Trudeau Snaps When Asked About $5 Billion Honda Deal for 1,000 Jobs

Today the federal government and Ontario announced a new electric vehicle battery plant will be built in Alliston, Ontario, part of a $15 billion project from automaker Honda.

But part of that dollar figure will include up to $5 billion in taxpayer funds, consisting of up to $2.5 billion from the feds and $2.5 billion from Ontario, through tax credits, capital costs and site servicing costs. This new plant will create 1,000 jobs, says the federal government. That works out to $5 million in taxpayer funds per job.

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau wasn’t happy at a reporter when asked how many jobs are being created and what the cost would be. Premier Doug Ford stepped toward the podium to answer, only to be cut off by Trudeau, who snapped, “if you’re not going to listen to the answer of saying it’s going to be 1,000 jobs created, then there’s nothing we can do for ya,” then backing away.

You can watch the video below to see the Prime Minister’s testy interaction with the reporter in question:

Justin Trudeau @JustinTrudeau is starting to crack. He steps in front of Doug Ford @fordnation, to snap at a reporter. Timestamp 1:11:30 https://t.co/lSdnKa58GH pic.twitter.com/0iEHexx64D

— Jim Fannon 🇨🇦 (@jimfannon) April 25, 2024

Honda’s new EV battery plant will be built beside its existing plant in Alliston, with the latter being re-tooled to build EV parts.

The Canadian Taxpayers Federation is not happy about the corporate welfare and blasted the decision, calling it contradictory based on the federal government’s Budget 2024, which was all about taxing big companies more.

“The Trudeau and Ford governments are giving billions to yet another multinational corporation and leaving middle-class Canadians to pay for it,” said Jay Goldberg, CTF Ontario Director, in a statement. “Prime Minister Justin Trudeau is sending small businesses bigger a bill with his capital gains tax hike and now he’s handing out billions more in corporate welfare to a huge multinational.

“This announcement is fundamentally unfair to taxpayers,” added Goldberg.

A cost to taxpayers of $5 million per job.

That’s if these jobs materialize like politicians promise. Not to mention this money will be taken from other Canadian job creators.

The government’s own records show it can’t even keep track of jobs from corporate handouts. https://t.co/KbfJTYNuTy

— Franco Terrazzano (@franco_nomics) April 25, 2024

Stellantis and LG are already getting up to $15 billion over 10 years from the federal government for their own EV battery facilities in Ontario. Both companies paused construction to renegotiate with the feds to match the U.S. offer under the latter’s Inflation Reduction Act. And it worked.

Volkswagen ended up getting the same deal as Stellantis and LG for its own EV battery plant, seeing up to $13 billion in incentives.

“If politicians want to grow the economy, they should cut taxes and red tape and cancel the corporate welfare,” said Franco Terrazzano, CTF Federal Director. “Just days ago, Trudeau said he wants the rich to pay more, so he should make rich multinational corporations pay for their own factories.”