When you make crappy cars and you primarily rely on a weak Canadian dollar to compete with your world rivals you’re bound to hit some snags along the way. Case in point GM, they just can’t make ends meet so what happened?

General Motors of Canada will cut 1,200 jobs at an Ontario truck plant in January, a move the Canadian Auto Workers Union says shows the effect of slumping U.S. housing and credit markets on the already struggling auto industry (sure, that’s the only reason why…..)

GM decided last week to kill a night shift at its truck plant (third shift), effective January. Company officials blamed the move on a sluggish U.S. economy — fuelled by problems in the country’s banking sector — that has softened demand for GM’s pickup trucks.

The layoffs, he added, are permanent and effective Jan. 1, 2008. The move will reduce output from the plant to two shifts from three for the first time in more than a decade.

Another for Canadian auto workers, who have had to contend with plant closings in Windsor, Ontario, earlier this year and the permanent shutdown of dozens of auto parts plants in Ontario that supplied Detroit’s Big Three.