The Stelco steel works in Hamilton. Photo by Chris Walsh/Flickr.

Mark Carney made a lot of hay during the 2025 election about how Canadians were “Maîtres chez nous” (masters in our own home). Carney was invoking the rallying cry of Québec’s Quiet Revolution, which argued in the early 1960s that Québecers needed to control their own economic destiny, free from the dominance of English Canada and the United States. Carney sold this allusion to Canadians, calling them “part-owners” of a country standing up to Donald Trump.

The ongoing dispute over the Stelco steel works in Hamilton offers a test of just how seriously Carney takes that principle. American-owned Cleveland-Cliffs is pressing ahead with hundreds of layoffs at the Ontario steelmaker, despite warnings from Ottawa that the company may be violating employment commitments made in 2024. Industry Minister Mélanie Joly insists that “everything is on the table,” including legal action and a potential forced sale. Yet the government has stopped short of considering public ownership.

And here’s the contradiction: Carney’s hypercapitalist ideology sits uneasily with the ideals of “Maîtres chez nous.” For progressives during the Quiet Revolution, economic self-determination meant more than simply replacing English-speaking capitalists with Francophone ones. It meant bringing key sectors of the economy under public ownership and democratic control, most notably through the nationalization of Hydro-Québec.

So, if we take seriously the idea of making Canadians masters of their own economic destiny—and not merely servants of a domestic capitalist class—we must embrace democratic socialism. This is precisely what NDP leaders........

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