TORONTO - Ontario's Liberal government is prepared to give General Motors more taxpayers' money for new projects despite thousands of layoffs recently announced by an automaker that's already received $235 million from the province, Premier Dalton McGuinty said Wednesday.

GM wants the Ontario and federal governments to contribute $140 million towards a new engine plant in St. Catharines, Ont., and a new research and development centre in Oshawa.

McGuinty said Ontario has no choice but to offer the automaker more money to invest in the province and create new jobs because of "stiff" competition from several American states that are also suffering job losses in manufacturing from the U.S. economic slowdown.

"Are we still in the game? Absolutely," McGuinty told reporters. "The industry continues to go through a restructuring that's affecting the North American auto market, and we will continue to stay in the game and work as hard as we can to land new investment."

The opposition parties were fuming Wednesday at what they said was the lack of job guarantees in the province's previous agreements to give money to automakers such as GM, which recently announced layoffs of 1,400 workers in Windsor and about 900 in Oshawa.

"We keep handing hundreds of millions of dollars to the Big Three then they keep coming back to the trough for more, yet people are still laid off and are losing their jobs," said NDP critic Paul Miller. "I believe that when we're spending taxpayers' money that we should have the right to know exactly what's involved in those agreements."

Conservative Christine Elliott, whose Whitby-Oshawa riding includes a large GM facility, said taxpayers have a right to know the details of the contracts to give provincial money to large, multi-nationals like General Motors.

"I wouldn't dismiss (another provincial investment) out of hand, especially where I come from. General Motors is the primary employer," said Elliott.

"But I think it's fair to say that any money that is given, especially in tough economic times, has to have certain guarantees that come along with it and it has to be transparent to the public."

In the legislature Wednesday, NDP Leader Howard Hampton said former Economic Development Minister Joe Cordiano had promised in 2005 that the province's $235-million investment in General Motors would guarantee jobs across Ontario.

"This is great news for the thousands of workers and their families who will benefit from new and secure jobs at General Motors," Hampton quoted Cordiano as saying.

But Hampton said he didn't have any faith that the Liberal government would demand a better deal for Ontario workers in any new contracts with automakers.

"What the record shows is that many of the boasts that have been made two and three years ago, that these (investments) were going to guarantee General Motors jobs across Ontario... have proven to be false," he said.

McGuinty said he didn't inherit a system that included guarantees for all the existing automotive jobs in Ontario, but would try to secure better job guarantees for any future investments of public money with auto companies.

"What we've started to do is create a new sector in Ontario where, as much as possible, we can attach certain restrictions and guarantees on a go forward basis," he said.

McGuinty also said the federal Conservative government should abandon its single-minded obsession with corporate tax cuts and agree to invest with the province in the new General Motors projects.

The premier couldn't say if Ontario had created more jobs than it has lost with its $500-million, auto-sector fund, but insisted the province has done very well compared with competing U.S. states like Michigan, Indiana and Ohio.

"There is undoubtedly a real challenge facing the global economy when it comes to the auto sector, but we have more than held our own," McGuinty told the legislature.

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