Area manufacturers intensify campaign for clarity on border rules

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Having lobbied the federal government for months seeking clarity on policy directed at essential workers crossing the U.S. border, southwest Ontario’s automotive sector is stepping up its campaign warning Ottawa of the dire risks of the status quo.

Submitting a petition urging more controlled border access is the next step, Canadian Association of Mold Makers chair Jonathon Azzopardi said Friday. If things don’t change, he warned that relocation of production to the U.S. and potential lawsuits are also options increasingly being talked about by companies.

“The loss of contracts is now approaching the hundreds of millions locally,” Azzopardi said at a CAMM/Automate Canada news conference at Cavalier Tool and Manufacturing. “We’re now losing entire programs worth $20- or $30-million.

“We’re not asking for a wide-open border. There are solutions that don’t compromise Canadians’ safety. We’re talking a few hundred people; that would allow us to operate our businesses.

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“We’re at a crossroads where the future is still bright and we can continue on the ascendancy we’ve seen, or we can watch our industry get decimated.”

Azzopardi said his own company has lost a third of its sales because of the border situation.

With manufacturing being declared essential by the province, he added, industry officials are simply looking for clear rules that assure certainty of access at the border similar to health-care workers and truck drivers. He called the current situation a guessing game of how the rules will be enforced.

“My American competitors are loving it,” said Azzopardi, who is also CEO and president of Laval International. “We’ve essentially put up a trade barrier against ourselves.”

Though the petition didn’t launch publicly until Friday, over 1,000 signatures were contained in the first booklets handed over to Essex Conservative MP Chris Lewis to present to the House of Commons next week.

The campaign is a product of the recently created Windsor-Essex Border Task Force. The task force represents automakers and their supply chains, tool and die/mould makers, automation firms and service/technical professionals and owners.

Biafore Associates Inc. president Daniel Biafore said the scientific data justifies the manufacturing sector getting the access afforded other essential workers.

According to Ontario’s Workplace Safety and Insurance Board, COVID-19 cases related to manufacturing account for .065 per cent of all workplace cases in the province.

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“The sector has one of the best preventative programs in place,” said Biafore, whose firm offers consulting, training, auditing and quality control services.

“Looking at the data, industry isn’t bringing cases in from the U.S.”

Biafore believes a solution can be found to tweaking the border rules, but he’s also hedging his bets.

He admits he’s considering moving his firm to Michigan. Biafore said he does 80 per cent of his business with U.S. firms and has lost 25 per cent of it related to the uncertainty at the border.

“We’re also looking at legal action against the government,” Biafore said. “The basis being the province has designated us as essential workers and the federal government is overriding that.”

The more than 1,000 advanced manufacturing companies in Essex County generate $3.3 billion annually for the local economy while the area’s manufacturing servicing sector adds another $1 billion yearly to that total.

We’re just asking for consistency, consistency, consistency in how you treat all essential workers

Cavalier’s sales manager Tim Galbraith said his employer has also lost long-standing customers recently and was informed it was directly a result of the border issue.

“Based on their risk mitigation, the Canadian border uncertainty made them decide to place their business in the U.S.,” Galbraith said. “The uncertainty is hurting our business and it’s hurting (our industry’s) future.”

Graeme Hackett, who is a self-employed robotics technologist, said the border has evolved into a nightmare over the past nine months.

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For the past two and a half years he’s been working to help set up the new production lines at a General Motors plant in Arlington, Texas. The company pays for him to return home via Detroit’s Metro Airport every 12 days.

“They’re (border agents) treating me like a biomedical hazard,” said Hackett, who lives in the Chatham area.

“Approaching the booth, I’m just hoping the border agent hasn’t had a bad day — it’s different booth, different rules.

“You get different answers on whether you’re an essential worker from everyone you talk to. We’re just asking for consistency, consistency, consistency in how you treat all essential workers.”

He noted a work colleague at the Texas plant, who lives locally, pays to return home every weekend and hasn’t been quarantined.

Hackett said he’s very stringent in following the COVID-19 safety guidelines of masks, social distancing and self-isolating in Texas and at home.

“I get my temperature taken every day at the plant and I wear a mask all day,” Hackett said.

Hackett added the Canadian border policy isn’t just hurting local businesses and individuals crossing the border.

He said the inability to get essential workers back and forth across the border is proving an impediment to GM’s plans to retool and re-open the Oshawa Assembly plant and to convert the London-area’s CAMI plant for production of the company’s new EV600 electric delivery van.

“Canada is suffering because of our own rules,” Hackett said.

dwaddell@postmedia.com

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