For the last forty years, Brampton has been an auto city.
That status is now in jeopardy after Stellantis announced in October that it was moving planned production of its Jeep Compass from Brampton to Illinois.
Hundreds of workers have already left the city to seek work at the Windsor plant, and thousands more are left in limbo waiting for what’s next.
But Brampton isn’t sitting on its hands waiting for more bad news. Instead, the resilient city has been not-so-quietly diversifying its economy, shifting the focus from auto manufacturing and food production, to aerospace, defence and advanced manufacturing.
The aggressive economic diversification plan has resulted in several shock absorbers and is helping the city better defend itself against uncertain tariff troubles.
“We love our auto jobs,” Brampton Mayor Patrick Brown told CityNews. “But I don’t want us to be a single employment community. I don’t think it’s healthy. It’s dangerous, and so we’ve really focused on trying to diversify and look at where the jobs of tomorrow are.”
That philosophy has also been adopted by A Berger Precision, a machining manufacturer in Brampton that’s undergoing a strategic diversification plan that began during the COVID pandemic.
After 20-plus years of auto-centric production, they’ve now branched out.
“We essentially did a deep dive into the mega trends of 2021 — aerospace defence, hydrogen, EV and medical and electrical infrastructure became areas of interest, and we started preparing for those industries,” explained CEO, Alexander Berger.
Those are some of the same industries Brampton has been courting.
Mayor Brown says Brampton is also looking into the deep beyond for answers.
“We’ve got a number of space companies that are doing incredible work right now,” he said. “I never would have thought of that, but look at MDA Space, they got the Canada space contract for the International Space Station — a billion-dollar contract. But we’ve got literally a dozen space companies now in Brampton.”
Defence also has huge potential when it comes to jobs.
Canada is promising to spend five per cent of its GDP (up from 2 per cent) as part of its NATO commitments and Brampton is trying to make sure homegrown companies can secure lucrative defence contracts.
Roman Shimonov is the founder and CEO of Roshel, the leading North American producer of smart armored solutions, headquartered in Brampton.
He says the war in Ukraine “changed everything” for his company, which had previously focused on armoured vehicles used in the transportation of money.
“We got the first contract from the Canadian government for eight units, which we delivered right at the beginning of the war. We received a new order for 200 units, another 200 units. And so far, we delivered over 2,200 vehicles.”
He says by the end of the year the company will have sent 3,000 units to Ukraine alone.
The company employs more than 500 people and just announced a joint venture with Algoma Steel to produce ballistic steel for armoured vehicles for Canada’s defence industry.
He credits some of the company’s succuss to its home base in Brampton.
“Brampton is a very diversified city. We have an amazing access to highways and roads and skilled labour. We have a proximity to access to the airport and to trains and to so many infrastructures. That makes Brampton a really unique and special city.
And while Brown admits U.S. President Donald Trump’s tariff war has done damage, it’s also opened new doors. The City launched several initiatives in response- including the Mayor’s Tariff Taskforce, a “Go Global” exports program to help businesses market their goods outside of North America and witnessed 271 startups graduate through Brampton’s Innovation District partners.
“You’ll lose some areas because of tariffs, and we’re trying to make up those job losses by focusing on the areas where there is economic growth.
“So, I think we can chew gum and walk at the same time,” he adds. I want to chase new jobs, I want to chase investment, but I want to protect the existing ones.”
In Brampton’s case, that’s meant rezoning the Stellantis Plant lands for automotive manufacturing only – a move Brown said didn’t go over well with the company but may help to hold it to its commitment to reopen the plant.
