Mayor of Oshawa, Ont., hopes report of GM closure is ‘just a rumour’

FILE: General Motors Canada Headquarters in Oshawa, Ontario (Photo: Robert Taylor/Flickr, CC BY 2.0)

OSHAWA, Ont. — Reports of the pending closure of a General Motors Canada plant in Oshawa, Ont., are hopefully “just a rumour,” the mayor of the city east of Toronto said Sunday.

CTV News reported Sunday evening that General Motors Canada plans to shut down its Oshawa Assembly Plant, affecting thousands of jobs in the city of roughly 170,000.

A spokeswoman for the company said Sunday that GM had “no news or comment tonight” and would not be commenting on speculation.

Oshawa Mayor John Henry said Sunday evening he had not spoken to anyone from GM, and he first heard about the reported closure from a CTV reporter who called him for comment earlier in the day.

“Hopefully it’s just a rumour,” Henry said in a phone interview, adding the closure would have ripple effects beyond Oshawa.

“It’s going to affect the province, it’s going to affect the region … The auto industry’s been a big part of the province of Ontario for over 100 years.”

Federal and provincial politicians also weighed in on the CTV report, expressing concern for the thousands of high-paying jobs at the Oshawa plant — as well as the potential trickle-down effect a closure could have.

Jennifer French, who represents Oshawa in the provincial legislature, said she finds the report “gravely concerning.”

“If GM Canada is indeed turning its back on 100 years of industry and community — abandoning workers and families in Oshawa — then this is a callous decision that must be fought,” she said in a statement.

“GM didn’t build #Oshawa. Oshawa built GM,” French added in a tweet.

Conservative MP Colin Carrie, who according to his website spent his summers as a youth working in the Oshawa plant, called the reports “very concerning” and promised to “look further into the situation.”

According to GM’s website, the Oshawa Assembly Plant employs 2,522 workers with Unifor Local 222. Production began on Nov. 7, 1953, and in the 1980s the plant employed roughly 23,000 people.

Unifor national president Jerry Dias said in April that the Oshawa complex was headed for closure in June of this year. But he noted the former head of GM Canada, Steve Carlisle, was determined it wouldn’t close on his watch.

Carlisle was moved that month to head Cadillac, the global automaker’s luxury car division as part of a management rotation.

At the time of the transfer, Dias said Carlisle’s appointment to head Cadillac would raise his profile and influence within GM’s headquarters in Detroit, and that “would be a huge benefit for us.”

The Oshawa operation became a Donald Trump talking point during Canada-U.S. trade negotiations, according to a Toronto Star report about an off-the-record aside during an interview with Bloomberg News over the summer.

“Every time we have a problem with a point, I just put up a picture of a Chevrolet Impala,” the U.S. president was reported to have said. The Impala is built at the GM plant in Oshawa.