The chief executive of armoured vehicle manufacturer Roshel is firing back at critics of his company’s deal to purchase the idled Stellantis plant in Brampton, Ont., defending it as “the best thing that can happen to this plant and to this city.”
Roshel founder Roman Shimonov said he’s surprised the government hasn’t publicly supported the sale given his company’s intention of creating thousands of jobs at the facility.
“When a Canadian company is taking the risk to create jobs, I don’t understand how it can create any tensions and I honestly don’t see any reason to be opposed to that,” Shimonov said in a phone interview Monday evening.
“We are generating the wealth. The government and unions, they don’t generate wealth. We generate the wealth, and we need to get support and not anyone else. So it’s very easy to criticize, but it’s much harder to … create wealth for this country and that’s exactly what we’re doing.”
Stellantis announced the sale of the facility and associated equipment to Roshel for an undisclosed amount late Monday afternoon. The companies say they expect the transaction to close by the end of this year, however it is subject to certain conditions, including government and regulatory requirements.
Shimonov said his Brampton-based company is willing to hire back some of the 2,000 Stellantis employees who were laid off from the plant when it halted operations in 2023.
The facility had been slated to be retooled for Jeep production, a process that began early in 2024, before the automaker paused the plan in early 2025. It later announced it was moving production of the Jeep Compass to Illinois, leaving the plant idled indefinitely.
“Right now there is an idle plant that is not occupying, not creating, not generating anything. It’s an idle plant for three years and then a Canadian company is coming, taking an initiative to create something good, putting the money, taking the risk to create something significant and this is what we need to talk about,” Shimonov said.
“Criticizing is the easiest part, but taking the risks and creating and generating, that’s what makes a Canadian company a successful company — different and disrupting and generating and creating the positive outcome for Canadian taxpayers.”
He also confirmed Roshel is exploring the option of leasing back some of the facility’s space to Stellantis for auto production. He said the company is in discussions with at least two manufacturers “that are willing to start building in Canada” including one from Europe.
“We’re talking about automotive solutions … and we are definitely looking into different options because this plant is massive and we want to utilize it as much as possible in order to achieve the best outcome for the employees, for the community, for the city, and for the Canadian economy,” said Shimonov.
Speaking at a news conference Monday evening, Unifor national president Lana Payne questioned why Roshel would choose the Brampton assembly plant and cast doubt that the defence contractor would need to hire as many workers that were employed there under Stellantis.
She said closing and selling the plant would cut Canadian vehicle production capacity by 10 per cent.
“Roshel upfitting trucks for the military is not the same as building vehicles from the ground up. The difference is when you build vehicles, you employ thousands and thousands of people in the plant and across the supply chain. When you refurbish or reassemble vehicles, you employ hundreds of people at most,” Payne said.
“You also don’t need 2.5 million square feet of factory space to refit military trucks, which begs the question, why Brampton Assembly? Why not somewhere else?”
Payne said the union still views potential labour action as a “last resort” despite receiving an overwhelming endorsement for a strike mandate from its members last month. She said the union is not yet in a legal strike position — which would require it to request a “no board” report — and wants to reach a resolution.
She added it’s also unclear whether Stellantis has breached its commitments to the federal government that were tied to funding it has received from Ottawa.
“It’s really hard to believe this plant could have been sold without some green light from the federal government,” Payne said.
In 2022, the federal government committed up to $529 million to help Stellantis retool its Brampton and Windsor facilities to produce electrified vehicles.
Prime Minister Mark Carney said Tuesday that selling the Brampton plant “violates the obligations that Stellantis has under several agreements,” as he called the move “unacceptable.”
“But to be more fundamental, it’s a betrayal of the workers as it is a betrayal of the obligations to Canada and by extension to all Canadians,” Carney said during an unrelated news conference in Montreal.
“We will fully enforce our rights in protection of those workers and protection of Canadian funds.”
Industry Minister Mélanie Joly added she would convene a meeting Thursday in Toronto with the leadership of Stellantis and Unifor, along with Ontario Economic Development Minister Vic Fedeli.
“Patience has its limits and for more than a year we’ve been engaging with Stellantis, engaging with Unifor, trying to find a solution for Brampton, but Stellantis has decided to go ahead and violate its contract,” she said.
“That is why we will … use the full force of the law to make sure that we protect jobs but also bring back justice to these workers that are waiting to just get a job from their employer, which is Stellantis.”
A spokesperson for Stellantis said the company would repay public funds it has received, but declined to comment on the amount, citing confidentiality provisions.
“We recognize that Canadians expect accountability for public funding and that is why Stellantis has offered to voluntarily return the government support received for Brampton Assembly’s original retooling plan,” said LouAnn Gosselin in a statement.
Speaking in Brampton on Tuesday, Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre called on the government to sue Stellantis “to get Canadian tax dollars back.”
“We need to know the exact sum, every penny that has gone to Stellantis for all of its operations in Canada under this Liberal government, and we need every penny to be repaid, now,” he said.
Poilievre added that laid off Stellantis workers have been offered “nothing but vague promises of a smaller number of jobs for an undefined group of workers with lower pay than they had before.”
“Any jobs that replace these will pay less and they’ll pay them to fewer people and we don’t know how many more tax dollars will be involved in order to make it happen,” he said.
With files from Daniel Johnson.
