relationship with Alberta over the issue around a pipeline. There's plenty going on for Eby,
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so I can see why he would not want to have an election right now, unless as to your point,
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maybe he develops a killer instinct. What's going to happen to the future of the conservative
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movement in British Columbia? Because people look at BC as being this kind of different province. I
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mean, most provinces have their liberal party and their PC party or something resembling a conservative
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party. BC has a very fractured conservative movement. Of course, you would know that being with
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that particular part of BC won. What's the future look like? I mean, will it consolidate
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behind a conservative and, you know, get ready for the next election? Or will it continue to kind of
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I probably couldn't exactly comment on if, like, you're going to have a right-wing movement that's
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all going to consolidate together. The problem right now is, again, many of the people in charge of the
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BC Conservative Party, for instance, are absolutely happy when Rustad kicked out Dallas Brody and when
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people like Tara Armstrong and Jordan Keeley left. They're fine with that. They didn't like them.
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They don't want to be controversial. I have MLAs texting me, because I know a lot of them,
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and they're already very wary that the party is moving in a more BC liberal direction once again,
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because, well, the people who ousted Rustad were actually made up of the people who thought he was
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too right-wing and that it was a mistake for him to let in Dallas Brody in the first place and whatnot,
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who, of course, right now is the one BC leader. The thing is that for BC, the thing I think that
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people can rest easy on is that it's actually probably becoming a less left-wing province,
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because we've hit the critical mass point where all the policies have so clearly failed that many of
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the, yeah, you know, Victoria and downtown Vancouver will remain NDP, and you'll get some of these
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pockmarked green areas around. The problem, though, is that there's too many blue-collar,
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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.
00:25:04.020
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
00:25:21.620
Great work. Thanks for coming on the show, Wyatt.
00:25:25.860
And that is it for this edition. Appreciate you tuning in, my friends. Let's do it again