My nine-year-old daughter read In Flanders Fields to me last night, her homework for the week. She has to memorize it.
Like me at that age, she's taken an interest in military history and the second World War. She's asked if we had any family members who fought (yes, several of my dad's uncles). As she asks more questions, I will answer them, including the fact that there have been many wars fought in the 70 odd years since the height of the last world war.
The other day while watching a documentary on it, some expert pointed out it wasn't so much that the Allies had better generals or better weapons. Rather, they had more of them. The Axis could draw only on resources from its conquered lands and borders, while the Allies could, and did, draw upon the rest of the world. The Germans had a far superior tank in the Tiger, but 49,324 American and Canadian built Sherman tanks simply overwhelmed them.
One of those resources was Canada's steelmaking capacity, which we put to good use building tanks and ships and guns. By the end of the war, we had the third largest navy in the world. It's a good bet most of that steel originated in Canada, and a good chunk came from Hamilton's Stelco.
In 2007, U.S. Steel purchased Stelco, which had blast furnaces in Nanticoke and Hamilton. In late October it was announced that after producing steel in Hamilton since 1867, production there will cease. The former-Stelco plant has been idle since 2010, and it will close permanently at the end of the year.
This facility primarily produced steel for our automotive manufacturing plants.
There are certain industries we, as a nation, need to preserve as strategic assets, never to be given up. These include energy, food, manufacturing. To accomplish manufacturing, you need the ability to create your base materials - steel, aluminum, copper, zinc, etc.
All these Canada has, or has had, in abundance. But over time, we have allowed our economy to shift from makers to users.
Textiles, manufacturing, steel making - all of these industries have withered on the vine. Some would say in a capitalist world, that's no big deal. Someone is making the product elsewhere for cheaper. This may be true, but it also forgets the one fatal flaw in the argument: a service-based economy doesn't do so well when calamity strikes and you are cut off from trading partners.
If we become dependent on Chinese steel, for instance, and China decides one day they don't like us, we have a problem. Even if China does continue to like us, what if the North Koreans decide to use their submarine fleet to mine Vancouver? A couple submarines spending a day in the Strait of Juan De Fuca could bring our economy to its knees, since our now-tiny military has such limited capacity to respond. A navy of 12 frigates, three destroyers, four and some coastal patrol vessels, split across two oceans, would be overstretched, at best, to respond. It's not probable, but it is possible.
Canada has tremendous resources in iron ore. We have the energy to change it into steel. We used to be one of the largest shipbuilders in the world. Now, we hardly produce any ships at all. Our few remaining shipbuilding plants on each coast are dependent on the scraps the Royal Canadian Navy hands them. Most other ships in this world are now built in Korea. Why can't Canadians build ships? We have all the resources we need. What's stopping us? Did we forget how?
This is why the loss of Stelco's Hamilton plant, from a strategic standpoint, is so significant. We still have steelmaking capacity in Canada, but in recent years, it has all come under foreign ownership. Stelco, with its two plants, was the largest. If someone decides they don't like us, what do we do, point our fingers at them? Despite all the wonderful material science advances, basic weapons - rifles, tanks, trucks, ships - are all made of steel. By a very large margin, steel is the most important metal in our economy.
Once plants like this shut down, they tend to never get rebuilt or replaced. If we keep losing base industries, we may soon have none left.
- Brian Zinchuk is editor of Pipeline News. He can be reached at [email protected].
