By Rebel News | Created at 2024-11-28 22:46:25 | Updated at 2024-12-04 19:26:33
5 days ago
Recently, Rebel News reported that the Ford Motor Co. plant in Oakville, Ont., appeared destined for permanent closure.
And that would be devastating. This plant first started producing Fords, Lincolns, Mercurys, and even an Edsel model back in 1953 when Louis St. Laurent was prime minister.
The plant has long been a key part of Oakville’s economy and has employed thousands of workers for more than 70 years.
But the apparent beginning of the end for the Oakville plant occurred with Ford gambling on electric vehicles. The Oakville plant was originally going to be retooled for EV production, but selling EVs has proven to be a fiscal fiasco for Ford. In the second quarter of 2024 alone, Ford announced it had lost more than $1.1 billion on its electric vehicles. Talk about “sticker shock”!
So it was that Ford announced it was hitting the brakes on plans to build EVs at the Oakville plant. And that’s when the speculation began went into overdrive.
Rebel News reached out to the media relations department of Ford Canada, but no representative would provide any comment regarding the plant’s future.
And although the automaker announced in July the plant would be refitted to produce gas-powered versions of its profitable F-Series Super Duty pickup trucks starting in 2026, we heard otherwise from Dan McTeague. McTeague is a former Liberal MP and the current president of Canadians for Affordable Energy.
McTeague informed us that numerous company and union sources had told him that the plant might never reopen. Currently, nothing is being manufactured in Oakville.
McTeague also noted that the election of Donald Trump is ominous for the plant. The president-elect has promised to bring manufacturing jobs back to America. And more recently, Trump announced a proposed 25% tariff for vehicles manufactured in Canada and Mexico.
Furthermore, McTeague speculated that production of the pickup trucks would most likely go to a swing state such as Michigan or Pennsylvania.
And this was indeed the story Rebel News originally ran with.
Alas, a few days after the story was published, we were contacted by a Ford U.S. representative, Said Deep, who politely informed us we got it wrong.
Indeed, Deep said while no vehicles are being manufactured in Oakville currently, a massive $2.3 billion retooling and renovation of the plant is now underway. As well, he said Ford has no choice but to use the Oakville plant to produce its F-Series Super Duty trucks as the plants currently producing these vehicles stateside are already at full capacity.
The Oakville plant is expected to be up and running come 2026.
While Ford declined to have an executive come on camera for our update, Deep passed along a statement from Ford’s president and CEO, Jim Farley:
Super Duty is a vital tool for businesses and people around the world and, even with our Kentucky Truck Plant and Ohio Assembly Plant running flat out, we can’t meet the demand.
Needless to say, we were mortified that our original story was erroneous. After all, as they say in the journalism biz: “Get it [the story] first, but first get it right.”
And in this case, we did not get it right.
In fairness, as previously noted, Rebel News did reach out to Ford for comment, but none was forthcoming. Had we known then what we know now the story would’ve been radically different. And the initial lack of feedback from Ford is baffling for two reasons: Super Duty trucks being produced in Oakville (and the 1,800 jobs that come with it) is a really great news story. Secondly, why does Ford Canada even employ a media relations staff if such staffers do not… relate to the media?!
In any event, to paraphrase a decades-old Ford ad campaign slogan, “There’s a Ford in Oakville’s future!” And that future means producing fossil fuel-burning trucks that consumers actually want to purchase. And that are profitable for Ford to produce — unlike such electrified clunkers as the Mustang Mach-E and the F-150 Lightning.
Yet, disturbingly, the Canadian and Ontario governments continue to invest tens of billions of taxpayer dollars into EV plants to produce cars few can afford and most don’t even want to purchase in the first place.
Indeed, perhaps Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and Premier Doug Ford should reach out to the Ford Motor Co. to find out how the EV market these days is far from electrifying.
But then again, Trudeau and Ford are squandering taxpayer money, not theirs, in order to foolishly engage in climate change virtue-signalling. Thus, in the final analysis, do our elected officials even care that there’s a very good chance that many of these e-plants are going to exist as white elephants from Day One?
David Menzies
Mission Specialist
David “The Menzoid” Menzies is the Rebel News "Mission Specialist." The Menzoid is equal parts outrageous and irreverent as he dares to ask the type of questions those in the Media Party would rather not ponder.
