GM Adjusting Oshawa Plant Production To Meet Canadian Demand

GM is taking steps to match pickup truck production at the Oshawa Assembly Plant in Ontario to Canadian market demand, a few days after it reduced shifts from three to two at the facility.

Responding to U.S. President Donald Trump‘s enactment of 25-percent tariffs on imported automobiles, GM nevertheless claims it will increase production for the Canadian market, Automotive News reports.

Despite dropping one of three shifts and eliminating about 700 jobs at Oshawa, The General claims “this means building more in Canada, for Canada.” The president of GM Canada, Kristian Aquilina, went on to say “as part of this strategic realignment, we are adjusting truck production at Oshawa Assembly to better reflect Canadian market demand.”

During the 2024 calendar year General Motors sold 52,078 Chevy Silverado units and 59,912 GMC Sierra trucks in Canada. These figures include both HD and 1500 variants of both pickup nameplates, and exclude Chevy Silverado EV and GMC Sierra EV sales.

Oshawa can presumably cover Canadian Silverado demand even with its reduced production hours and workforce. The plant made about 144,000 of the Bow Tie pickups during the 12 months of calendar 2024, or about 12,000 monthly. Even a one-third cut in this number will leave ample Silverado units to meet Canadian demand for the vehicle.

Given that Oshawa Assembly only builds Chevy Silverado trucks and all GMC Sierra units are imported, this raises the interesting question of exactly how the automaker will address Sierra supply in the Great White North. The Canadian government is exempting the 25-percent reciprocal import tariffs for automakers that build, and continue to build, vehicles in Canada. It’s unclear if the production cut at the Oshawa plant will impact the counter-tariffs on the Sierra, or if the Canadian market will receive only units built at the GM Silao plant in Mexico, and not the GM Fort Wayne plant in Indiana.

Unifor President Lana Payne

Canadian union Unifor blasted the company’s statements, shift reductions and layoffs, describing them as “premature and disrespectful,” in the words of Lana Payne, the union’s president. With a White House meeting between President Trump and Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney upcoming, Payne argues that The General should have waited before taking any action at Oshawa.

Meanwhile, south of the border, the UAW and its president Shawn Fain have been full-throated in their support for Trump’s tariffs, praising them as a way to bring production back to the U.S. The union even published a study showing how reactivating current idle capacity at U.S. factories could directly create 90,000 new American jobs.

The news comes as GM is, in fact, reactivating unused production lines at the  Fort Wayne assembly plant in Indiana to produce approximately 50,000 more Silverado and Sierra trucks annually for the domestic U.S. market.