A Toronto councillor may want to ban future Mexican-made General Motors vehicles from the city's fleet, but it may just be a symbolic gesture.
Ward 11 Cllr. Mike Layton will bring a motion to council next week to stop purchasing GM vehicles manufactured in Mexico, should the impending closure of the Oshawa plant happen.
However, there are no vehicles of the sort on the way for Toronto anyway.
City staff confirm of the 5,500 vehicles in the fleet, 372 are from GM, but only 26 came from Mexico and all are from 2012 or older.
And while there are 87 GM vehicles on order, none are coming from the country.
Layton told NEWSTALK1010 that it's important to stand in solidarity with Oshawa workers.
"We're following their cue," he said. "This is their boycott that they're leading."
"The desire is that draw enough attention to this issue that GM will start reconsidering what they're doing to the people of Oshawa."
In a statement, Mayor John Tory said while he wants to hear more from city staff on the issue, he supported the motion and Unifor President Jerry Dias said it does send a message.
"It's good to see that the City of Toronto understands that they have to get General Motors' attention," he said. "It's going to have (the closure) a negative impact on the city of Toronto."
All purchasing by the city of fleet vehicles is done by public tender and this year, the city is expecting to buy about 300 public works vehicles to replace those that have reached the end of their shelf life.
Dias said the boycott wouldn't have a potentially negative effect on auto parts jobs in the province.
"The amount of auto parts jobs that are tied into Mexico is miniscule at best," he said. "There's no auto parts plants in Canada that build in Canada that strictly build for the Mexican market."
He maintained they won't be calling for a company-wide boycott of GM products, only those manufactured in Mexico.
With files from Siobhan Morris