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Honda Canada’s upgrade at its Alliston plants
made the Canadian operation the first ‘global lead plant’ outside Japan.
Ontario taxpayers contribute 10 per cent.
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ALLISTON, ONT.—Ontario taxpayers are kicking in 10 per cent of the $857 million Honda is investing to upgrade three plants north of Toronto so the company can take the lead in developing the next-generation Civic.
The project — which
has not secured any federal investment — will modernize the Civic, CRV
sport utility and engine factories to provide “important efficiency
gains,” Honda of Canada chief executive Jerry Chenkin said Thursday.
The three-year effort
includes worker training and development and partnerships with Ontario
colleges and universities and will make Honda’s Alliston operations a
“teaching plant” for Honda workers around the world.
Chenkin and Premier
Kathleen Wynne acknowledged the province’s “conditional grant” of up to
$85.7 million is not buying any new jobs.
“We’re helping to
protect 4,000 good jobs,” the premier said after a tour of the massive
CRV factory, touting Honda’s investment as a “vote of confidence” in the
province.
The announcement comes
months after Ford Canada — which got a multi-million injection from
Ontario to upgrade its Oakville assembly plant — decided to shift engine
production to Mexico instead of Windsor, taking 1,000 jobs south.
Losing auto production to Mexico and the United States has been a problem for Ontario, with the government unsuccessful in recent efforts to land new assembly plants while it tries to shore up existing production.
For the rest of the article with a video;
http://www.thestar.com/business/2014/11/06/honda_to_make_major_announcement_in_alliston.html
Losing auto production to Mexico and the United States has been a problem for Ontario, with the government unsuccessful in recent efforts to land new assembly plants while it tries to shore up existing production.
“We’re always aggressively pursuing others,” Economic Development Minister Brad Duguid told reporters.
Wynne, who fought the
spring election campaign in part on her push to “partner” with
automakers and other industries on next-generation manufacturing, said
teaming with Honda kept the project from going to another jurisdiction.
“Not in Ohio, not in Indiana, but right here in Ontario,” she boasted.
Chenkin suggested that
the province’s cash infusion helped convince his bosses that the best
business case for the investment was in Ontario.
“We have to fight for the business we get in Canada,” he said.
It’s the first time
one of the company’s plants outside Japan has been designated as a
“global lead plant,” which is a credit to the knowledge and experience
of Alliston workers, he added.
While Honda’s project
will take three years to complete, the Ontario contribution will be made
in stages over five years and is conditional on the automaker meeting
investment and job maintenance targets.
Provincial NDP Leader
Andrea Horwath said she wanted to make sure there were firm job
guarantees attached to the provincial money.
“We think it’s
worthwhile to keep auto sector jobs in Ontario, but what we do want to
make sure is that there’s value for the investment that taxpayers
provide or that the government commits to with these grants,” she said.
“So with $85 million,
what is the guarantee around keeping investment here and making sure
that we continue to have the same workforce, that the 4,000 have their
jobs guaranteed?”
Interim PC Leader Jim
Wilson is pleased Honda will be expanding its Alliston plant in his
riding, but said the government should not give big grants to a select
few companies.
“I’m happy to see the
jobs, but my preference would be for the government to get off this
slippery slope of picking winners and losers and do the right thing for
the economy, and for jobs, and lower (electricity) rates and taxes for
all the businesses and let them — without government grants — create the
jobs.”
Aside from securing
4,000 jobs at the three plants, the Honda project will bolster 1,500
suppliers who are paid about $2.1 billion a year to provide parts and
services, Chenkin said.
It’s been almost 30
years since Honda became the first Japanese automaker to build a
manufacturing plant in Ontario, building the Alliston factory in 1986.
Since then, the
company has invested $3.9 billion in the province with plants that can
produce 390,000 Civics and CRVs annually for the Canadian and North
American markets, as well as for export. About 100,000 are sold in
Canada.
Honda can also produce
240,000 four-cylinder engines annually in Alliston, where the first
vehicles to roll off the line were Civics in 1988. Odyssey minivans were
built in the second plant starting in 1998, with the engine factory
opening 10 years later.
With files from Dana Flavelle and The Canadian Press
For the rest of the article with a video;
http://www.thestar.com/business/2014/11/06/honda_to_make_major_announcement_in_alliston.html
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