Canadian Workers Built the Auto Industry—We Won’t Let American Billionaires Strip It for Parts
With jobs, public investment, and entire communities on the line, Jagmeet Singh has outlined the NDP’s plan to protect Canada’s auto industry and the people who keep it running.
1. MEANINGFULLY IMPROVING EMPLOYMENT INSURANCE
COVID-19 exposed massive gaps in our EI system. Meaningful improvements are needed to guarantee Canadian workers can count on us to help put food on the table.
• Significantly raise the Maximum Insurable Earnings and the 55% benefit rate to ensure more workers have a livable benefit.
• Remove barriers to accessing EI by reducing the threshold for qualifying to a universal 360-hour standard. And ensure benefits cover at-risk contractors and the self-employed who lose their work and income
• Extend the duration of benefits to 50 weeks to account for the fact that we already have a weak job market and over half a million workers receiving EI, including in auto and other trade-reliant industries.
• Eliminate the one-week waiting period.
• Expand EI work-share to help spread hours evenly, avoid layoffs and keep businesses open
The Canada Employment Insurance Commission (CEIC) has the legal authority to roll out special EI measures right now with no new legislation
2. BUILDING INFRASTRUCTURE TO KEEP PEOPLE WORKING
The government needs to undertake a massive building plan, building more of what we need here and getting shovels in the ground faster, using public land and Canadian products to do it.
• Identify shovel-ready infrastructure projects – roads, bridges, transit, community projects, health capital, and other country-building infrastructure projects.
• Step up investments in homes. Tariffs are already causing uncertainty amongst homebuilders and developers.
• Start work on an East-West clean energy grid to create jobs and deliver affordable, clean and secure energy to people and businesses across the country. And build it with Canadian building materials like steel, creating well-paying unionized jobs.
3. PROTECTING PEOPLE AND JOBS
With companies already laying off workers and businesses scaling back operations, the government needs to resist cutting staffing and supports for Canada’s vital public services. New Democrats will set aside every single dollar of revenue from tariffs to support workers who are impacted by them. And we will:
• Bring together all levels of government, businesses, and unions to develop a national strategy aimed at boosting critical domestic manufacturing and value-added processing
• Mandate that the Canadian government and agencies such as Canada Post only purchase Canadian-made vehicles, and encourage Canadians to Buy Canadian by exempting Canadian-made vehicles from the GST.
• Step in to keep people working and preserve good jobs, rescue manufacturing capacity and help business find alternatives to layoffs
• Invest in public services like health care, education and transit
• Put in place emergency income supports as was done during COVID-19
• Take additional actions to protect Canadians from price gouging
• Expand and deepen trade relations with countries other than the US, and work with provinces to eliminate inter-provincial trade barriers by improving labour and environmental standards to the highest level
• Ban American companies from removing valuable assets from Canadian plants and workplaces. Canadian taxpayers have invested over $30 billion in the auto industry over the last 5 years, and we will use every legal tool at our disposal to keep these companies from taking our money and the tools we’ve helped pay for.