Marco Vigliotti is the editor-in-chief of iPolitics and QP Briefing. He reports on politics in Ottawa and Toronto, and has covered Parliament Hill for the better part of the past decade. He also worked for the Ottawa Citizen/Sun and The Hill Times.

Marco Vigliotti

Editor-in-Chief

Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre says Ottawa should only spend money to spur industrial development in Canada if it leads to jobs for local workers, in the wake of revelations by 

 that a planned battery plant in Windsor could hire temporary foreign workers to fill positions.

Speaking in Cambridge, Ont. on Friday, Poilievre vowed that a Conservative government wouldn't commit financial support to projects that won't create jobs for Canadians.

"Now we learn that his (Prime Minister Justin Trudeau) multibillion dollar grants to foreign companies may be funding as many as 1,500 jobs that won't be going to Canadians but instead to temporary foreign workers," he told local media.

"A Poilievre government will make sure that every time the government supports jobs in Canada, it will be exclusively for Canadians."

Union, politicians raising concerns that government-supported Stellantis-LG battery plant will use temporary foreign workers

Nextstar Energy, a collaboration between corporate giants Stellantis and LG, is building a plant in Windsor that will manufacture batteries for electric vehicles. Nextstar says the $5-billion facility — set to open in 2025 — will employ more than 2,500 employees across the battery manufacturing process.

The federal and Ontario governments announced this past summer they would offer up to $15-billion in tax breaks to keep the plant in Windsor. The announcement came after construction was paused earlier in the year due to the plant operators’ demands to negotiate a deal for funding in order to match what the United States would offer through the Inflation Reduction Act.

Of that money, Ontario would provide $5 billion, with the other $10 billion coming from Ottawa.

, the federal and provincial governments said the plant would “create and secure thousands of good-paying auto jobs and tens of thousands of indirect jobs across Canada.”

 reported on Thursday, concerns are mounting that the plant will end up hiring temporary foreign workers (TFWs), rather than members of the local workforce.

In fact, federal approval to hire a TFW at the plant has already been granted.

One job for the battery plant offered by a firm called Jeil Special — which appears to be connected to a South Korean firm known as Jeil M&S that boasts of doing business with LG — has received a Labour Market Impact Assessment (LMIA), meaning it can be filled by a temporary foreign worker. Companies must apply for and receive an LMIA before they can legally hire a temporary foreign worker, 

with applicants having to show that they can’t find Canadian workers to fill the role

The specific duties of this job — dubbed an “operations manager – administrative services” — are fairly broad. They include directing and advising “staff engaged in providing records management, security, finance, purchasing, human resources or other administrative services,” hiring and training staff, planning budgets, overseeing daily operations and directing and controlling “corporate governance and regulatory compliance procedures.”

A government source confirmed that the LMIA had been approved for the Nextstar project, but stressed that it was the only one.

In a statement provided Friday evening, Nextstar said that it's planning on hiring thousands of Canadian workers but it requires international specialized employees on a temporary basis to help launch the facility.

“NextStar Energy is fully committed to hiring Canadians to fill more than 2,500 full-time positions at the Windsor battery facility and are engaging up to an additional 2,300 tradespeople locally and throughout the province to help with the ongoing construction and process equipment installation," read a statement attributed to the company's CEO Danies Lee.

"The equipment installation phase of the project requires additional temporary specialized global supplier staff who have proprietary knowledge and specialized expertise that is critical to the successful construction and launch of Canada's first large scale battery manufacturing facility."

News of the temporary hires first picked in the summer when the Windsor economic development body said it had been asked by LG to put together a group of local developers to find housing options for incoming workers from South Korea, 

“LG asked us to put together a group of local developers and investors to present their needs for the next one to three years,” said Invest WindsorEssex vice-president of investment attraction and strategic initiatives Joe Goncalves, according to the 

“They’re expecting from 600 to 1,000 workers will be coming to set up the equipment. Another 300 to 500 people will be coming from LG to run the facility here.”

 on the condition of anonymity said that concerns around TFWs at the Nextstar plant came to a head recently after a dozen international workers arrived at the site but failed to advance through safety orientation owing to comprehension issues.

They said the concern is that foreign workers at the Nextstar plant will be used to install that equipment, rather than in the supervisory capacity that sometimes is seen in these sorts of projects.

Windsor NDP MPP Lisa Gretzky said she also heard that the international workers at the site failed to complete the required safety orientation.

"I've heard that three quarters of the workers that they're bringing in from overseas didn't pass the safety orientation," she said in an interview on Thursday.

"I go back to the fact that we have workers, skilled workers, right in our own community, right in Windsor-Essex, but more broadly across the province [and] across the country who have done this work before they can do it. So why are we not having them do the work? Why are we not putting them to work?"

While there are international workers at the Nextstar plant, Sean Strickland, executive director of Canada’s Building Trades Unions, said his association has confirmed that none of them are "currently executing work onsite."

Poilievre wasn't the only politician to weigh into the controversy on Friday.

Conservative MP Rick Perkins called on the Liberals to release the contracts signed with Stellantis, Volkswagen and Northvolt — the other two also reaching deals to bring battery plants to Canada — due to concerns over hiring TFWs in Windsor and revised cost projects from the Parliamentary Budget Officer. A new PBO report on Friday put the total price tag for the three deals $5.8 billion higher than the 

"Today we learned that the multibillion-dollar subsidy to Stellantis may be funding as many as 1,600 jobs that won’t be going to Canadians, but to foreign workers instead, despite the Prime Minister's promises of jobs for Canadians. This is not acceptable," read a statement from Perkins, the Conservative industry critic. 

"Justin Trudeau has also been hiding the details of the massive corporate subsidies he gave to electric vehicle battery plants for months, but the Parliamentary Budget Officer let us know today that the costs are much higher than the Prime Minister has been letting on."

Meanwhile, during a press event in Kitchener on Friday, Ontario NDP Leader Marit Stiles was asked about the concerns that Nextstar would bring in temporary foreign workers.

She said working people in Windsor would be "very deeply disappointed" if the jobs didn't go to members of their community, and promised to talk to those on the ground to hear their concerns.

"I'm deeply concerned about it. I think all Ontarians will be," Stiles said.

"This deal was supposed to guarantee jobs, jobs right here in Ontario, jobs for people in the Windsor region. Many of people are having trouble making ends meet [and] these good jobs are super important for people and particularly in that region, which has been pretty hard hit."

*This story has been updated with comment from Nextstar and from Conservative MP Rick Perkins.

"A Poilievre government will make sure that every time that government supports jobs in Canada, it will be exclusively for Canadians," he said Friday, in the wake of revelations by iPolitics that the Nextstar battery plant in Windsor could hire temporary foreign workers to fill positions.

In wake of Nextstar controversy, Poilievre says government funding should be used only to create jobs for Canadians

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