The Prime Minister François Legault and his Economy Minister Pierre Fitzgibbon will announce this morning the arrival of the Swedish company Northvolt, which will build a mega-factory worth $7 billion with almost $1.4 billion in public funds. Quebecois, as reported The newspaper Mid-September.
Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and his Innovation Minister François-Philippe Champagne will take part in the press conference.
According to our information, Ottawa will provide equivalent assistance from Quebec, bringing the total public investment of all kinds in the mega-factory to around $3 billion.
This major announcement comes as Ford just paused construction of its $3.5 billion battery factory in Michigan to reassess the viability of its project.
Unlicensed workers
In Sweden, Northvolt has just been exonerated in court after Hungarian and Serbian workers were found on their premises without work permits.
“In 2021, a government inspection discovered two construction companies working as subcontractors for one of the local construction companies, employing a total of 12 workers with false work permits from Hungary and Serbia and with salaries below Swedish collective agreements,” said Anders Thor, vice president for communications at Northvolt, reported in detail to the Journal.
“A legal proceeding was initiated to verify whether Northvolt had legal responsibility for these workers on site, which ended on September 15, 2023 and cleared Northvolt of all charges,” he said.
Billion Dollar Waltz
Earlier this month, after announcing a $150 million loan for the $750 million Volta copper sheet project in Granby, Le Journal calculated that total investment in the battery sector is already at more than $1.2 billion -dollars.
In mid-September, Le Journal reported that citizens of the Richelieu Valley rejected Northvolt’s billionaire project before it was even announced.
We also learned that the $28.2 billion in subsidies for Stellantis-LGES and Volkswagen will not be profitable over the next 20 years, according to the parliamentary budget director.
-More details to follow.