Industry Minister Mélanie Joly says Cleveland-Cliffs' own CEO publicly backed the U.S. tariffs now being blamed for the cuts — and that the 2024 jobs commitment doesn't expire just because 'market conditions have changed.'

Industry Minister Mélanie Joly sent a letter to Stelco president Paul Simon on Monday giving Cleveland-Cliffs five business days to present a plan for complying with the job-protection commitments it made when Ottawa approved its $3.4 billion purchase of Stelco in 2024 — or face potential legal action under the Investment Canada Act.

What the original commitments actually required

When then-industry minister François-Philippe Champagne approved the Cleveland-Cliffs takeover in October 2024, approval was contingent on a package of binding, five-year undertakings: maintaining Stelco's head office and day-to-day operational responsibility in Hamilton, honouring all existing collective bargaining agreements and pension commitments, making significant capital and R&D expenditures, and keeping Stelco's emissions intensity at least 25% below the global average for integrated steel mills. Joly's letter argues the planned layoffs of up to 500 workers run directly against those terms, and that the conditions "don't expire just because business strategy or market conditions have changed."

A pointed detail in Joly's letter

Joly specifically noted that Cleveland-Cliffs CEO Lourenco Goncalves has publicly supported the U.S.'s Section 232 steel tariffs — the same tariffs the company is now citing as the reason it can no longer sustain Hamilton's cold-rolled and coated operations. Flagging that contradiction puts the government's objection on sharper ground than a general jobs dispute: it's pointing out that the company's own CEO backed the policy now being used to justify breaking a commitment to Canadian workers.

What Stelco is offering instead

The company maintains that total steel tonnage produced won't change — only the product mix, shifting toward a higher concentration of hot-rolled steel — and that Hamilton employees affected by the idling will be offered jobs at Lake Erie Works in Nanticoke, where operations are being consolidated. United Steelworkers Local 1005 has pushed back hard on that offer, with president Ron Wells noting only 46 openings exist at Lake Erie Works against roughly 350 Hamilton layoffs — a gap the company hasn't yet explained.

What happens if Cleveland-Cliffs doesn't comply

Ottawa's five-day deadline is a formal step under the Investment Canada Act's enforcement framework, and a failure to produce a credible compliance plan opens the door to the government seeking a court order to enforce the original undertakings — an outcome that, if it happens, would be a meaningful test of how seriously foreign buyers need to treat job-protection conditions attached to future Canadian takeovers, not just this one. For Hamilton specifically, the clock is now running on a concrete, dated deadline rather than an open-ended political dispute.