GM’s Ontario EV plant was sold as a green success story. Instead it collapsed under subsidies, layoffs and unsold vans

Interview requests

Every age invents new names for old mistakes. In ours, they’re sold as investments. Before the Carney government unveils its November budget promising another future paid for in advance, Canadians should remember Ingersoll, Ont., one of the last places a prime minister tried to buy tomorrow.

Eager to transform the economy, in December 2022, former prime minister Justin Trudeau promised that government backing would help General Motors turn its Ingersoll plant into a beacon of green industry. “By 2025 it will be producing 50,000 electric vehicles per year,” he declared: 137 vehicles daily, six every hour. What sounded like renewal became an expensive demonstration of how progressive governments peddle rampant spending as sound strategy.

The plan began with $259 million from Ottawa and another $259 million from Ontario: over half a billion to switch from Equinox production to BrightDrop electric delivery vans. The promise was thousands of “good, middle-class jobs.”

The assembly plant employed 2,000 workers before retooling. Today, fewer than 700 remain; a two-thirds collapse. With $518 million in public funds and only 3,500 vans built in 2024, taxpayers paid $148,000 per vehicle. The subsidy works out to over half a million dollars per remaining worker. Two out of every three employees from Trudeau’s........

© Troy Media