Stellantis says it is willing to pay back federal funds it received to retool the Brampton, Ont., auto plant it sold this week to Roshel, a Canadian maker of armoured vehicles.
“We recognize that Canadians expect accountability for public funding and that is why Stellantis has offered to voluntarily return the government support received for Brampton Assembly’s original retooling plan,” Stellantis said in an emailed statement.
Stellantis, which owns Jeep and Chrysler, announced the sale of the idled plant northwest of Toronto to Canadian armoured vehicle maker Roshel on Nov. 9.
Prime Minister Mark Carney framed Stellantis’ agreement to sell its Brampton auto assembly plant as a “betrayal” to Canadians while speaking to reporters on Nov. 10, calling the situation “unacceptable.”
The financial details of the agreement between Stellantis and the federal government have not been released.
Related Stories
The Netherlands-based company said in its statement that confidentiality provisions in its agreements with Ottawa prevent it from disclosing further details, but noted that it did not receive the $15 billion originally earmarked for battery-production incentives at the NextStar Energy plant in Windsor.
The automaker sold its entire 49 percent equity stake in NextStar Energy to its founding partner, LG Energy Solution in February.
“The widely reported figure of up to $15 billion refers to conditional automotive battery-production incentives for NextStar Energy,” Stellantis said. “It was a maximum potential amount with payments tied to the production and sale of automotive batteries, not $15 billion already received.”
Stellantis also has not provided details about its sale of the Brampton facility, including whether its workers would be grandfathered into Roshel’s operations.
More than 2,000 Stellantis employees have been out of work since late 2023, when the plant was shut down so it could be retooled to manufacture the next generation Jeep Compass. Until then, the factory had manufactured the Dodge Charger, Dodge Challenger, and Chrysler 300.
The plant’s retooling got underway in 2024 but was suspended in February 2025. The company then announced in October of that year that production of the Compass would shift to the United States, leaving the Brampton plant idle.
Carney commented on Poilievre’s demand for Joly to step down during his Montreal press conference.
“The issue is not the work, the exceptional work of the minister of industry, Madame Joly and her colleagues, it is the behaviour of the company versus of those workers,” Carney said. “There’ll be a meeting of all stakeholders on Thursday on ways to move forward. But make no mistake, we will enforce our rights, absolutely, in protection of those workers.”
Joly also spoke briefly about Stellantis during the press conference, but did not respond to the Conservative leader’s call for her to resign.
“Patience has its limits,” she said. “Stellantis has decided to go ahead and violate its contract, and so that is why we will, as the prime minister has mentioned, use the full force of the law to make sure that we protect jobs, but also bring back justice to these workers that are waiting to just get a job from from their employer.”
