Oakville's Dana Canada is set to receive $3 million in funding as part of a $59 million investment from the feds announced last month.
Read more here: Oakville's Dana Canada to benefit from NGen funding
MP Anita Anand discussed the investment with reporters today at Dana's Oakville plant, located at 656 Kerr Street.
She was joined by Dana's Vice President of Power Technologies and the CTO of KA Imaging, a Waterloo-based company that will also receive part of the funding.
"Manufacturing is obviously an important part of any economy," said Anand. "What we've been doing from a federal government perspective is partnering with the industry to sustain competitive advantages and to make sure that businesses can grow."
"What we're doing today here at Dana in Oakville is to celebrate the next round of NGen advanced manufacturing projects with an investment of over $21 million to support 15 new collaborative projects, including right here at Dana."
Anand said that $15 million of the funding is allocated to projects that support the commercialization of quantum technologies, sensors, networks, or computing, to solve industrial and societal challenges, as well as those related to electric vehicles (EVs).
For Dana, their investment will go toward developing cooling components for EVs.
"This EV market is rapidly expanding," said Anand. "What we need to do is make sure that Canada maintains its competitive advantage and builds up its supply chain for EVs, and Dana and KA imaging have a significant role to play."
In response to questions from Oakville News, Anand said the $3 million is "primarily to grow the business here at Dana," and to "ensure that Oakville and Dana are leaders in the EV supply chain."
Steven Monte, Vice President of Power Technologies at Dana, did not explicitly state that the investment would lead to more local jobs but indicated that it would bring more of their operations closer to home.
"Accomplishing what we're going to accomplish and need way into the future, actually requires us to go outside," said Monte.
"We outsource into the states and outside of Canada, so this development is going to bring that process in-house in addition to actually enhancing the quality of the product."
The Dana plant in Oakville is a research and development centre and a prototype pilot production centre. Monte says the investment means activities that are currently being outsourced will be brought in-house, specifically, he mentioned it could mean deploying high-volume production.