Ontario will more than quadruple its promised support to help keep Ford’s Windsor engine plant working, according to a report in the Toronto Sun. Finance Minister Dwight Duncan and Economic Development Minister Sandra Pupatello – both Windsor-area MPPs—made the $81 million funding announcement in Windsor Friday.
“This investment reaffirms our government’s commitment to strengthening our local economy and will get Windsor families back to work,” Duncan said in a statement.
Ontario had pledged $17 million to the plant in March 2008 but said Friday’s money will build on that support. The money — along with up to $736.4 million being invested by Ford itself—will help keep or create 757 jobs at the plant, the government said.
“To be truly competitive at a world-class level we have to work together—we have to build partnerships between business, labor and government,” Jim Tetrault, Ford’s vice-president of North American manufacturing, said. “And it’s that spirit of collaboration combined with a willingness to innovate that has breathed new life into the operations at the Essex Engine Plant.”
Ford was the only one of North America’s Big 3 automakers that did not need government money to keep it from going out of business in 2008. Its Project Renaissance refurbishment will retool the engine plant so it can produce 5.0-litre V-8 engines for use in the Ford Mustang.
