Streetcar production 'dramatically increased' at Thunder Bay Bombardier plant, but issues remain

Bombardier continues to ramp up production on its ongoing streetcar contract with the Toronto Transit Commission, but there's still a lot of ground to make up, according to the president of the union local representing Thunder Bay workers.

Bombardier and the TTC signed the deal in 2009. Under the contract, Bombardier is to build and deliver 204 new streetcars for use in Toronto by 2019.

Those cars are being built at Bombardier's Thunder Bay plant using components produced by the company's facilities elsewhere in Canada and Mexico. While the production process is improving, the union said, the project is still fraught with delays.

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"It's a tough thing, but I think Toronto should be assured to know the rate has dramatically increased, and it seems to be sustainable," said Dominic Pasqualino, the president of the Unifor local which represents workers at the plant in the northwestern Ontario city.

"Whether we're going to meet our deadline for this year, I don't know."

Bombardier has said it was revising its delivery target for 2017 from 70 cars down to 65.

Pasqualino said the local plant was completing just one car-per-month in January. Now, he said, they're up to about one per-week, with the goal of eventually completing a car every three days.

Parts problems

"It's a very complicated car," Pasqualino said. "And there are revisions; there always will be."

"It's a lot harder when the revisions are done in another country where you have to notify them," he continued. "Whereas before, we might have walked down to the person that was making a panel and tell him 'listen, this panel needs to be an eighth of an inch shorter.'"

Many of the parts for the cars are being made in other Canadian Bombardier plants, as well as in Mexico.

In fact, a group of workers from Mexico is in Thunder Bay this week, fixing issues with streetcar flooring made in a Mexican Bombardier plant.

"They have four or five people up here working on midnights ... to repair that job," Pasqualino said, adding that employees from Mexico have been to the northwestern Ontario plant before. "When you're running into a tight deadline at the end of the year, any little hiccup, it's hard to recover from that."

2019 goal 'achievable'

Pasqualino said the overall goal of 204 cars by 2019 is "achievable," but noted that damage has been done to the Bombardier brand due to the TTC contract.

"Bombardier's reputation has diminished," he said. "But the other thing that a lot of people fail to realize is that there's been a complete change in upper management in Bombardier in the last year, year-and-a-half."

"There's been brand-new people here who have been very dedicated to make sure that the mistakes of the past aren't repeated, but that's a big ship to turn around."