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Ontario Premier Doug Ford acknowledged that his government was aware that massive layoffs at Algoma Steel were imminent, well before the province agreed to loan the company $100 million in taxpayer funds.
The steel giant announced Monday it would lay off roughly 1,000 workers as a Sault Ste. Marie plant closure is being made to adapt to a “fundamentally altered” landscape in the face of tariffs from the United States.
Weeks earlier, at the end of September, the Ontario and federal governments had partnered to loan Algoma a total of $500 million, 20 per cent of which was put up by the Ford government.
“This direct support will help Algoma pivot its operations away from U.S. dependent markets and remain a commercially viable and economically stable source of jobs, growth and opportunity in Northern Ontario,” the government said when it made the announcement.
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On Wednesday, however, Premier Doug Ford say the federal and provincial governments were informed by the company that hundreds of steel workers were about to lose their jobs – a fact the government failed to disclose to the public.
“What the CEO told us [there] would be a dramatic change if we didn’t put [funding] in. It’d be a lot more than a thousand people,” Ford told Global News at Queen’s Park.
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Ford referred to Algoma Steel as the “titanic,” which he said was “sinking up there,” and the government had limited choices to pursue.
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“We either save, you know, two-thirds or we don’t save anything,” Ford said. “And I believe in saving the company up there, allocating funds to keep them going.”
When asked whether additional jobs could have been saved if the governments offered a larger loan, Ford referred Global News to Algoma Steel.
Ford added that, without the taxpayer funds, “that plant wouldn’t be standing right now.”
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