Nov 12, 2026
For nearly three years, more than 2,000 laid-off autoworkers in Brampton, Ontario have been waiting for a callback. That wait got a lot more complicated.
Ontario Premier Doug Ford, federal officials and union leaders are set to sit down Thursday with automaker Stellantis in Toronto. The meeting follows the company’s decision to sell its idled Brampton assembly plant to a defence manufacturer, a move that throws both jobs and public funding commitments into question.
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For Canadian taxpayers, it’s a test of whether the strings attached to public money actually hold, and for Ontario’s auto communities, it’s a signal of how secure those jobs really are.
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What’s on the table at the Stellantis meeting?
Ottawa, the province, the automaker and the union are meeting at a downtown Toronto hotel, according to Unifor, which represents more than 9,000 Stellantis workers across the country.
Stellantis, the multinational automaker behind Jeep and Chrysler, has agreed to sell the Brampton plant to Roshel, a Brampton-based armoured vehicle maker. The terms of the sale haven’t been made public. Prime Minister Mark Carney called the sale a betrayal, saying Ottawa plans to “enforce our rights, absolutely, in protection of those workers.”
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How much taxpayer money is tied to Brampton?
So who is on the hook for the public money? The answer hinges on what Stellantis agreed to in exchange.
In 2023, Ottawa and Ontario jointly promised Stellantis $1.5 billion over 10 years to revive an electric vehicle battery plant in Windsor, in a deal that required the company to maintain its Ontario footprint through 2035, including Brampton. A separate billion-dollar pledge covered retooling, with Ontario committing $132 million to Brampton.
Public records reveal Ontario paid the company $55.4 million between 2022 and 2025. It’s unclear how much of that went to Brampton.
Stellantis, for its part, says it has offered to voluntarily return the support it received for Brampton’s original retooling plan, citing confidentiality rules for withholding further details. Ottawa had already served the company a notice of default on its federal contracts in December 2025.
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The real question for taxpayers is whether repaying retooling money is enough, when the larger deal promised jobs in Canada.
Is the Roshel sale a lifeline or a loss for workers?
Whether the sale is a lifeline for workers depends on who you ask. Roshel CEO Roman Shimonov has called the deal “the best thing that can happen to this plant and to this city.” He says he intends to create thousands of jobs there.
Roshel is a finalist for a military contract worth up to $4.9 billion to build light utility vehicles at the plant. That contract has yet to be awarded, though.
Unifor argues the sale jeopardizes the jobs of the laid-off Brampton workers who have been waiting to return, and that uncertainty also reaches Windsor. In October, Stellantis workers voted 97.3% in favour of a strike mandate, with bargaining stalled over job security.
For taxpayers, the number to watch isn’t just how much Stellantis offers to repay, but rather whether that figure matches what Canadians were promised in return. As Industry Minister Mélanie Joly put it, “For Brampton’s auto workers, walking away is not an option.”
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Leslie Kennedy served as an editor at Thomson Reuters and for Star Media Group, followed by a number of years as a writer and editor and content manager in marketing communications, before returning to her editorial roots. She is a graduate of Humber College’s post-graduate journalism program and has been a professional writer and editor ever since.
