Joly switches gears, offers Stellantis more money to not sell Brampton plant

A day after the industry minister said she's fed up and threatened to sue Stellantis she's giving the company another chance and making them a better offer to try and save an Ontario auto plant. We've put an aggressive package to Stellantis to prevent the sale. And we are still in solution mode to prevent the sale. We have new funds that we can help keep a warm plant until we look for something that we can put in there. We have a sale of a plant. On Thursday, the union said the sale of the Stellantis plant in Brampton was a done deal. Now officials say there's a window of opportunity. We're putting an aggressive package on the table. Because we want Stellantis to keep the plant open. We're willing to present scenarios to the global CEO. Stellantis idled its Brampton plant in 2023. The federal government gave the company more than $220 million to retool two plants, including Brampton. But the automaker decided to move production at that facility to the U.S. Stellantis said in September it was selling the plant to Canadian defense company Rheinmetall, and this week announced that sale is going ahead. Well, this is a gut punch. You know, it's not just a gut punch to me. It's obviously a... Punching the gut for all the employees that, you know, rely on that facility to provide for their families day in and day out. More than 2,000 jobs are on the line. Some workers say the government should have done more long ago. To let them know just yesterday that you're going to try and default them in 30 days if they don't pay up. You could have done this a couple of months ago. Why didn't the government do something then? We always wanted to get to a position where we actually were having Stellantis keeping The Brampton plant open and finding a solution. Now there's another 30 days of uncertainty to see if the government and Stellantis can come to some sort of arrangement. If not, Ottawa wants the company to pay back hundreds of millions of dollars. Stellantis says it will repay 24 million. Ashley Burke, CBC News, Ottawa.