The provincial government announced Wednesday another plan to help create and protect jobs in the auto sector.
Ontario Minister of Economic Development, Job Creation and Trade MPP Todd Smith said in Windsor their Driving Prosperity plan aims to address challenges in the sector around competitiveness, innovation and talent.
Smith tells Quinte News that with the amount of auto sector-related jobs in our area, this is good news for the Quinte region.
One-hundred-thousand employees work in the auto sector in Ontario.
According to the press release, the government is making a series of regulatory changes to get government out of the way of job creators in the auto sector and other manufacturing sectors. This includes tackling a costly and burdensome regulatory irritant in the auto sector. Currently, auto makers who put a few litres of gas into a vehicle fresh off the assembly line to drive it to a distribution centre must apply for an exemption from having their plant regulated as if it were a gas station. The proposed change would exempt all auto plants from this unnecessary requirement.
“We’re making it faster, easier and cheaper for companies to comply with the regulations that we do need, while at the same time removing regulations that do nothing to protect workers’ health and safety,” said Smith.
The government announced a Job Site Challenge to identify job sites ready for the next auto assembler. This will be launched later this summer with the first certified sites hopefully available in the fall of 2020 to investors.
The manufacturing sector, including the auto sector, accounts for $91 billion in GDP in Ontario.
