THUNDER BAY — A federal politician and a union leader believe Thunder Bay's Bombardier plant may have a role to play in Canada's battle against COVID-19.
Thunder Bay-Rainy River MP Marcus Powlowski and Unifor Local 1075 President Dominic Pasqualino say there's potential for the plant to manufacture ventilators.
Both point to the plant's history producing ships and aircraft in wartime.
"This is a time of national need. This amounts to a war," Powlowski said in an interview.
The Liberal MP said discussions are still in the preliminary stage.
"Canada has pretty limited capacity [to manufacture ventilators] so we're looking to see if alternate manufacturers can help...Bombardier can make almost anything," Powlowski said.
He noted that the Thunder Bay plant has capabilities beyond the car factories in southern Ontario which are basically just assembly plants.
"The plant here really makes a lot of stuff. I don't know what's going on specifically with that, but I think we have a lot of capacity," Powlowski said.
The MP has already raised the issue with Bombardier.
It's not clear whether Bombardier has officially notified the government of its interest in participating in procurements related to COVID-19.
Pasqualino, however, described it as "a fantastic idea."
He spoke about it Tuesday, shortly after Bombardier announced it was shutting down work at all its Canadian operations until April 26 due to the current pandemic.
"We'd be excited to be part of the solution to this worldwide problem," Pasqualno said.
He said he'd spoken to Powlowski about Bombardier converting to ventilator production, and agreed with him that the plant holds an advantage over other companies because "we actually make things."
Producing ventilators, however, is far different from manufacturing mass transit vehicles.
"I don't know about requirements, about the hygiene or the particular parts or what it takes to do that, these are all things that are likely being looked at now. Hopefully it can happen as soon as possible," Pasqualino said.
He said the plant has lots of space to work on a new product, and has "good engineers and a good system in the plant. Hopefully we can help out with our technical knowledge."
