{"id":323757,"date":"2025-12-04T00:27:14","date_gmt":"2025-12-04T00:27:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/323757\/"},"modified":"2025-12-04T00:27:14","modified_gmt":"2025-12-04T00:27:14","slug":"ford-says-he-knew-layoffs-were-coming-before-loaning-algoma-steel-100m","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/323757\/","title":{"rendered":"Ford says he knew layoffs were coming before loaning Algoma Steel $100M"},"content":{"rendered":"

Ontario Premier Doug Ford acknowledged that his government was aware that massive layoffs at Algoma Steel<\/a> were imminent, well before the province agreed to loan the company $100 million in taxpayer funds.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

The steel giant announced Monday it would lay off roughly 1,000 workers<\/a> as a Sault Ste. Marie plant closure is being made to adapt to a \u201cfundamentally altered\u201d landscape in the face of tariffs from the United States.<\/p>\n

\u201cAs part of the closure of its blast furnace and coke making operations, Algoma has made the difficult decision to issue approximately 1,000 layoff notices today, effective in 16 weeks on March 23, 2026,\u201d the company said in a statement.<\/p>\n

It went on to say the decision to close the plant and lay off workers was \u201cnecessary\u201d given what it described as \u201cextraordinary and external market forces.\u201d<\/p>\n

Weeks earlier, at the end of September, the Ontario and federal governments had partnered to loan Algoma a total of $500 million, 20 per cent of which was put up by the Ford government.<\/p>\n

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\u201cThis direct support will help Algoma pivot its operations away from U.S. dependent markets and remain a commercially viable and economically stable source of jobs, growth and opportunity in Northern Ontario,\u201d the government said when it made the announcement.<\/p>\n

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On Wednesday, however, Premier Doug Ford said the federal and provincial governments were informed by the company that hundreds of steelworkers were about to lose their jobs \u2013 a fact the government failed to disclose to the public.<\/p>\n

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\u201cWhat the CEO told us [there] would be a dramatic change if we didn\u2019t put [funding] in. It\u2019d be a lot more than a thousand people,\u201d Ford told Global News at Queen\u2019s Park.<\/p>\n

Ford referred to Algoma Steel as the \u201ctitanic,\u201d which he said was \u201csinking up there,\u201d and the government had limited choices to pursue.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe either save, you know, two-thirds or we don\u2019t save anything,\u201d Ford said. \u201cAnd I believe in saving the company up there, allocating funds to keep them going.\u201d<\/p>\n

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When asked whether additional jobs could have been saved if the governments offered a larger loan, Ford referred Global News to Algoma Steel.<\/p>\n

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Ford added that, without the taxpayer funds, \u201cI don\u2019t think that plant would be standing right now.\u201d<\/p>\n

Minister of Economic Development, Job Creation and Trade, Vic Fedeli, insisted the idea that layoffs would eventually come to Algoma Steel was a widely known fact.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe investment that we made in Algoma was necessary, first of all, just to keep the doors open, to make sure that they\u2019re available to be open today,\u201d he said. \u201cWe saw the union say they knew these lay-offs were coming because of the electric arc furnace.\u201d<\/p>\n

Fedeli did not say exactly when Algoma had confirmed to the government layoffs were on the way.<\/p>\n

\u201cAll of the unions, everybody has known for a long time that these layoffs wouldn\u2019t be coming eventually,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

Opposition critics, however, accused the government of handing money out without setting strict enough terms.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe government did not do that; they refused to attach strings,\u201d Ontario NDP Leader Marit Stiles said. \u201cAnd here we are. They have known this was coming for years.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\t\t&copy 2025 Global News, a division of Corus Entertainment Inc.\t<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Ontario Premier Doug Ford acknowledged that his government was aware that massive layoffs at Algoma Steel were imminent,…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":323758,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[16599,45,49,48,8334,46,13403,13404,714],"class_list":["post-323757","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-economy","tag-algoma-steel","tag-business","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-donald-trump-tariffs","tag-economy","tag-ford-government","tag-ontario-politics","tag-politics"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/323757","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=323757"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/323757\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/323758"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=323757"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=323757"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=323757"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}