The CEO of a Canadian armoured vehicle manufacturer says that his company “is not going to even consider” taking on any responsibility for the more than 2,200 people on layoff at the Brampton assembly plant. Roshel CEO Roman Shimonov made the comment in an interview with CP24 Breakfast on Tuesday morning when asked whether he would commit to rehiring impacted workers. The interview came one day after news broke that Roshel would purchase the idle plant from Stellantis and convert it into “a new centre of excellence for advanced manufacturing.” The Brampton assembly plant had previously been idle since December, 2023. “I can confirm that we will give a priority to people in Brampton the way we always do. We are in Brampton and there is a reason we are in Brampton. Brampton is an amazing place to develop and to create a competitive business, but a competitive business cannot work by taking obligations of other companies and we are not going to even consider taking any responsibilities of anyone from previous engagements,” Shimonov said. In May 2022, the federal government agreed to provide Stellantis with $529 million in funding to retool its Brampton and Windsor plants. Following news of the sale of the plant on Monday, Industry Minister Mélanie Joly said the decision by Stellantis “does not erase the commitments they made to workers in Brampton.” Joly added that she has reached out to representatives for Unifor, Stellantis, the provincial government and the Brampton plant to convene a meeting later this week. Shimonov, for his, part, told CP24 Breakfast that Roshel “cannot be a side or a part” of any of those negotiations. Instead, he said the company is moving forward with an “ambitious plan” for the Brampton assembly plant that he hopes will create thousands of jobs. “We are talking about an idle pant that wasn’t operating for many years and now we have a new, much brighter future. People that criticized (the sale), they either haven’t been briefed on the facts or are just ignoring them because we are talking about a plant that was idled for many years,” he said. The union representing workers at the Brampton assembly plant has accused Stellantis of betraying its members with an “underhanded deal” that allows it to “walk away from its commitments.” In a press conference Monday evening, Unifor President Lana Payn said that selling an auto assembly plant and losing vehicle production capacity is “devastating” for the Canadian auto industry and for the country as a whole. Shimonov, however, framed the sale as good news for the Canadian economy as a whole. “My ask, my request is pretty simple. We don’t need to rely on anyone else,” he said. “I am a proud Canadian, I immigrated to Canada 15 years ago, I started the company, I hired hundreds of people, paid tens of millions of dollars in taxes, I am intending to pay even more and this is what is driving the economy, this is what makes our country independent. So when people are talking about ‘elbows up’ this is exactly the way to put the elbows up, to rely on ourselves to create jobs, to create a better and brighter future for ourselves without relying on others.” Plant first opened in 1986 There is a long history of manufacturing at the Brampton assembly plant dating back to 1986. Most recently, the Dodge Charger and Dodge Challenger were assembled at the plant but the last of those vehicles rolled off the assembly line in 2023. At the time, Stellantis said that the plant would undergo improvements to begin manufacturing electric vehicles. Speaking with reporters outside the Brampton assembly plant on Tuesday morning, federal Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre said that the closure of the plant “is yet another betrayal of Canada’s working people.” Poilievre said that despite promises of new jobs, the reality is that Canadian jobs are moving to the U.S. with “nothing but vague promises of a smaller number of jobs for an undefined group of workers.” “Any jobs that replace these will pay less and they will pay them to fewer people and we don’t know how many more tax dollars will be involved in order to make it happen,” he said.
