Western Standard - Hamilton MP says HUNDREDS will be laid off before Christmas

00:00:00.000 Now it's hit home. It's hit home to me. It's hit home to Hamilton. It's hit home to local

00:00:05.240 1005. And when I say it's a crisis, 100% it's a crisis. You have 350 families that are going

00:00:13.200 to be out of a job before Christmas. And it probably is going to be more. And I don't

00:00:19.100 want to sound that alarm, but that's what I'm hearing today.

00:00:30.000 So, Stelco announced this week that it will indefinitely idle its cold-rolled and co-hosted

00:00:37.680 operations at Hamilton Works, leaving hundreds of workers facing layoffs. The company points

00:00:43.360 to US tariffs, weakening demand, and continued pressure from foreign steel imports as major

00:00:49.360 factors began the closure. I'm joined with MP Ned Couric. Ned, this is your community,

00:00:54.160 so what are you hearing directly from your constituents and the people that are either

00:00:57.920 the families or the workers that are affected by these layoffs well i i got a very disturbing call

00:01:05.440 yesterday uh early i wouldn't say morning but you know around i think it was around noon and

00:01:12.160 i got a call from a gentleman who works for local 1005 and that's the union that represents a

00:01:18.960 majority of the steel workers there and he got shocking news that the the plant was going to go

00:01:26.320 idle and that what we know of right now about 350 workers but you know even today we're hearing that

00:01:33.420 it's going to be 500 to 600 and it is absolutely terrible news these are these are high level

00:01:41.840 paying jobs union jobs and these people will be out of a job just before Christmas so I you know

00:01:49.140 all I could say to him is that my office will be there to support him support his unions and let

00:01:54.400 know that the door is always open so i just reading before we got onto this call

00:02:01.360 your colleague kyle see back described kind of a perfect storm of trump tariffs

00:02:05.920 um unfairly traded foreign steel and of course the industrial carbon tax something you guys have been

00:02:12.480 highlighting on a number of policy fronts for a while now which of those you think is doing

00:02:17.600 the most damage and how much responsibility does president donald trump have for what's

00:02:22.720 What's happened to steelworkers in your writing?

00:02:25.680 Well the union has identified the tariffs and that's no big secret.

00:02:29.100 I mean the steel industry has been tariffed at 50% for nearly two years now.

00:02:35.000 So that is the main, main reason.

00:02:38.540 Now there's contributing factors.

00:02:42.620 The Prime Minister promised that he would get a deal.

00:02:44.760 That was a very, very big campaign promise which he ended up not doing and still hasn't

00:02:49.200 fulfilled.

00:02:50.200 So these businesses are what we like to call stakeholders, major stakeholders that employ

00:02:54.180 lots of people, have had to bear these tariffs and figure that out.

00:02:59.320 But yes, foreign steel or steel dumps in Canada, namely Chinese and Turkish steel, and okay,

00:03:08.540 I give credit to the government, they put some control on that, but not enough.

00:03:15.580 That should have happened full stop.

00:03:17.700 And then the industrial carbon tax, which we went to Stelco, me and Pierre Paulyam,

00:03:21.520 the leader of the Conservative Party, before the election, and they said, this will cost

00:03:26.020 us $500 million by 2030.

00:03:30.000 So if you can't, if the Prime Minister was unable to get a deal, then you have to control

00:03:36.660 what you can control, meaning what we can control in Canada, and that is cutting the

00:03:41.140 industrial carbon tax, severely regulating any steel coming into our country.

00:03:46.740 So our steel companies can sell to Canadians.

00:03:49.700 I mean, there's enough, there's more, I think the figure, don't quote me, but I heard today to one of the union workers,

00:03:56.200 he was saying that the amount of steel that Stelco produced, just as much Turkish steel is coming to Canada.

00:04:02.340 But those are all, my colleague Kyle did name it right.

00:04:06.740 It is a perfect storm, but the factors are in a timeline a little bit different.

00:04:12.860 So, you mentioned and you critiqued Mark Carney's inability to reach a deal or his

00:04:19.620 choice rather to not reach a deal.

00:04:22.260 Of course, Canada and the United States pulled out negotiations for a little while now.

00:04:27.900 What in your view do you think Mark Carney could have done differently in terms of approaching

00:04:31.500 its trade relationship with the US?

00:04:33.480 Not the carbon tax, but just the Washington relationship.

00:04:37.440 What could have been done differently in your view to actually achieve a deal?

00:04:40.400 are two sides to this yeah i mean first i like to say that 100 that our industry is under

00:04:50.160 unjustified tariffs everybody knows that the president trump is is not you know he's not

00:04:56.800 being friends with canada the these are unbearable tariffs that he's done to a lot of industries

00:05:02.640 but the prime minister campaigned on the promise of figuring that out and canadians

00:05:07.840 in general voted for him on that reason that was more or less the election ballot question

00:05:15.440 and now we're two years later and we aren't where where we are now i don't know what happened on the

00:05:22.400 last deal that broke down that is it's been tight-lipped um i find out just like everyone

00:05:29.920 else does that like the prime minister is not going to share and hasn't shared anything with

00:05:34.560 that i i'd like to believe that i would like to believe that the deal was bad for canada that's

00:05:39.920 why he walked away there's other theories out there i'm not going to comment on that because

00:05:44.160 he might be currently talking and and in negotiation so that's not my place to say

00:05:49.600 i would not want to ever disrupt any ongoing trade talks but i will say i'm frustrated uh

00:05:55.040 coming from hamilton a city that it will get uh will get affected more so than most cities

00:06:02.320 that we haven't had we haven't got a deal and it's been two years so you know he broke his

00:06:08.240 campaign promise to canadians so obviously you're pointing as well kyle see back yourself the tories

00:06:17.520 in general are looking at the carbon tax pricing regime uh specifically on the industrial side

00:06:22.960 as a factor but stelco's announcement emphasizes tariffs imports and weakening demand so what

00:06:29.200 evidence do you have that eliminating the industrial carbon tax would have actually

00:06:32.960 prevented these layoffs well we don't know the inner like the stelco is is running their company

00:06:43.120 they want to run it now you know am i frustrated at stelco i'm frustrated at the company as well

00:06:49.920 because you just we don't really know what kind of happened there but we're going to take we're

00:06:58.240 going to take their letter that they kind of you know that they that they circulated and said it

00:07:02.080 was tariffs the evidence that i have about the industrial carbon tax is from themselves we went

00:07:08.320 and toured the facility and all the head management was there and and the accountants and the

00:07:13.360 bookkeepers and the reason they brought us in is because at that time we were we were advocating

00:07:18.720 to eliminate all carbon tax consumer and industrial they had told us that the numbers would be 500

00:07:24.640 million dollars till 2030 i would like to believe that 500 million is a massive impact on your

00:07:32.400 production profitability and so on and so forth now can they survive a 50 percent tariffs no probably

00:07:38.880 not but that is a definite weighing factor so essentially the art is is is taxing or tariffing

00:07:49.280 our big industries with with an industrial carbon tax it can be uh apologize it can be the same

00:07:54.800 thing right so um my evidence is that's what they told us that's what they told us verbatim

00:08:02.080 so i've been watching the news waves and i noticed that of course not only millennia jolie

00:08:06.560 has mentioned that the federal government offered the company assistance but also some provincial

00:08:11.520 politicians have said themselves that they were curious as to why stelco did not accept any sort

00:08:16.400 of government assistance programs that were offered previously so have you spoken or have

00:08:21.920 you do you have any information as to why STELCO rejected assistance and and if Ottawa actually

00:08:27.200 helped uh the company and the company turned down how much kind of responsibility do you think does

00:08:33.040 STELCO hold itself in its own decision-making capacity well I'm not uh I haven't heard anything

00:08:41.680 on that front i've heard some some rumors i mean this is ongoing so i am going to be having more

00:08:47.440 uh more conversations and this and that now you know the union workers the the men and women that

00:08:54.960 i talk to on a regular basis uh you know they're very frustrated they feel that stelco has left

00:09:02.240 them out in the cold right so if there is truth to that which there could be because i really don't

00:09:08.080 know i mean that would be very concerning right that would be very concerning that if the government

00:09:12.720 did step in to offer them something and they refused it that would be really concerning and

00:09:17.120 very uh unfortunate for for the members of local uh 1005 but i haven't uh i haven't come across

00:09:24.400 any of that yet so stelico says overall that steel tonnage won't necessarily decline because

00:09:32.240 production is being concentrated elsewhere i think perhaps at lake erie works um you know

00:09:38.720 is this really a crisis in canadian steel production or do you think it's kind of

00:09:42.640 just hamilton your committee itself losing hundreds of pretty good paying jobs uh while

00:09:48.240 the company consolidates its losses or its gains elsewhere the profits and losses of the company

00:09:57.120 and what they're doing or what they're going to move forward with,

00:10:01.700 I mean, I'm not here to comment on that.

00:10:03.920 What I can comment is, yes, it is catastrophic for Hamilton.

00:10:07.500 And the general consensus is that it's not going to stop at 350 jobs, right?

00:10:12.540 There's a whole slew of management jobs there that are non-union.

00:10:16.440 There's more union workers there.

00:10:18.220 So everybody's kind of really terrified and scared.

00:10:22.040 And now the downstream effect of that is that Hamilton does a lot of steel manufacturing.

00:10:27.640 There is, in my riding, there's 30% industrial lands like Arvin Avenue and those areas.

00:10:33.300 The city essentially comes to my community to go to work.

00:10:37.380 And now we're getting calls from those workers and those companies and those stakeholders saying, hold on a sec.

00:10:43.860 If Stelco is just, you know, idling that production line, what does that mean?

00:10:49.360 And now what does it mean for their supply chain and so on and so forth?

00:10:52.980 So there has been talk that this could scale out to a thousand or more jobs that could be lost.

00:10:59.780 But that's all speculation.

00:11:00.800 And I don't want to get on the side of speculating who isn't or who's not going to have their job.

00:11:08.680 But these are the calls that I'm getting.

00:11:10.380 So for Hamilton, my neck of the woods, and I would say Hamilton in general, but specifically in my riding, this is catastrophic news.

00:11:17.240 Absolutely catastrophic news.

00:11:19.360 Well, we do call Hamilton Steel City, of course, and there is plenty of jobs that work in that industry.

00:11:25.340 And the emphasis of my question there was this kind of, do you see it as a point of crisis that is facing your local economy?

00:11:32.720 I mean, is this really a steel crisis that we're in, given that these job losses are coming?

00:11:37.280 And, of course, there's the speculation of further.

00:11:39.640 Do you feel like that's where we've reached so far, or is that too alarmist, do you feel?

00:11:43.800 I don't think there's nothing. I don't think I don't think I'm going to sound like an alarmist when I would say, yes, 350 high paying mortgage paying jobs have been eliminated.

00:11:57.040 And that's not we've seen some jobs be eliminated over the last year as well.

00:12:02.000 This is just one that obviously hits home because, yeah, you said we are steel town.

00:12:07.420 We identify as a steel town where, you know, we're from Hamilton.

00:12:10.360 We got a little bit of grit in us and it is a bit of our identity.

00:12:13.800 I would would call it a crisis and again I have stood up many times in the

00:12:20.820 House of Commons whether it's in question period SO 31 whether it's in

00:12:25.260 committee and I've urged and advocated that this that the government needs to

00:12:30.060 do more mainly to get a deal and mainly keep their promise to Canadians where I

00:12:35.700 have concern is that we have a government that is taking a lot of

00:12:39.600 photo ops there's a lot of talk but really there's no action and I can give you examples outside of

00:12:45.820 this example like these major projects there's still no shovels in the ground there's a lot of

00:12:51.280 other other things here where again a lot of talk no action but now it's hit home it's hit home to

00:12:58.380 me it's hit home to Hamilton it's hit home to local 1005 and when I say it's a crisis 100%

00:13:05.840 it's a crisis you have 350 families that are going to be out of a job before christmas and

00:13:12.960 it probably is going to be more and i don't want to sound that alarm but that's what i'm hearing

00:13:18.400 today so when you and your team get back to ottawa what are you going to be pushing the

00:13:25.120 government to be doing any specific measures you can be you can mention to me right now that you'll

00:13:30.000 be lobbying for and specifically in lobbying for any measures that you can propose i is the objective

00:13:36.400 to restore those jobs to delay that job loss or is it to just simply avoid the next set of layoffs

00:13:43.600 whenever that might be so the the advocating will be will be um 100 will be getting rid of the

00:13:53.360 industrial carbon tax we are in a trade war our industries can't be taxed by the government now

00:13:59.440 so we will and we've always advocated for that so that will not change we will just stress this now

00:14:04.480 more i would advocate that the government needs to do more on foreign steel foreign steel dumping

00:14:11.120 illegal dumping into canada that is something that we can actively do right when we get back

00:14:18.160 in ottawa and i will be urging uh the government to to do that a hundred percent and then to uh

00:14:24.800 have tariff relief for these companies that are are being affected the most um whether we're

00:14:32.000 preventative whether we're going to try to get the jobs back at the end of the day uh i'm not

00:14:37.920 talking to the owners of stelco i know that they're an american company i don't know where

00:14:43.840 they're going to go moving forward i'm strictly talking to the unions but i do i i'm sure we'll

00:14:50.800 get more info on what's going on there. But we have to advocate to, yes, restore jobs,

00:14:58.240 prevent more job losses. And ultimately, ultimately, the prime minister has to have

00:15:04.200 him and his ministers need to get back to the table and get to a point where there's an

00:15:12.660 acceptable deal. And if we can aid in that, I would love to, our party peer, we would love to

00:15:17.800 and that we've been asking to help and we've brought forth solutions on top of that we are

00:15:25.400 we have a conservative economic plan that we started advocating for a week ago people are

00:15:30.680 getting squeezed they don't have enough money our whole objective is to put more money in canadians

00:15:35.720 pockets now that's a separate issue on on side of uh you know the disastrous announcement uh

00:15:41.880 yesterday but there's a few things there are 100 that we can advocate for

00:15:46.120 So finally, Ned, what do you say to the stalker worker in your writing who doesn't care whether they're playing lines with Carney, Trump, China, or whoever else? He just wants to know, is my job coming back? What would you say to that worker?

00:16:00.360 I would say to them that I, Ned Keurig, the Member of Parliament for Hamilton East Stony Creek, will fight relentlessly on their behalf, like I have been since I've been elected.

00:16:11.820 It's been no secret. People can see my record. I talk with a lot of unions. I talk with a lot of manufacturing stakeholders.

00:16:19.400 And I will always fight for the worker 100,000%.

00:16:24.360 thousand percent. And I've said to them, whatever my office can provide them resources or anything

00:16:30.080 they need in this time of difficulty, my door is open and I have an open door policy for everyone

00:16:36.380 that I represent. But right now in their time of need, I will be there in any capacity they need

00:16:41.100 me to be in. Dr. Karek, thank you so much for your time speaking to the Western Center today.

00:16:47.480 Thank you very much. I appreciate it.

00:16:54.360 You

Western Standard - October 03, 2026

Hamilton MP says HUNDREDS will be laid off before Christmas

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