Federal NDP Leader Avi Lewis and Ontario NDP Leader Marit Stiles are calling on the federal government to nationalize Hamilton-based steelmaker Stelco, amid layoffs Industry Minister Mélanie Joly says violate the company’s agreement under the Investment Canada Act.
In a release Tuesday, Lewis said the federal government should take “immediate action” after Stelco’s American owner Cleveland-Cliffs broke its commitment to maintain the same number of unionized workers and similar numbers of non-union workers for five years when it bought the company in 2024.
Joly has vowed to take Cleveland-Cliffs to court, saying Saturday in a post on X that “all options are on the table” as government lawyers consider next steps. But Lewis said Tuesday that going through the courts will take too long to save those whose jobs are in the crosshairs.
“Canada cannot afford to lose its steel industry,” he said. “If we’re serious about saving these jobs and the Canadian steel industry, we need immediate action.”
An industrial worker walks near the Stelco Hamilton Works on Oct. 9. The American steelmaker announced 300 to 350 layoffs at the plant amid the ongoing Canada-U.S. trade war. (Evan Mitsui/CBC)
Lewis noted that the United Kingdom nationalized British Steel in July, saying the move protected “thousands of jobs.” In September, the U.K. government announced plans for the public takeover of another steelmaker, Specialty Steel.
Lewis also jabbed at Cleveland-Cliffs CEO Lourenco Goncalves, who has expressed support for the U.S. tariffs on foreign steel that led to these layoffs, saying they “are designed to deindustrialize our economy and destroy our manufacturing base.”
Goncalves maintains the company is within the law to conduct layoffs because they are temporary, until Canada and the United States reach a trade deal.
“There is no provision in the contract that I have to keep employment at a certain level every single day of the five years,” Goncalves told CBC’s Rosemary Barton Live on Sunday.
“If that was an imposition of the Canadian government, I would not have accepted.”
Ontario NDP says Ford should offer steel industry relief
Speaking at Queen’s Park on Tuesday, Stiles pushed for Ontario Premier Doug Ford to “work with the federal government to push Cleveland-Cliffs to give up their ownership interest in Stelco and establish public ownership and Canadian management.”
“The cost of not doing this is thousands of jobs. It’s spinoffs. It’s the whole community of Hamilton that is impacted,” she said. “The industry will lose out if we let Stelco go under.”
In a release issued the same day, Stiles and her Ontario NDP colleagues from Hamilton — MPPs Sandy Shaw and Robin Lennox — also said Ford should “get back to work and deliver a tariff relief package for the steel industry,” as well as a “Buy Ontario First” procurement strategy. The Ontario government remains on a 21-week summer break that ends Oct. 27.
CBC Hamilton asked Ford’s office for a response to the calls for nationalization but did not hear back by the time of publication.
When asked last week whether his government would consider such an action, Prime Minister Mark Carney said he would wait to hear Cleveland-Cliffs’ response to Joly’s letter demanding the jobs be reinstated, and then he would “take appropriate action.”
The company has since declined to reverse the layoffs.
Time now to consider public ownership, prof says
Nicolas Lamp, associate professor at the faculty of law and school of policy studies at Queen’s University, told CBC Hamilton last week he thinks the government should step in and take public ownership before Canada’s steel expertise is lost.
“At the moment when Canada is trying to build a lot of infrastructure, major plants, major projects, it’s really a question of whether Canada should just let all that expertise kind of die,” he said.
Lamp pointed to the purchase of the Trans Mountain pipeline from Kinder Morgan in 2018 as an example of the federal government taking on major infrastructure from a private company.
Mike Watt, whose career at Stelco spans 20 years, standing outside the Stelco Hamilton Works on Oct. 9 after receiving a layoff notice. (Evan Mitsui/CBC)
“I’m not saying we should definitely nationalize it,” he said.
“I would say that the Canadian government really has to look very closely at what the reasons for these layoffs are and whether a company that was more sympathetic — that had the Canadian workers and also the Canadian national interest in mind — would act similarly.”
Last week, federal Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre said he supports the government taking legal action against Stelco. He reiterated that Tuesday, but said the best way to fix this problem would be getting a deal to remove the tariffs.
“Our message to the prime minister is get back to the table and get a tariff-free deal,” he said in Windsor on Tuesday.
“The workers at Stelco, Stellantis, Ford and every other trade-dependent company in this country are relying on the PM to keep his word and get a deal.”
