Federal industry minister spoke to reporters during a media scrum today in Ottawa
Federal Industry Minister Mélanie Joly said Tuesday that she’s working closely with representatives of the United Steelworkers and Algoma Steel Group Inc. to ensure a brighter future for 1,000 workers laid off by the company on Monday.
“My point is we’ll continue to fight for these jobs,” Joly told reporters during a media scrum in Ottawa.
Here’s a full transcript of her remarks:
My thoughts are definitely with the workers, their families.
I know this is a tough time, particularly just before Christmas, and so I’ve been in contact with the company’s leadership.
I’ve been in contact with the chief executive officer [Michael Garcia], the chief financial officer [Rajat Marwah] and also with Marty Warren [United Steelworkers national director for Canada].
We know that the entire steel sector in Canada has been mostly organized over supporting the U.S. automakers and our business model before the tariffs was actually organized around that market.
And because of the unjustified and unjustifiable American tariffs, which are at 50 per cent, our steel sector is not able to send steel on the other side of the border to the U.S. automakers.
So in that sense, we’ve been working with the company to make sure that they were adapting their business model.
And that is why we provided this fall, $400 million to the company, and Ontario also provided $100 million and the goal was to make sure that the company would get through these months.
While they were working on pivoting and adapting their entire operations, we’ve been working with them on … also on a new plate steel plant in order to support the housing sector and also the defence sector.
And we think that through these investments, there can be more jobs that come back to Algoma, and which will be the case for many steel plants across the country.
We also think that our Buy Canada policy is working.
Algoma has now received orders from Irving shipyards and also from Seaspan Shipyards, two important shipyards across the country.
Now, is it enough? We still need to be at it, and I know that this is not a perfect answer to those who were affected.
But my point is we’ll continue to fight for these jobs.
We’ll be working with the union. We’ll be working with the company, and we’ll make sure that the future can be brighter right now for the steel workers and the steel sector.