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Workers at the General Motors Oshawa assembly plant.Moe Doiron/The Globe and Mail

Stephen Carlisle will take the wheel as president of General Motors of Canada Ltd., replacing Kevin Williams, whose tenure was marked by a decline in market share and a series of lawsuits by dealers, former dealers and former employees.

Mr. Carlisle, 52, takes over from Kevin Williams, 53, who was appointed in March, 2010, as the economy and the vehicle market were rebounding from the 2008-09 recession. GM Canada was dealing with the fallout from that downturn and the aftermath of its parent company's descent into Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection in 2009. Mr. Williams is retiring from GM.

Many of the issues Mr. Williams faced arose from the recession, notably the company's decision to terminate more than 200 of its Canadian dealers. That led to a class-action lawsuit that is winding up in a Toronto courtroom, a separate suit by other dealers whose franchises GM Canada sought to eliminate and two other lawsuits by dealers who survived the winnowing.

There are also lawsuits in Canada filed by people whose family members were killed or injured as a result of the auto maker's delay in recalling vehicles with faulty ignition switches.

Mr. Carlisle, who was born in Woodstock, Ont., and began his career at GM as a co-op student in 1982, will arrive when GM Canada's market share is at its lowest point yet and the company has slipped to third place in the annual sales race it led for decades before the recession.

When Mr. Williams was appointed in March 2010, Ford Motor Co. of Canada Ltd. had just overtaken GM as the sales leader in Canada, a position the Oakville, Ont.-based auto maker has successfully defended since then.

GM Canada's market share fell to 13.5 per cent last year – where it stands now – from 15.8 per cent in 2010. Vehicle sales are on track this year to be about 246,000, up about 5 per cent from last year and at about the same level as 2010.

Market share "is a significant priority," Mr. Carlisle said in an interview Thursday "because the reality is for us to be sustainable as a brand or a family of brands, we have to grow, there's no doubt about that."

A strong flow of new products during the next 12 to 18 months in core segments of the market should help boost share, he said.

In contrast to GM's performance since the recession, Chrysler Canada Inc., whose parent company also went through Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection in 2009, is on track for record sales above 270,000 this year, compared with 162,395 in 2009. It now stands second in the market with a share of 15.6 per cent, compared with 10.7 per cent in 2010.

Mr. Carlisle's key job is as sales chief, which means the open revolt among the company's dealers in Canada will be a crucial issue.

"He needs to get peace with his customers – the dealers – by getting these lawsuits settled," said one dealer who spoke on condition that he not be identified.

That means, the dealer said, awarding the Chevrolet franchise to Buick-GMC dealers who lost Pontiac in 2009 when GM eliminated the brand, compensate nearby Chevrolet dealers if necessary and allocate funds to Toronto dealers similar to marketing programs developed for major U.S. urban markets.

Mr. Carlisle said the first call he made from the auto maker's headquarters in Oshawa, Ont. was to members of the company's dealer council.

"Our fates are intertwined here," he said. "We have all this great product and to take full advantage of that to our mutual benefit we have to work together and find a way through some of these issues."

The future of GM's assembly operations in Oshawa is a major worry among unionized workers, retirees, parts makers and some government officials.

About 3,800 unionized employees work at two existing car factories and there are thousands more at nearby parts suppliers.

One of the two car factories is scheduled to close in 2016. Next door, production of the Chevrolet Camaro will be shifted to Lansing, Mich. next year and there are no new or redesigned products allocated to the plant after 2018.

"We need a champion within GM to fight for jobs in Canada," said Jerry Dias, president of Unifor, which represents workers at GM assembly plants in Oshawa and Ingersoll, Ont., as well as an engine and transmission factory in St. Catharines, Ont.

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