Chris Selley: Handing a ‘blank cheque’ to Stelco wouldn’t have been so unusual for Canada

A view of some of what remains of Stelco from across Burlington Bay in Hamilton, Ont., on Wednesday, June 3, 2026. Photo by Peter Power /Postmedia

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Barring some successful last-minute inducement, Stelco — that is, the Steel Company of Canada, est. 1910, Hamilton, Ont. — is “indefinitely” idling its cold-rolled and galvanized operations, at an estimated cost of 350 to 500 jobs.

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Prime Minister Mark Carney is “very disappointed.” He has vowed to pursue remedy under the terms of the government approval of Stelco’s 2024 sale to Cleveland-Cliffs, the Ohio-based steel colossus. (Alas for Hamilton, and every other steel town, there are several steel towns across North America.)

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Those terms, as the government tells it, stipulate that Stelco must “continue to employ at least the same number of unionized employees and the vast majority of non-unionized employees as were employed when the transaction was announced,” per a statement from Innovation, Science and Economic Development Canada. The condition is supposedly “binding.”

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We’ll see. I wouldn’t run to Polymarket to bet on it. If those rules were transparently, unambiguously binding, we presumably wouldn’t be having this discussion. Cleveland-Cliffs would just sheepishly be cutting cheques or abandoning its relocation plans entirely and erecting some kind of steel apology statue in Hamilton’s Jackson Square.

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Over the years, how many politicians have you heard saying, “I’m mad as hell and will see them in court” after a company pulls out, steps back or rejiggers Canadian versus international operations. Do you ever remember anything coming of all that high dudgeon? When it does, it’s usually pretty meagre.

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It’s tough to demand your money back when the recipient is insolvent, of course. Come on down, Sweden’s Northvolt and its now-abandoned $7-billion battery plant near Montreal.

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It’s just as tough if the company is a “Quebec champion.” Remember Bombardier up and selling its CSeries program to Airbus for a song? We paid for those stupid planes, which are now Airbus A220s. Delta Air Lines has 93 of them in their fleet. Air Canada has 47 flying around, laughing at us, mocking our very sovereignty.

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The 2008 bailouts at GM and Stellantis came with a $2.8-billion loss to taxpayers, according to one analysis. Then there were the many other trips to the well for the Big Three in southern Ontario. The feds are taking Stellantis to court for moving Jeep Compass production from Brampton, Ont., after taking hundreds of millions of taxpayer dollars to retool the plant.

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And there are many other examples, and they follow a familiar pattern: “You can’t do that!” says politician; company does it; everyone has a few minutes to rage; and then regular life resumes, with no one really following up on how much money, if any, we get back or don’t.

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Global News sources framed the Stelco situation interestingly, one can reasonably presume with government approval. Team Canada apparently tried “everything we could.”