GM Canada produces and distributes 10 million face masks

April 29, 2021 · 0 Comments

By Brian Lockhart

GM Canada switched gears to help the pandemic effort over the past year by producing 10 million face masks at cost for the Public Health Agency of Canada.

The masks were produced at the company’s Oshawa Operations plant and they completed the production run on April 8.

The plant produced approximately 1 million masks per month to help protect front-line workers and Canadians during the COVID-19 pandemic.

The company issued a statement saying, “This past year hasn’t been easy, but so many of you stepped up to help by donating gloves, hand sanitizers, and masks to our collection depots across Canada, offered vehicles to local restaurants to help keep their doors open, running prescriptions and groceries to senior in-need, and by donating to foodbanks, shelters and community services.”

The company took it up a notch and produced nearly 500,000 additional masks with 1,000 of those masks being sent to each dealership across the country.

The hope is for the dealerships to continue the goodwill by donating those masks to local organizations in the community.

In Orangeville, MacMaster GMC received their masks from the Oshawa plant and have started giving them to local organizations.

“GM made 10 million masks since May,” explained MacMaster Business Relations Manager, David Murphy. “They converted their production facilities to make proper grade masks at the operations centre in Oshawa right near headquarters. They made the masks, they told the government they would, then made around 500,000 additional and donated 1,000 to each GM Canada dealer across Canada.

“We’ve chosen four charities to receive these. We are donating to Choices Youth Shelter, Lord Dufferin Retirement Centre, and the Orangeville Food Bank.”

They are still making a determination on the fourth charity that will receive the masks.

“This collaborative team effort across GM Canada to help in every way we can, is what we do at General Motors – and our collective response to the pandemic is one of the proudest moments in our history,” said Scott Bell, president and managing director of GM Canada.