TORONTO – General Motors’ announcement that production of the BrightDrop electric delivery van will cease at the CAMI Assembly Plant in Ingersoll, Ontario is the latest casualty of the Trump administration’s dangerous and destabilizing auto policies.

“The reality is that CAMI was hit from both directions by Trump as he aggressively acted to undo EV supports and hit Canadian auto assembly plants with a 25% tariff,” said Unifor National President Lana Payne. “Now more than 1,000 workers and their families are paying the price for Trump’s political interference and GM’s failure to hold the line.”

The announcement affects more than 1,000 Unifor Local 88 members currently on layoff after the plant was idled in May. At the time, GM cited slowing commercial-EV demand, but today’s decision confirms a full end to the BrightDrop line.

“We have a lot of members with decades of dedication to GM who are now abandoned,” said Unifor Local 88 GM CAMI Chairperson Mike Van Boekel. “These are highly skilled workers who delivered for this company and this community. They deserve a future at CAMI—not a dead end.”

GM has made no commitment on what comes next for the facility. CAMI remains a critical regional economic driver and was the centrepiece of a $1-billion retooling supported by federal and provincial investments.

“After billions of dollars in public support to build an EV future, Canada cannot allow companies to simply walk away the moment there is pressure from Washington or turbulence in the market,” said Payne. “Canada must respond with a real industrial strategy that defends Canadian jobs, leverages our market, and pushes back on Trump’s economic bullying.”

The CAMI blow comes ahead of the company’s previously announced elimination of a shift at GM Oshawa, scheduled for January 2026, heightening concerns about GM’s long-term manufacturing footprint in Canada. The news also follows a decision by Stellantis to relocate Jeep Compass production from Brampton to the United States.

Unifor will meet with GM and both levels of government immediately to press for a new product mandate and ensure CAMI remains a pillar of Canadian auto production.

TORONTO – President Trump’s new tariffs on heavy-duty trucks and buses are the latest direct attack on our auto manufacturing sector—another act of economic blackmail designed to drag investment and good jobs out of Canada.

“Trump is coming for Canada’s industrial manufacturing base, weaponizing tariffs one sector at a time using security-threat provisions that everyone knows are completely bogus,” said Unifor National President Lana Payne. “The question is, how many more hits is Canada willing to take before we fight back?”

On October 17, Trump once again invoked Section 232 of the U.S. Trade Expansion Act, inventing a national security threat in order to slap 25% tariffs on heavy-duty pickup trucks and semi-trailers and 10% tariffs on buses. Even for vehicles that qualify under CUSMA, the tariffs target non-U.S. parts used in vehicles built in Canada, creating a deliberate disincentive for companies to manufacture here. The message is obvious: move production to the United States—or pay.

The tariffs, set to take effect November 1, will hit Unifor workplaces already hammered by Trump’s trade war, including commercial truck builder Paccar in Quebec, where workers have already endured repeated layoffs, and General Motors Oshawa, which is slated to lose a shift early next year, among others.

“Jobs are being lost in real time while the Trump administration drags out negotiations and we’re told to be patient as we still have the best in a bunch of bad international trade deals,” said Unifor Quebec Director Daniel Cloutier. “We need a united cross-sector approach to protect our good-paying jobs.”

This latest blow comes on the heels of Stellantis’ move to abandon its legal commitment to build the next-generation Jeep Compass in Brampton, shifting production, and roughly 3,000 Canadian jobs, to Illinois instead.

“The reality is corporations are buckling to pressure from the U.S. and If we don’t fight back now, we’re handing him our jobs, our leverage and our future,” Payne warned.

On Nov. 2, 2025, Unifor marks the International Day to End Impunity for Crimes Against Journalists to shine a spotlight on how journalism is essential to free societies and functioning democracies.

Journalists give a voice to the voiceless, they tell our stories, and they hold the powerful to account, but too often they pay a high price for this work through threats, harassment, physical attacks, legal intimidation, sometimes even death, with little or no justice and impunity for perpetrators.

Globally, the scale of violence and harassment of journalists are of grave concern. UNESCO reports that since 2006, roughly 85% of killings of journalists remain unpunished.

In 2024 alone, at least 124 journalists and media workers were killed worldwide, the highest number in over three decades of tracking by the Committee to Protect Journalists.

In Canada, threats, harassment, legal intimidation, and obstruction are growing.

Journalists covering politics, protests, Indigenous issues, or environmental campaigns, have increasingly reported being surveilled, doxxed, threatened, or faced legal or regulatory pressure. For example, in Aug. 2025, Unifor condemned the chilling actions of the anonymous figures who targeted and harassed Carrie Tait, a Globe and Mail journalist who had been investigating allegations of political interference at the Alberta Health Agency.

Canadian legal protections for press freedom exist. Charter rights for expression, defamation laws and protections for sources, but years of precedent show that laws alone don’t deter harassment, threats, or physical attacks. Many cases either do not lead to charges, or charges do not lead to convictions.

The digital age has brought online harassment—especially of women, Indigenous, racialized, and other equity-deserving media workers—social media-fuelled threats, doxxing and invasive surveillance. These threats often escalate into in-person risks.

To end impunity against journalists, the following steps are essential:

• Codify specific offences for threats, harassment, doxxing, intimidation of journalists (online and in-person), with clear enforcement.
• Allocate resources to law enforcement and judicial systems for training, handling, and prioritizing cases involving media workers.
• Provide training in digital security, physical safety, and trauma resilience.
• Ensure that freelancers have access to the same protections as staff journalists.
• Recognize that women, Indigenous, racialized, 2SLGBTQIA+ journalists often are more targeted, and tailor supports accordingly.
• Ensure sustainable funding and infrastructure for journalism. Local news needs support to survive, because a weakened media means fewer watchdogs and fewer protections.

Unifor is committed to playing an active and ongoing role to help. Our ongoing and recent initiatives to support journalists, media workers and journalism include:

• Unifor Media’s Help Is Here website  provides supports for journalists and media workers facing harassment, whether they are members or freelancers. It provides links to peer support, advice and tips on documenting abuse, guidance for reporting harassment to employers or law enforcement, and practical advice on protecting personal information.
• Fact-Checked, Unifor’s Media Action Plan campaign, aims to remind Canadians that news from a trusted news source is news that has been fact checked, reviewed, and verified.
• The union is developing and prioritizing bargaining language for collective agreements that addresses harassment, threats, safety, ensuring that media workers have clear processes to report abuse, support, and recourse.

Journalism is a public good. A society that allows crimes against journalists to go unpunished is a society that risks losing its accountability and its democracy.

We must ensure that no journalist fears for their safety, no truth is silenced by impunity, and that justice is not a promise, but a reality.