GM prepares to turn out the lights on only Canadian plant outside Ontario

August 30, 2002 MONTREAL, The AP is reporting that an era in Quebec's business history ended Thursday.

Canada's lone auto assembly plant outside Ontario closed its doors after feeding the North American market with more than 4 million vehicles over 37 years.

The Quebec venture by the General Motors Corp. began in 1965 in a tiny town north of Montreal as Jean Lesage's Quiet Revolution had just swept the province. The auto pact, which spawned the growth of Canada's auto sector, was getting under way and everyone was bristling with enthusiasm and hope as one of the world's largest companies was coming to town.

"It was absolutely glorious," recalled Elie Fallu, mayor of neighboring Ste-Therese, who as a 33-year-old resident watched the early efforts to lure the company to the area.

Black and white photos depicted the joyous official opening ceremony that attracted political and business dignitaries from Quebec, Ottawa and the United States.

Hidden behind the smiles was the behind-the-scenes work to lure the plant to the Montreal region -- then Canada's leading financial center.

"It was a great struggle between Quebec and Ontario," said Fallu, who as the area's Parti Quebecois representative later watched the plant undergo years of success and tumult.

The host municipality, which later became known as Boisbriand, had to compete with another suitor along the Trans-Canada Highway near the Quebec-Ontario border.

The lower Laurentians town won out at the last minute, in part because of the plant's visibility to the many vehicles that would pass along what was then Quebec's lone highway outside Montreal.

It was also a period long before Quebecers became enamored with imports -- and when two-thirds of vehicles sold in Quebec sported the GM label.

The very first vehicle churned out from the assembly line was the 1966 Chevrolet Biscayne, a simple car with flat lines and a large trunk.

Over the next 27 years, until the arrival of such muscle cars as the Chevrolet Camaro and Pontiac Firebird, thousands of workers turned out a succession of cars destined for the North American market. Names like Belair, Impala, Strato Chief, Laurentian, Parisienne, Monza, Astra, Skyhawk, Sunbird, Sunfire, Cutlass, Grand Prix, Bonneville, Celebrity and Ciera.

The plant survived a 1970 wildcat strike and internal language battles over labor contracts that were available only in English.

Yet the factory soon lost its competitive advantage. At its peak, the plant supported 3,000 employees but only 1,200 remained as the final car exited the assembly line this week, destined for a GM museum.

Critics accuse the company of being too slow at retooling the plant as consumers turned to vans and sport-utility vehicles.

Independent analyst Charlie Reid said GM tried its best to salvage the facility but had to reduce overcapacity that was dragging down the company and the entire automaking industry.

"It's simply a market decision," said the Toronto-based analyst, noting that other companies moved a lot quicker, and often with less sensitivity than GM, to cut their losses.

Faced with high insurance costs, the Camaro and Firebird models had lost their allure among consumers. Consequently, the Quebec plant was producing some 40,000 units a year, well below its full capacity of 250,000.

Converting the rear-wheel assembly plant to another model would have been too expensive, Reid said.

"Everybody wants to look for a political reason for this but there really isn't one," the analyst said, dismissing suggestions that Quebec's often tumultuous political environment had a role to play.

GM's decision to pull out of Quebec marks a third strike in efforts to operate assembly plants in the province. Hyundai Motor Co. closed its Bromont facility in 1994 and Renault also made an unsuccessful attempt in St-Bruno, near Montreal.

A day after angry GM workers filed out of the Boisbriand plant, unsure about their employment future, union spokesman Yvon Morin maintained his optimism that another operator would step forward before the plant's scheduled demolition in 2004.

"We hope there will be other automotive plants in Quebec but for now there are no more Camaros and Firebirds, so there's no more industry in Quebec," Morin said Wednesday.

Industry observers say the arrival of a new Quebec auto plant is highly unlikely, in part because of market dynamics such as free trade and Quebec's distant location from the auto manufacturing hub in the U.S. Midwest.

While the plant's closure will hurt communities and families, it won't hamper Quebec's thriving auto parts industry, which employs four to five times as many people as the GM plant, said Gerry Fedchun, president of the Automotive Parts Manufacturers Association.

Quebec's low electrical costs may give it a competitive advantage in its push to develop a North American research and development center for the production of parts from lightweight metals such as aluminum and magnesium, he said.

That's what Boisbriand Mayor Robert Poirier is counting on as he pushes the government and GM to transform the facility.

"What we are trying to do here is transform the plant to the next generation of car -- the green car, the electric car -- that will be a better future for the region here."