Last week, Toronto city council voted overwhelmingly in favor to ban Mexican-made General Motors vehicles from the city’s municipal fleets.
This motion was proposed by left-wing Toronto councillor Mike Layton, who claimed it was to show “solidarity” with workers at GM’s Oshawa Assembly plant, which the automaker recently decided it would close down before the end of 2019.
The City of Toronto ‘s municipal fleet currently consists of around 5,000 vehicles, just 376 of which are made by GM. Of those, just 26 were built in Mexico. Layton acknowledged that it was “not a lot of vehicles,” but hoped that the motion would prevent companies from taking similar actions in the future.
“You know what, our purchasing power as a city is worth something,” he said.
The Silverado work truck is made in Mexico.
This motion seems unlikely to have any major affect on the future of GM Oshawa. Not only has Toronto purchased less than 200 vehicles from GM in the past two years, the city still seems willing to purchase the company’s vehicles that are made in the United States – this despite the fact that Ford and Fiat Chrysler offer competing products to many of GM’s most popular fleet vehicles.
GM says it remains committed to Ontario and the Toronto area and points to its Toronto Tech Campus as proof, which is currently under construction and slated to open in the near future. The automaker also claims it is Canada’s largest automotive R&D, software and engineering company – largely thanks to its Canadian Technology Center, which is located not far from Oshawa in Markham, Ontario. Its manufacturing plants in Ingersoll, Ontario and St. Catharines, Ontario are also expected to remain open for the forseeable future.
“GM has contributed more than $100 billion into Canada through manufacturing, purchased goods and services, and over $8 billion invested into worker pensions,” the automaker said in a previous statement. “GM’s investment in Canada has also created Canada’s largest automotive software engineering workforce as it continues to add jobs in next-generation automotive engineering, software and testing work in Oshawa, Markham, Kapuskasing and soon in Toronto.”
(source:Â National Post)
Comments
Make Canada Boring Again
Canada is our brother country and we need to help each other. However, I will never buy Chinese made car. Mexico cars are Ok.
Canada is not our brother! Never have never will! What Canada has become is a leach off of the US. They need to be forced to support themselves and not be our little brother! I view Canada the same as I do Mexico, China, or any other country! They are all places GM can make money with!
So Canada is ok with people buying cars made in their country but cars made in Mexico is a no no! That’s sad and pathetic! If making cars in Canada was profitable for GM they would still be doing that. But clearly that is not the case!
I am a GM supporter threw and threw so what’s best for the company is what I support! I want GM to be around long after I am gone!
ROFL, IM SO FUNNY HAHAHA I CAN MAKE A JOKE ABOUT CANADA THAT NO ONE HAS EVER THOUGHT OF BEFORE…SMH AT LEAST WE DINDT ELECT DONALD TRUMP. WHAT A JOKE …
MCBA
It’s a lot more exciting than the sh!t hole you live in.
And we have True Dough, yay.
Bunch of garbage, yet Canada were the 1st to receive Chinese-made autos from Honda…
Honda didn’t get free money for failure only to run off with it.
Good job Toronto! That won’t impact more GM jobs in your area will it? IDIOTS!
Thats O.K. Toronto will still continue to buy from Nissan and Hyundai /Kia which never make any vehicles here. Mike Layton is an idiot.
26 vehicles in a fleet of 5000.
A drop in a bucket that nobody would otherwise care about.
GM Canada sales January 2018: 16,791 , January 2019: 14,300
26 / 5000 = 0.0052 or 0.52% of the entire fleet. Again, it’s still a drop in the bucket.
Furthermore…
“Results were driven by strong pricing, surging crossover sales, growth of GM Financial earnings, disciplined cost control and the successful launch of the company’s all-new full-size pickup trucks”
“Revenue of $38.4 billion, up 1.8 percent from fourth-quarter 2017”
source: https://media.gm.ca/media/ca/en/gm/news.detail.html/content/Pages/news/emergency_news/2019/0206-earnings.html
Pay attention to that ‘strong pricing’ bit. Unit sales mean nothing in the face of revenue. It has ALWAYS been like that.
Is the sky falling, or is it just you?
I’m not worried about 2000 lost sales, I’m worried that 14,300 Canadians were still dense enough to buy junk from GM.
Yes, it is just about revenue for GM, not cars, they’d sell types like you an ox cart for $1 million that costs a dollar to make in some third world country.
Ah, but I’d have to be in the market for an ox cart, wouldn’t I?
As it stand, I’m not.
But there’s the crux; making the ox cart for a dollar in the third world versus making in America for billions. A UAW/Unifor line worker installing seat-belts on the ox cart is undeservedly being paid $75K a year for work quality that is no better than non-unionized workers in the Japanese plants; workers there that are paid less to make Japanese ox carts.
And you think GM is wrong to cut costs when a union makes it unprofitable to make ox carts and shift assembly elsewhere?
Perhaps you should find an acoustic guitar to sing at a union rally like some kind of bloated bob dylan clone if you still think that redundant workers can sway an entire nation.
Canada needs to understand.. they’re not China as Canada should do a Google search for the number of GM vehicles the country buys as a whole and it’s small; this is why this latest move by Toronto won’t force General Motors to changing their mind.
GM doesn’t make any vehicles Canada can use, except for maybe pickup trucks, oh wait those are made in Mexico too. Although, If one wants to spend $50k to 60K, GM will sell you an American made truck. Canada will become like Australia, with the GM dealerships selling mostly Korean and 3rd world products and mostly becoming irrelevant.
What about other Mexican vehicles?
Those are apparently okay.
You can keep your Mexican crap south of the border. You started the war and we will finish it. Be very careful or we will burn your White House to the ground again…. ROFLMAO
Oh and that sucking sound is 10B$ worth of annual Canadian sales evaporating.
Stem the flow of Illegals and Mexican made cars.
It is sad how rude some American’s can be towards Canada, I my self have been purchasing New G M cars built in the U S all my life. Do you know that their are more people that live in California than all of Canada!
Layton should be more concerned with gun violence in Toronto.
Toronto won’t see an American penny of mine going forward. F them!