U.S Steel, show us the money!!!

And so another dance with an American company resumes.
You know the story. American company buys Canadian property but doesn't treat it the same as its U.S holdings. On one nationalistic level I get that. If there is a downturn around the world and there was and we're still crawling out of it the tendency is to take care of your own meaning American steelworkers vs Canadian. That's an understandable reflex. However I seem to remember arguing in the late 80's against free trade with our American friends because once they had a deal in place they would not respect the deal they had been signatories to. All through the 90's especially during the recession our American friends continuously threw road blocks in front of that free trade agreement that Brian Mulroney so desperately wanted. Many many times and you can check this out, Stelco, Dofasco, Ipsco and Algoma Steel had to band together to attend hearings, lobby Ottawa, lobby Washington to have the American government actually live up to what the free trade agreement stated and at some cost. We, their greatest trading partners at the time (somebody will tell me if China has now surpassed us) were constantly lumped in with the dumping nations of Brazil, South Korea, Taiwan et al, nations pushing their businesses to do whatever it took to undercut American and Canadian steel makers. Has anything changed today? U.S Steel made a decision to purchase Hamilton Steel/Stelco because they thought they might make a profit especially off of the relatively up to standard Nanticoke operation. They knew there would be resistance and so they made promises. Promises to this day they have not lived up to. They have tried to break unions at Nanticoke and at Hilton Works and to some monetary degree they have by locking out their employees and forcing agreements they the steel maker can live with. They could lock them out of course because the world was in recession and so the corporate mentality was let's give the business of steel making to plants in Gary Indiana and elsewhere while we put the screws to the Canadians who apparently believe in health care, safety and pensions. Yeah, I get it U.S Steel. When times are good, when money is there to be made Hamilton and Nanticoke are great acquisitions, but when there is a recession and apparently your economists didn't recognise we were headed for a bubble that had to burst, it's a different story. It's called screw the Canadians and instead of actually putting money into the Hamilton plant you put it into hiring some of the biggest legal names around to fight against the Canada Investment Act all the way to our Supreme Court where you were told again and again through the legal process you didn't have a leg to stand on. So you did a deal and got an out of court settlement with Ottawa, brokered a deal with the Hamilton local, promised to fire up the plant and then, pulled the plug again. Now despite assurances at Hamilton City Council from Mayor Bob Bratina that there are signs U.S. Steel is getting close to firing up Hilton Works in the second quarter to actually make steel instead of just shipping coke to Nanticoke there are many sceptics in this city who want to see it before they believe it. And so at city council Ward 4's Sam Merulla passionately appealed to his colleagues to ask U. S. Steel to come before City Council and explain themselves, and explain to the people of Hamilton what is going to happen at Hilton Works. Part two of that motion which carried unanimously by the way also wondered out loud what the current official stance is of the Federal Government who did sign on to that out of court settlement last year. Indeed a further motion from Councillor Terry Whitehead is coming that will query the very makeup and execution of the Canada Investment Act. In fact it was Whitehead who suggested that under the Harper government there is one rule of thumb for the west and another for the rest of us.  Merulla who as I mentioned addressed council with great passion suggested this was a matter of sovereignty, that in fact the Canada Investment Act was operating like the "screw Canada act" his words. I can't disagree.
And folks it's not just about my community and it's heritage of steel making, this is also about London where Caterpillar is the big ugly American who first took our incentives, then tried to beat our workers into the ground and who has now announced those workers are toast because they're shutting the plant and stripping the place of it's equipment that many Ontarians and Canadians helped pay for. Hello Dalton, how about an injunction to stop them from moving anything out of that plant. This is about our friends in Quebec where aluminum was god, until a foreign entity purchased Alcan and started selling off divisions. Rio Tinto Alcan is no longer a Canadian owned manufacturing giant but is now just another division of another Multi-National.
What about Inco and Falconbridge giants that made us the leading Nickel producers in the world? Gone as well. What about steel? Wholly owned Canadian companies like Stelco, Dofasco and Algoma Steel are owned by Americans and Indians. From all over the world companies are looking at buying Canadian made assets and doing so while our federal government does nothing except for the case of  Potash Corp. The Government of Canada said it did not see a net benefit to allowing BHP Billiton to take it over and thus BHP backed away. That was 2010. When was our last federal election that gave Stephen Harper his majority? May of 2011 is the answer and in Saskatchewan you might suspect because of the federal intervention the NDP was shut out in what is traditionally a strong NDP province. The final tally there Conservative 13 Liberals 1 cuz nobody can beat Ralph Goodale. Folks this issue is bigger than our city council motion. I hope you are taking notice. There is a majority in Ottawa that has an agenda which we are just going to have to survive for the next three years. What we should not have to survive however is an assault on our working force by our so called friends from south of the border. We have been targetted and jobs in London, Hamilton and wherever there is a Zellers store are on the line. If we don't do something, if we don't start fighting back those jobs will be gone or they will be minimum wage. Hats off to Councillor Merulla for bringing the fight to council and hats off to his colleagues for supporting unanimously his request for an explanation about our future. I hope other municipalities and then provinces get in on the act to defend Canadian jobs. I hope we have the guts to say enough is enough.