Forum hears need for auto strategy

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Canada will have a strong auto industry for years to come – but achieving that won’t be easy and means getting all sides working together to build a real auto investment strategy, Unifor National President Jerry Dias told an auto forum and panel discussion in Windsor today.

“We will be aggressive, we will be assertive, we will be all the things the panelists said we need to be,” Dias said in an address to the forum.

The Policy and Solutions Forum was organized by Unifor Local 444 to bring labour, industry and academia together to discuss what is needed for an effective auto strategy in Canada to attract investment to Canada.

“We will work collaboratively to make sure those investments are made,” Dias told the crowd of more than 250 local businesspeople, labour leaders, politicians and academics.

Steve Rodgers of GS Global Solutions said Canada’s share of auto production has been dropping, with the country falling from ninth in 2013 to a projected twentieth place by 2020, largely thanks to governments in Mexico and the southern U.S. aggressively courting new auto plants.

“They look on it as an investment to bring economic growth to their areas,” he said.

Dias said that with labour, industry and government working together to bring more auto investments to Canada, including commitments to new products by the Detroit Three automakers, we can make sure the predictions made by Rodgers need not come true.

Panelists agreed that Canada needs to recognize the need for a focused strategy that combines incentives with infrastructure, support for research into innovations on the next generation of autos, training for workers, and more.

Without that, they warned, Canada cannot count on having a strong auto industry in the future, with some commenting that a long history of building autos will not be enough.

“There is happy little bubble over Windsor or Ontario that protects us from the rest of the world,” said Peter Frise, Scientific Director and CEO of the Auto21 Network of Centres of Excellence.

Ray Tanguay, auto czar for Ontario and the federal government, said there is much work to be done but said he is confident all those involved can come together to bring new investments to Canada.

“At the end of the day, we have to provide value,” Tanguay said, adding Canada’s skilled workforce is a key part of providing that value.