EV batteries promise to bring St. Thomas, Ont., jobs for decades — but how much did it cost us?

A former Volkswagen insider says Ontario's skilled labour pool and government subsidies likely played key roles in convincing the world's largest automaker to choose St.Thomas, Ont., as the site of its first North American EV battery plant.

Governments are promising the plant will bring jobs and prosperity for decades, but how much public money was paid in support to the automaker remains a closely guarded secret.

"Governments have be to part of the equation," federal industry minister Francois-Phillipe Champagne told Power and Politics host David Cochrane Monday on CBC Television when asked about what subsidies were given to VW to make the plant happen.

"We know other jurisdictions are willing to put more on the table. Where we win is around the talent."

The money, Champagne told Cochrane, would be disclosed "in due course," but until then, would remain a secret because it was too "commercially sensitive" to be released while federal officials are presumably courting other companies to set up shop in Canada. 

Vic Fedeli, Ontario minister of job creation economic development and trade, gave Afternoon Drive host Allison Devereaux a similar answer on CBC Radio Monday, saying the sum would have to come from the company itself. 

"Volkswagen will release the size of the plant, the dollar value, the employees, anything to do with numbers will be released by Volkswagen here, on the site, in St.Thomas in the very near future when the formal announcement is made," the minister said. 

For its part, Volkswagen said it isn't ready to disclose the information. 

"Unfortunately we're not releasing any more details at this point," Nicole Mommsen, VW's head of global communications, told CBC News in an email Wednesday. 

Senior government officials close to the deal told CBC News those details will likely come in April when the company, as well as the federal and provincial governments, make a formal on-site announcement about the new factory in St. Thomas. 

Until then analysts can only speculate, but former Volkswagen executive Andreas Schotter has a better idea than most. He was once a marketing and sales controller for the company as part of its North American division before he went into academia to teach international business strategy at the Richard Ivey School of Business at Western University in London, Ont. 

"They are under pressure right now," he said of the company Thursday. "They have to find other markets."

Schotter said Volkswagen is rapidly losing market share in China, the source of about 30 per cent of its revenue. Chinese automakers have become the world leaders in electric vehicles and are outperforming the company after it invested heavily in Asian markets and green technology in the wake of the diesel emissions scandal. 

"They see that they need to balance off the China potential risk they have because they threw everything into the China basket at one time and were banking on a home market that would remain very strong."