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He said in a phone interview that the plant closure would have ripple effects well beyond the city of roughly 170,000.

“It’s going to affect the province, it’s going to affect the region … The auto industry’s been a big part of the province of Ontario for over 100 years.

“This country has also invested a lot in General Motors,” he added, referring to the 2009 bailout that saw the federal and provincial governments invest billions in GM and Chrysler to keep the companies afloat.

Opening in 1907 as a manufacturing base for the Canadian McLaughlin Motor Car Company, both the plant and company were purchased by General Motors 11 years later.

Production reached its peak in the 1980s after a nearly $8-billion investment GM’s Canadian manufacturing facilities, making Oshawa ‘Autoplex’ one of the biggest assembly plants in the world, boasting a workforce of over 40,000.

Nearly 4,000 jobs were lost when, in late 2005, GM announced the closure of Oshawa’s No. 2. plant and the elimination of a shift at the No. 1 plant.

That was followed in 2008 with the closure of the city’s truck plant, leading to a nearly two-week blockade of GM Canada’s head office in Oshawa.

GM also owns CAMI Automotive in Ingersoll, Ont. — the current production base for the Chevrolet Equinox — and the St. Catharines Propulsion Plant, responsible for building GM’s larger-bore V6 and V8 SUV and truck engines, as well as all-wheel-drive transmissions.

The fate of those two operations weren’t known at press time.

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Sources tell theSun Ontario Premier Doug Ford will be commenting on the closure Monday.

Former Canadian Auto Workers head Buzz Hargrove told the Sun news of the closure left him reeling.

“I’m shocked,” he said.

“It seems like Trump’s strategy is working beyond belief.”

Earlier this year, U.S. President Donald Trump threatened to slap a 25% tariff on Canadian auto imports — part of his ongoing campaign of brinkmanship on trade and coming shortly after the United States imposed similar tariffs on imported steel and aluminum.

Threats of an auto import tariff prompted warnings from Foreign Affairs Minister Chrystia Freeland that Canada would respond in kind should Trump decide to carry out his plan.

According to GM’s website, the Oshawa Assembly Plant employs 2,522 workers with Unifor Local 222.

Unifor issued a statement Sunday evening saying they received word from GM of a ‘major announcement’ on Monday, but was given no further details.

“While the union does not have complete details of the overall announcement we have been informed that, as of now, there is no product allocated to the Oshawa Assembly Plant past December 2019,” the statement reads.

“Based on commitments made during 2016 contract negotiations, Unifor does not accept this announcement and is immediately calling on GM to live up to the spirit of that agreement.”