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Originally Posted by TheMatth69
A lot as to with the fact that Canada's inner market isn't big enough to justify some of these facilities and companies tend to rationalize their assets especially in the last decade.
You would think however that with the huge steel and mining industry in Canada, we could at least have one facility left. But maybe it's more profitable for companies to buy their steel and other types of Ore in Canada and import it to their abroad facilities.
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Good Day.
We used to be big enough, with rail part-and-parcel of an overall steel industry.
But, recall the big 'meltdown' in 2010 after the financial crunch, and the <departure> of US Steel - which had bought up virtually all of the Canadian manufacturing capability,
which was approved by Competition Bureau (M&A) with certain manufacturing capacity and employment guarantees - which US Steel simply walked away from, and was never brought to account for.
Plus, recognize that the mainlines (CN, CP, etc) now depend to a fairly large extent on rail recovery from discontinued and delisted lines and subs. This results in less demand for new product from these major consumers.
So, I would and do rather prefer the greater dependability of acquiring rail from the contractor's dependable suppliers, rather than from good ol' undependable USA - NAFTA-2 notwithstanding.
As well, I am ready to bet it falls under CETA somewhere in the works.
Some links to background and history :
https://www.thespec.com/business/2014/07/31/us-steel-s-history-in-hamilton.html
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stelco
https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/hamilton/...-canada-changing-its-name-back-1.3876802
https://investinhamilton.ca/blog/2019/09...ng-facility-opens-at-stelco-in-hamilton/
From these, it appears we do retain some capacity at this point, but only in back-end final-product processing, and not in the full ore-to-product capability (which makes Trump's section 232 claims against us appear rather ludicrous !! duh !!) .
And, yes, we still mine a LOT of ore, and it mostly gets all shipped out all around the world, along with thermic coking coal from BC & Alberta (about which you heard debate in Alberta recently involving Kenney)
https://www.nationalobserver.com/2021/02...coal-mining-united-albertans-against-him
https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/edmonton/alta-coal-kenney-1.5899366
EnJoy!