We “created jobs” with battery plants. Now what? 

The debate came to a head this week, but it’s been playing out behind closed doors in meeting rooms around the country all year.

Suddenly, everyone from Ontario Premier Doug Ford to Unifor national president Lana Payne is questioning the plan for Stellantis and LG’s Windsor, Ont., battery plan—an investment they once pushed for. 

The controversy over this one plant is, on its face, temporary. But the questions it raises may linger. 

What happened: When Windsor police reported they are prepared for about 1,600 South Korean workers to arrive in the Southern Ontario city, it unnerved leaders of construction and trade unions. Danis Lee, the CEO of NextStar Energy—Stellantis and LG’s battery joint venture—told the CBC the workers are staff specialists from suppliers who will be in Windsor only temporarily, to help install equipment. Federal officials said they have approved only one labour-market impact assessment, a document employers apply for to prove they need a foreign worker to fill a job.

The hot seat: Despite NextStar’s claims that it will uphold its plans to hire over 2,500 Canadians and is working with 2,300 local tradespeople, MPs spent nearly 2.5 hours scrimmaging on the issue at Parliament Hill Tuesday night. And it was spicy, with the chair having to step in after less than 30 minutes to defuse the “heated” debate. 

“We’re in an untenable situation,” said Conservative MP Brad Vis, “where every big company that wants to build a battery plant in Canada using Chinese minerals wants billions upon billions of dollars from the federal government. I want to see the contract and understand what subsidies Stellantis is actually getting.” 

“For anyone that has ever set foot in a factory or been part of a manufacturing town like mine, you’ll realize very quickly that [this] is normal,” said Liberal MP Irek Kusmierczyk. “When a Canadian company like CenterLine, for example, or Valiant from Windsor, would sell a product or a machine to Alabama, you would have Canadian workers travelling there to help with the installation.”

A ‘pressing need’: The uproar has brought new attention to the issue of who will work in the wave of new EV-linked factories that Canadian governments have pledged public dollars to bring to the country. But it’s an issue with which the industry has long been preoccupied. 

In early July, representatives of the federal Liberal government and Dalhousie University gathered to discuss a “pressing need to develop more battery talent in Canada,” according to a meeting note The Logic obtained through an access-to-information request. 

The university is home to an exclusive research collaboration between Tesla and Dalhousie battery scientist Jeff Dahn. The lab has spun off startups like Novonix.

The note says that Employment and Social Development Canada’s $110-million Sustainable Jobs Centre and Training Fund, which the government announced in fall 2022 to help 15,000 workers upskill or gain new job skills, has identified two specific starting points: low-carbon building retrofits and batteries. 

With battery talent as a key priority, Natural Resources Canada also has plans to “have an increasing role” in coordinating the governments’ skill-development efforts and has asked for the advice of universities like Dalhousie to help “stock the battery talent pool.” 

‘We are the guinea pigs’: Meanwhile, on the front lines in Windsor, the city knows it has work to do to attract the workers who will staff the NextStar plant. 

“We are the ones that are the guinea pigs, because obviously the [Volkswagen battery] plant in St. Thomas is years behind,” said Ed Dawson, senior manager of automobility and innovation at Invest WindsorEssex. We met in September, on the sidelines of the Detroit Auto Show, where he was scouting startups for the gigafactory supply chain. “The lessons that we’re going to learn about attracting talent to the area’s going to be very different.”  

Earlier this fall, Invest WindsorEssex, the local economic development organization, hired a talent-development specialist to help new industries recruit in the region while ensuring its existing industries had enough workers, as well. 

Jessica McCarthy spends much of her time packing tables and banners into her Chevy Equinox, pumping up Sirius XM and heading to local Google dev fests, Toronto engineering conferences, and assembling advisory panels with partners like St. Clair College and University of Windsor. She tries to recruit and retain talent by reassuring young people that Windsor has the charm of a small town but the perks of Detroit’s big-city downtown. Earlier this month, she helped launch an EV jobs portal that includes not only job postings, but also links to funding programs for upskilling. Early next year, a bigger campaign promoting the region will begin, she said in an interview this week. 

“Windsor-Essex has a huge workforce that is about to go into retirement,” she said. “When we’re going out to other places like most recently, Toronto, and then the new year focusing on southwestern Ontario, we’re mainly talking to different universities and colleges.” 

The takeaway: The uproar over NextStar’s South Korean workers may die down, but it won’t be the last we hear of the issue. The battery talent pipeline has taken years to build in Asia and won’t materialize in North America overnight. On Parliament Hill this week, MPs also indicated they want to hear further testimony on the matter. 

The World Economic Forum and Global Battery Alliance have estimated that the battery industry may employ 10 million people by 2030, and now that Canada has snagged thousands of job commitments from NextStar, Volkswagen and others, it must make sure local workers are prepared to fill them. 

Some background reading as this debate unfolds: 

• On housing and infrastructure: Canada’s $28B battery gambit is just the tip of the iceberg
• On training: Canada’s auto industry is training for a wave of jobs never seen before
• And With foreign exchange, Stellantis and LG prepare for Canadian gigafactory launch
• On how employment figures are calculated: Economists skeptical of claims about VW battery plant’s $200B in benefits

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