Joly Tells Stelco’s American Owner the Layoffs Are Not an Act of God

Keenan Hutka October 8, 2026 2 minutes read

OTTAWA – October 8, 2026 – Industry Minister Mélanie Joly has told Cleveland-Cliffs it cannot blame U.S. steel tariffs for planned Stelco layoffs and then treat the cuts as force majeure, not when the American parent’s chief executive has publicly backed those tariffs.

Joly sent a letter Monday to Stelco president Paul Simon. She wants a plan for how the company will meet the undertakings it gave Ottawa when Cleveland-Cliffs bought the Hamilton plant in 2024 under the Investment Canada Act. Those included keeping more than 1,500 jobs, the union positions and most of the non-union ones. Stelco has said it may lay off up to 500. As of Wednesday, Joly said Ottawa had not received a reply.

“He’s in favour of these U.S. tariffs against steel,” she said of Cleveland-Cliffs chief executive Lourenco Goncalves. “They cannot say that this is now an act of God or force majeure.” If the plan does not come, she said, Ottawa will use “the full force of the law.” One remedy on the table, raised in the legal discussion around the letter, is a court-ordered divestiture, a forced sale.

The company has said the jobs could come back if Ottawa and Washington settle the trade fight. That is a condition, not a commitment. Canada approved the foreign takeover on a jobs promise. Two years later the owner wants to cut hundreds of those jobs and point at a tariff policy its own chief executive supported.

Northwestern Ontario does not have a Stelco mill. It does have the same tariff file, and it just watched LNG Canada’s Kitimat expansion go back to a Chinese state yard for the modules because no Canadian shop could build them. Joly is now threatening a Hamilton plant over 500 jobs. The letter is the test of whether the 2024 conditions meant anything.