Good afternoon, everyone.

Just as I begin, I’d like to welcome Ron Bedard, the President and CEO of Dofasco. Thank you, Ron, for coming here today. More substantively, thank you for leading one of Canada’s great steel companies, but also for helping us in designing some of these support measures that I’m going to talk about today, and some of that we have put in place.

This is an important day for Canada’s workers. We know the world is changing. This decades-long process of an ever-closer economic relationship between Canada and the United States has ended. And as a consequence, many of our strengths have become our vulnerabilities – particularly in the industries that are most tightly integrated with the United States.

Last year, 75% of our exports went to the U.S.

90% of our lumber exports.

90% of our aluminum exports.

And 90% of our steel exports.

All bound for a single market.

Overall, for the Canadian economy, we estimate that U.S. tariffs and the uncertainty that they’re creating will cost Canadians around 1.8% of GDP. That’s about $50 billion lost from our economy, or the equivalent of $1,300 for every Canadian.

And this is happening fast. It’s a rupture, and it means that our economic strategy needs to change dramatically and rapidly.

Budget 2025 is our plan to confront these challenges and emerge even stronger. To move our economy from reliance to resilience, and to give ourselves far more than any foreign nation can ever take away.

The Budget builds Canada strong by focusing on what we can control:

• Building at home to protect and empower Canadians.
• Boosting our productivity to drive lasting prosperity.
• Transforming how government works for you.
• Diversifying our trade partners abroad to create more opportunity and greater independence.

The core strategy of Budget 2025 is to unleash $1 trillion in total investments in Canada over the course of the next five years.

That alone will increase our GDP by over 3.5%, or $3,500 for every Canadian worker, more than twice what’s being taken from us.

Now, to help get there, we must protect our workers and our industries who are most exposed to U.S. tariffs – in our steel, aluminum, auto, and lumber sectors. We need to help them bridge to the future.

We have already taken decisive action to:

• Limit imports of foreign steel.
• Become our own best customer by buying Canadian.
• Enable our strategic industries to diversify and conquer new markets.
• Protect our workers and industries affected by U.S. tariffs.

Back in July, we restricted foreign steel imports entering Canada’s market, expanded training and income support for steel workers, and provided liquidity relief for businesses.

The government, for example, provided a $400 million loan to help Algoma Steel in Sault Ste. Marie to transition to a business model that’s less reliant on the United States.

In August, we introduced new measures to help the softwood lumber industry stay competitive, including financing for company restructuring, investments to diversify products, income and training supports for affected workers, and prioritising Canadian lumber in home building.

In September, we launched a comprehensive industrial strategy with new reskilling programs, a new $5 billion Strategic Response Fund to help businesses pivot to new markets, and we announced that we would create a new Buy Canadian Policy across federal agencies. We also reduced red tape and increased loan limits to help large firms access the liquidity that they need.

These measures are working.

We’ve received close to 1,500 applications from companies across the steel, aluminum, lumber, manufacturing, automotive, and seafood sectors, through our Regional Tariff Response Initiative.

In the steel sector alone, more than 230 firms have applied, and supports are already being delivered. Because of these initiatives:

• Cherubini Metal Works in Nova Scotia is modernising its metal and fabrication lines to export more products overseas.
• Hooper Welding in Hamilton will grow its capacity to produce fabrication equipment required for Canadian and international energy projects.

Thanks to this targeted funding, Canadian companies are integrating new technologies, launching new products to diversify markets, securing roles in domestic supply chains, and through these upgrades, participating in trade missions worldwide.

Our investments are also protecting workers – providing relief to nearly 37,000 Canadians during this period of uncertainty. So far, they’ve prevented more than 14,000 Canadians from losing their job.

More broadly, across our economy, employment is rebounding after the early impacts of the trade war. More than 120,000 total jobs have been created since March.

What we’re doing today is reinforcing that momentum with new, strengthened measures to accelerate the transformation of the Canadian steel and lumber industries, to build strong domestic demand for their products, and to empower their workers and businesses to seize new markets at home and abroad.

These new measures focus on three core objectives:

• First, to further limit foreign steel imports to increase domestic demand for Canadian steel producers.
• Second, to make it easier to buy and build with Canadian steel and lumber.
• Third, to invest in workers and businesses so that they have the tools and the resources that they need to drive this industrial transformation.

So, let me start with limiting foreign steel imports, to ensure that our steel producers have a bigger share of our market.

Doing so will unlock hundreds of millions of dollars in domestic demand for Canadian producers.

• We will reduce tariff-free steel imports from non-free trade agreement partners, from 50% of 2024 levels, as it is today, to 20% of those levels. This will open up more than $850 million in new domestic demand for Canadian steel.
• Second, we will reduce tariff-free steel imports from non-CUSMA FTA partners from 100% of 2024 levels to 75% of those levels, unlocking more than $540 million in additional market access for our producers.
• We’ll impose a global 25% tariff on targeted imported steel derivative products such as wind towers, prefabricated buildings, fasteners, and wires, to grow demand for Canadian-made steel.
• And we will toughen our broader compliance measures to prevent foreign steel dumping. To do so, the Canadian Border Service Agency will be equipped with a dedicated steel compliance team, enhanced detection of false declarations, and expanded online reporting tools.

Our temporary horizontal remission of Canadian tariffs on imports has helped Canadian businesses deal with the early impacts of those tariffs. However, over the longer term, such broad remissions would only hurt Canada’s steel sector.

To move away from relying on imported steel, and to give Canadian companies time to adjust their supply chains to use Canadian steel, those temporary remission measures will end on January 31, 2026, for steel used in Canada for manufacturing, food and beverage packaging, and agricultural production.

Now, the second broad way to drive transformation of our strategic industries is by becoming our own best customer. So we’ll build big with Canadian suppliers – investing in roads, bridges, homes, and community centres.

Later this year, we’ll implement the Buy Canadian Policy, which will ensure that Canadian materials, including steel and lumber, are prioritised in all contracts over $25 million, and that this applies across federal grants and contribution programs, especially those in infrastructure.

To maximise the use of Canadian softwood lumber in housing and infrastructure, we will prioritise shovel-ready, multi-year projects that can begin in the next 12 months, using Canadian wood.

With a funding allocation of roughly $700 million next year, Build Canada Homes, our new federal homebuilding agency, alone will create $70 million to $140 million of new demand for Canadian wood products – and attract private and provincial capital to multiply that impact.

In order to build on that, I’m announcing today that we will make it more affordable to transport Canadian steel and lumber across this country by cutting freight rates for transporting steel and lumber inter-provincially by 50%, through funding to the Canadian National and Canadian Pacific Kansas City railways.

And finally, we will increase protections for Canadian steel and lumber workers and businesses, so that they can adapt and seize new opportunities.

• We’ll help employers retain workers by expanding our earlier supports and enhancing our work-sharing programs, increasing income replacement ratios, income replacement benefits from 55% to 70%.
• We will also provide an additional $500 million to the Business Development Bank of Canada’s Softwood Lumber Guarantee Program to ensure that companies have the financing and the credit support that they need to maintain and restructure their operations during this period of transformation.
• And similarly, we will deploy $500 million in funding under the Large Enterprise Tariff Loan facility, specifically for softwood lumber firms facing liquidity pressures.
• We’ll make it easier for the forestry sector to access federal support by establishing a single window for applications, a one-stop shop to help companies navigate a broad sweep of support programs.
• And lastly, we will launch a Canadian Forest Sector Transformation Task Force that seeks input and recommendations from provinces, territories, and industry on how to seize new opportunities in softwood lumber and create new growth in the sector.

These support measures, combined with those implemented earlier this year, will give Canadian steel and lumber producers access to domestic markets worth hundreds of millions of dollars. In fact, it’s more than $1 billion.

They will create new opportunities for workers as domestic demand increases, and provide businesses with the support they need to adapt to the changing global landscape.

We’re making sure that Canadian steel and lumber companies have the capital, talent, and time they need to acquire the skills, tools, and facilities that will enable them to help build a strong Canadian economy.

The hundreds of billions of dollars of infrastructure and housing investments that Budget 2025 will unleash will create significant demand for Canadian steel and lumber, as will our new trade and investment partnerships around the world.

Last week, I was in Abu Dhabi, where the United Arab Emirates announced their decision to invest $70 billion in Canada. In Johannesburg, for the G20, we launched discussions toward a Canada-South Africa Foreign Investment Promotion and Protection Agreement that will deepen investment between our two nations. And we agreed to launch comprehensive free trade talks with India, the world’s fifth-largest economy.

We have begun trade negotiations with the United Arab Emirates, the Philippines, and Thailand, and we are working to finalise our agreement with ASEAN. This is in addition to the agreements our government has already concluded with Indonesia, Ecuador, the European Union, and Germany.

Countries around the world want to invest in Canada and build with us. We are making the strategic investments necessary to produce and export more of what the world needs, like Canadian steel and Canadian lumber.

The Canadian steel and lumber industries will always be at the heart of Canada’s competitiveness, our security, and our strength. These are sectors that reflect our country’s character – resilient and forward-looking – with a history of reinventing themselves at pivotal moments.

And at this pivotal moment in our history, Canada is moving from reliance to resilience. We can give ourselves much more than any foreign government could ever take away. We are building a single Canadian economy, instead of 13. We are working together on projects of national interest. We are making unprecedented investments in our defence and security, and we are diversifying our trade relationships.

We will build Canada strong with the workers and the resources that build our communities strong.

Building with Canadian workers, using Canadian steel and lumber, we will build Hamilton strong.

Sault Ste. Marie strong.

Saguenay strong.

Miramichi strong.

Canada strong.

Thank you.