Fact-based journalism that sparks the Canadian conversation

Articles Business Environment Health Politics Arts & Culture Society

Special Series Hope You’re Well For the Love of the Game Living Rooms In Other Worlds: A Space Exploration Terra Cognita More special series >

For the Love of the Game

In Other Worlds: A Space Exploration

More special series >

Events The Walrus Talks The Walrus Video Room The Walrus Leadership Roundtables The Walrus Leadership Forums Article Club

The Walrus Video Room

The Walrus Leadership Roundtables

The Walrus Leadership Forums

Subscribe Renew your subscription Change your address Magazine Issues Newsletters Podcasts

Renew your subscription

The Walrus Lab Hire The Walrus Lab Amazon First Novel Award

Amazon First Novel Award

First Algoma, Now Stelco: Layoffs Tear Through Canada’s Steel Towns

How Hamilton and Sault Ste. Marie are feeling the hit of Trump’s tariffs

On September 28, Canadian steel giant Stelco made a huge announcement—the latest fallout of the Canada–United States trade war. The company would idle its cold-rolled and galvanizing lines at its manufacturing facility Hamilton Works starting October 9, laying off up to 500 workers across Hamilton and its Lake Erie Works mill in Nanticoke, about 350 of them in Hamilton itself, the union representing those workers said.

The same day, US president Donald Trump, touting a new steel investment in Iowa, predicted Canada would accept “a fair deal” within three or four weeks, calling the country “really very difficult to deal with” and pointing to the Iowa investment as evidence his tariffs are forcing manufacturing to relocate to the US.

There is some basis to Trump’s bombast. The steel industry is crucial to Canada’s economy. It supports about 23,000 direct jobs across the country and contributed roughly $3 billion to the national gross domestic product in 2024. Production is concentrated almost entirely in two Ontario cities. In Hamilton, Dofasco, owned by ArcelorMittal, Canada’s top steel producer, is the city’s single largest private employer, with about 4,500 workers; Stelco, across its Hamilton and Nanticoke operations, employs around 2,000 more. In Sault Ste. Marie, Algoma Steel is the only major producer and the city’s largest employer—before this year, it had 2,366 workers in a city of about 72,000.

Both cities were hit by the same US tariffs: a 25 percent levy on Canadian steel and aluminum imposed on March 12, 2025, later doubled to 50 percent. Until recently, only one of them had lost a substantial part of its steel workforce. Algoma issued roughly 1,000 layoff notices in December 2025, effective March 23 this year; one of its two unions, USW Local 2724, saw its own membership fall from 520 to 280.

Now Hamilton has losses of its own, smaller in scale but a break from a run of relative calm. Stelco’s Hamilton workers had been protected from layoffs under a federal commitment tied to American manufacturer Cleveland-Cliffs’ 2024 purchase of the company. The company now says the market for cold-rolled and galvanized products has reduced by nearly a quarter since 2024, and that total steel tonnage won’t change: production is shifting to Lake Erie Works, and most Hamilton workers affected will be offered jobs there instead. That distinction matters, because the federal commitment obligates Cleveland-Cliffs to maintain Stelco’s overall unionized employment levels, not necessarily jobs in Hamilton specifically.

Hamilton mayor Andrea Horwath has said she doubts the number of jobs actually offered to affected workers will be very much and questioned how the layoffs could happen at all given that five-year undertaking. “The fight is not over,” she said. Prime Minister Mark Carney has accused Cleveland-Cliffs of betraying workers and threatened legal action against the company. As of October 1, union president Ron Wells said only about forty laid-off Hamilton workers had been offered a position at Lake Erie Works.

On October 5, Industry Minister Mélanie Joly gave Stelco until October 13 to present a plan for honouring its undertakings, while in an October 9 letter, Stelco president Paul Simon replied that the layoffs do not breach them and called Ottawa’s claim false. He also cited changing market conditions, including US........

© The Walrus