The Decibel - A border town on the front lines of the trade war

Episode Date: October 8, 2026

Sault Ste. Marie, Ont., is on the front lines of Canada’s trade war with the U.S.. The city lies just a few kilometres away from the U.S., across a river from a city with the same name in Michigan. Its core economic industry is steel, which has been hit with U.S. President Donald Trump’s 50 per cent tariffs.The Globe and Mail’s staff reporter, Patrick White, recently went to ‘The Soo’ to see how the residents are faring after layoff notices and previous years of economic hardship.Questions? Comments? Ideas? E-mail us at [e-mail] Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

I drove to Sioux Saint-Marie from Toronto, so it's about an eight-hour drive along the Trans-Canada. Patrick White is a staff reporter for the Globe who recently went to Sue St. Marie, Ontario, also known as the Sioux. The highway kind of descends down towards the St. Mary's River. Like a lot of northern Ontario cities, you pass quite a few big box stores until you get to this cute city core. Unfortunately, it's like a lot of these other cities and that you see quite a few. boarded up homes and boarded up stores and some smashed windows. You also see a very nice, neat downtown with a great hockey arena where the Sue Greyhounds play, which is kind of the heart of the downtown, at least in my travels, that seemed to be the

beating heart of the downtown. Sue St. Marie is home to around 80,000 people, and it's just a few kilometers away from the U.S. there's a very close relationship with the U.S. with the city directly across the St. Mary's River, which is also called Sue St. Marie. I've talked to a few people about the relations across the river. They referred to that city as Sue Mish. And many people in Sioux-St. Marie, Ontario,

have friends across the river. They have relatives across the river. They work across the river. And vice versa. The relationship could really not be closer. They are in two different countries but can feel like a single city. The Sioux's economic core is a steel plant. And U.S. President Donald Trump has hit Canada's steel industry

with some of the toughest tariffs in the trade war. Leavies on steel currently sit at 50%. So this is salt in the wound for a city already facing serious headwinds. Today, Patrick tells us how people are, people of the Sioux are faring right now and the complicated picture of being on the front lines of the trade war. I'm Cheryl Sutherland in for Mena Karam and Wilms, and this is the Decibel from the Globe and Mail. Hi Patrick, welcome back to the show. Hey, thanks very much for having me. So Patrick, I used to actually live in the Sioux back in the early 90s when I was

a little kid. Yeah, and I have these memories of going across the border to Sioux, Michigan, in to get my groceries, like those kind of memories stick out to me or they're like, like, seared into my brain. What brought you to Sue St. Marie? Well, I think we wanted to, I'm the city's reporter at the Globe and Mail and have been for a few months. One of the mandates we took up when we started this beat was to look at how various cities across Canada we're doing in light of the trade war.

And the first one you have to really look at is Sue St. Marie. They really are on the front lines. of Donald Trump's tariff battle with Canada. The tariff against Canadian steel from the U.S. came in at 25% last spring and then quickly bumped up to 50% by the summer. That goes to the very core of what Sue St. Marie produces. It goes to the core of who they are. It's their identity as being the steel town and working at Algoma.

So I really wanted to go to see kind of, kind of six months on from when a lot of these layoffs that were announced a while back took effect how the city was faring. Right. So when you say it goes to the core of this city, it's because, of course, Sue St. Marie is home to the Algoma Steel headquarters, which is a major steel producer in Canada. But just tell me, how important is steel production and the company to Sue St. Marie? It's less important than it used to be. I think back in the, when I looked into, at the kind of late 70s, early 80s, there were somewhere around 14 to 15,000 people

working at Algoma in Sioux-St. Marie. So it's a, with a city of 70 to 80,000, that's a pretty significant portion of the population is all getting an Algoma paycheck. Recently, in the mid-80s, that kind of trimmed down from 14,000 to 7,000. So they've gone through these giant layoffs before. And I think when a Globe reporter visited in 2024, they were down to 3,000. So over time, the significance, the amount of employment provided by Algoma has declined, but the identity is still there. And that's what I, another thing I wanted to see and talk to people about is considering this contraction, how much does the city still identify with Algoma and with producing steel? And it's very strong. When you say identity is still there,

how does that appear in the city? Like what does that mean? Well, you see the name Algoma all over the place. It's in hockey tournaments and golf tournaments. And it's on people's jackets and hats. And it's also in people's bloodlines. Most of the Algoma workers I spoke to had relatives that were working there as well, whether it was fathers, grandfathers, or sons and daughters who were working.

there. So the presence of Algoma goes beyond that corporate logo. It's in the generations. It's in the bloodlines. I mean, what you're describing here, it sounds like pretty much everyone in the Sioux has a connection to Algoma. Absolutely. Its presence there, despite this downsizing, is very, very strong. Let's get into the impact of tariffs on Sioux-Marie. So the U.S. administration brought in steel and aluminum tariffs on Canadian products last year. And as you mentioned, they started at 25% and were raised to 50% a few months later. What have those tariffs meant for Algoma steel? On the business side, it's been devastating.

I think historically about 50% of Algoma's shipments would go to the U.S. So about half of their business is with the U.S. With a 50% tariff, the CEO has been saying that that business is pretty much gone. Their shipments are down. The last I saw was the second quarter results showed that shipments were down 62% year to year, where once they shipped 50% of their materials to the U.S., that's now down to 23% going to the U.S. So imagine that hit to the bottom line and to the number of people.

people working there. It's, it's been really tough to make El Goma viable in that kind of climate. Earlier you mentioned layoffs. Were those because of the tariffs? Interestingly, yes and no. So a few years ago, Al Goma did announce that it was planning to move away from the very traditional way of making steel that involves coal and coke. So you have these giant blast furnaces with these giant coke fires going, they were going to transition from that into an electric arc furnace or two large electric arc furnaces, actually. So that's basically they will make steel with electricity. And they're calling that kind of a greener steel because you don't have the same emissions. And they have long said that that will be done with fewer jobs, about a thousand fewer

jobs. But the timeline for that was a few years down the road that there would there be those job losses. When the tariffs came in, they decided to basically accelerate that electric arc furnace transition. So the thousand layoffs happened much sooner than anybody thought they would. So the tariffs accelerated a business plan that was already in place. So there were these 1,000 layoff notices from Algoma. What are the trickle-down effects for Sue St. Marie? Yeah, there are different ways of figuring that out economically, but it's thousands of other jobs would be affected. It's hard to say exactly how many, but, you know, a thousand strong union paychecks from Algoma supports several thousand other jobs in the neighborhood, usually service jobs.

Like restaurants, that kind of thing. Restaurants, barbershops, everything you can imagine. And those are 1,000 taxpayers. those are a thousand property taxpayers in most cases. So the trickle-down effects are tremendous. When I got there, it was only about six months after those layoffs would have taken effect. And I couldn't really discern that the full trickle-down

had taken effect. A lot of those people would have been on EI, a lot of people as I found, actually have found other work in other industries and have found other work at Algoma. So I didn't quite see that trickle-down effect that I kind of assumed would be in place. Well, you did meet somebody named Connie Rainer Elliott who kind of encapsulates what she's been seeing. Can you just tell me her story and what she told you?

Yeah, Connie is a well-known figure in Sue St. Mary. She runs a organization, a nonprofit, called Soya, Save Our Young Adult. She started it several years ago after losing one of her own children to drug abuse. It is now grown into a storefront in basically in downtown Sioux St. Marie. They provide food. It's a food bank. They have clothing. They have many other support services.

They can refer people to housing agencies, though all the housing agencies have huge waitlists at this point. And so, yes, what she's seen in the last three years is her clientele has gone from somewhere around 300 to 650. So she's seen a big increase. Now, we can't really correlate that with the tariffs or with the layoffs at Algoma. This is a similar trend we've seen across, especially smaller cities in Ontario at this point,

is a big increase in demand for housing, for food banks, for other services. So there's definitely a number. need in Sue St. Marie. Yeah, what you're painting here is kind of a complicated picture, right? Like, it sounds like there are these issues that were happening in places like the Sioux already, and then tariffs come in and kind of make the problems that much more difficult. Yeah, I think Sue St. Marie is dealing with the overlapping crises that so many other places

across this country are facing these overlapping crisis of the toxic drug crisis, a mental health crisis and a housing crisis. So it is one thing for a big city like Toronto or Montreal or Calgary or Vancouver to deal with these with fairly robust budgets for a city the size of Sue St. Marie or any of the other cities on that area of the TransCanada. We're talking North Bay, Sudbury, Orillia. It really stretches them to try to deal with these hugely complicated issues. We'll be right back. So Patrick, you talk to a Sue White who got one of those layoff notices we talked about earlier. His name is Frank DeMarco.

Can you tell me about Frank? Yeah, Frank, he identifies himself as a bricklayer. He's got these big bricklayers hands that kind of crush your hand when he shakes it. His dad was a bricklayer in Italy who moved to Sue St. Marie, like so many Italians, in the 60s and 70s. Frank took after his father. He worked as a bricklayer. in his earlier years and then about 20 years ago started working at Algoma and has worked there ever since. I met him at a kind of a street party for the season opener of the Sue Greyhounds,

the local Ontario Hockey League team. And everybody seemed to know Frank. Everybody wanted to come up to Frank and either shake his hand or give him a hug. Some of the kids refer to him as Uncle Frank. You know, he had a beer from the beer gardens in one hand, and the other hand was just never stopped shaking people's hand. He almost seems like the informal mayor of the town, even though he's got kind of no political position. So he worked at Algoman Steel, and I understand his kids also worked at Algoma Steel. Yeah, his dad worked there. He works there. And a son and daughter also worked there up until quite recently.

And this is not uncommon. You bump into this all over town, just several generations. generations who have links to Algoma. So before the layoffs, there were the tariffs, of course, right? What happened to Frank when the tariffs took effect? He was worried about his job, but Frank had a little side thing happening, a little side hustle, a big side hustle, actually. He and his wife, Merritt, had decided to open a restaurant.

It was a dream they'd had for a long time. Merritt has been in the restaurant business for a long time. And so in late 2024, they leased a restaurant space. And for the next few months, they got about renovating that space. It's kind of like a, it's called Boots and Saddles Roadhouse. So you can imagine the kind of place it is with horse saddles and cowboy hats and all kinds of things like that when you walk in the door. I expect boots and saddles at a restaurant called Boots and Saddles. Many, many boots and saddles.

So just as they're about to open, they were planning to have a. soft launch in May and they were opening the dining room in June, that was precisely when first the 25% tariffs came in and then when Donald Trump started musing openly about a 50% tariff. So the DeMarcos had just have this massive outlay of cash hoping that people would flood in their restaurant to make up for it. And just as they are hoping for that, Donald Trump is announcing. these giant steel tariffs, which everybody acknowledges, will really hurt the economy of Sue St.

Marie, he said. This was 2025. Yes. So this is, this is 2025. And then the layoffs came too right after that. And then the layoffs. So they open. They make it through the summer of 2025, do pretty well.

Lineups out the door on wing night, which is Tuesday. I highly recommend it. And then winter things slow down. and just as that usual slowdown happens, they get the layoff notices in early December. So he gets a letter along with about 1,000 other Algoma workers and thinks, my livelihood is over, my career is over. Some people said, hey, you're lucky.

At least you have this restaurant to go back to. But he was worried whether he could support that restaurant without the Algoma check coming in the door. So he had some significant worries at that point. I mean, that sounds pretty hard because first he had the stress of the restaurant when the tariffs came down and then he gets this layoff notice. How did he process this? Like, how was he feeling at this time? Well, when the tariffs came in and he got, that was bad. When the layoff notice came, he was at his lowest point.

He thinks his career's over, his livelihoods over, and he's worried about the community as well. So he had a few weeks after that letter came and a few months after that letter came. of really being worried about what he was going to do next. And I think that was what everybody was talking about. What did they move on to next? What does Sue St. Marie move on to next? So what ended up happening with Frank? Did he lose his job?

How's the restaurant? So Frank thought he would lose his job. That's what the letter seemed to indicate. But his March came closer when he was the actual termination date was he actually got his job extended for several weeks, and then at the end of that extension, he was hired on full time again. So Frank never missed a shift.

All that worry, and he still working at Algoma, still working his normal shift. And he said that a number of his friends had the same experience. They got the letter. They had months of anxiety, and the work kept going.

So he is, he's doing okay. He's, he's doing fine. And the restaurant's doing great too. I went there on a Saturday night and had a most incredible chicken parm I've ever had in my life. And the place was busy. Everybody wants to talk to Frank. I think people go there as much for Frank as, as much as they do for the great food. So it's still, it's still going.

The other thing that has happened recently is the opening of a couple of mines nearby. So I talked to some people who did lose their job at Algoma and they have been able to find jobs at nearby mines that more than make up for the salary they were making at Algoma. There were others that still haven't been able to find work, but I actually found that in my brief time in Sue St. Marie, those were in the minority. I mean, what it sounds like, Patrick, is that the tariff war with the U.S. is kind of this other economic hardship for Sioux-S. On top of so many others in the past few years. So, I mean, you're talking about these minds here. It sounds like there are some economic positives happening in the community.

But can you talk about some of the solutions that local government officials are hoping to see for the Sioux? Yeah. So, I mean, one of the main reasons we went up there. at this point is because there are municipal elections happening all over Ontario. And one of the interesting ideas that the incumbent mayor Matthew Shoemaker has is he's really behind an idea to expand, build and expand the port of Sue St. Marie. So it's about a phase one, I believe, is a $200 million project they've done under this mayor a number of economic analyses of how many jobs this would bring in. It seems to be over 2,000

jobs is one estimate, you know, more than making up for the recent loss of Algoma. There's a lot of commodities in this region. There's not just steel. There's other mineral minerals. There's critical minerals coming online. There's a lot of forestry. And the belief is if they could develop a major port at Sioux-St. Marie that they could bring back a lot of employment right there along the water. So that's one of his major ideas. And he's had some support from the province and the federal government. The city just needs financial support now. So I think the city is committed about $15 million and they're looking for the other levels of government to kick in the rest. Okay. Are there other things helping the economy in the Sioux? Yeah. The arrival

of a reopening of a couple of mines nearby has really made up for really cushion the blow of some of that loss and employment. There's another manufacturer of steel tubing in the Sioux that's added about two or three hundred jobs since the layoffs. There are many other opportunities that have kind of come up. And cities like this have dealt with this before. I think maybe reading about these in some of some in distant Canadian cities, we get a pretty grim idea of what things must be like on the ground in places like Sue St. Marie and some of the other cities that have had some hardships recently. The Sue's been through bigger layoffs.

They know how to get through something like this. And other, I talked to another former Algoma worker started a landscaping business. there's an ability to rise from this and eventually be just fine. So Patrick, it sounds like what you're describing here is it sounds like Siouxites are weathering the storm. How is Frank feeling about how people of the Sioux are handling what's being thrown at them? Well, he's such a naturally positive guy. I think he believes in this city's ability to get through pretty much. Anything. To provide an example of that, he would tell me about this hockey tournament that he

organizes every year. It's a charity hockey tournament. He runs it and they raise money to give bursaries to local medical students in hopes that they will stay in Sioux-St. Marie, like a lot of cities of this size, there's a doctor shortage in Sioux-St. Marie. And they want local medical students to stay local. So this hockey tournament raises money for that. Frank organizes it every year. But after the layoff notices came out to him and a thousand others, he had some doubts about whether he could do this.

He thought, how can I ask for people for these big entrance fees when their paychecks are about to be cut off? And just as he was mulling whether he should go through with that, entrance fees started to flow in. So a lot of laid off Algoma workers paid their entrance fees. Algoma itself supported the tournament. He felt like the city really had his back. And he gets quite emotional even talking about this feeling of the city getting his back

and the city coming together at its kind of worst and darkest moment to raise money for something like this. So the tournament went off without a hitch. Patrick, I think. that's a great point to end. Thank you so much for coming on the show. Thanks so much. That was Patrick White, a staff reporter for the globe. That's all for today. I'm Cheryl Sutherland. Minica Ramman Wilms is the host of The Decible. I produce the show along with Madeline White and Rachel Levy McLaughlin. Our editor is David Crosby. Adrian Chung is our senior producer, and Angela Pichenza is our executive editor. Thanks so much for listening.