A legal expert says job promises made by Stelco Holdings Inc.‘s American parent company when it acquired the beleaguered steel maker are legally binding — but whether this week’s layoffs violate them depends on terms that have not been made public.
Cleveland-Cliffs’ takeover of Stelco was approved in 2024 contingent on a number of mandatory, five-year commitments, including maintaining at least the same number of unionized workers and most non-unionized employees as when the deal was announced.
Business lawyer Nassira El Hadri says the company’s plan to cut up to 500 workers at its Hamilton and Lake Erie facilities could prompt legal action.
She says if Cleveland-Cliffs failed to meet its 2024 commitments, the industry minister could first issue a formal demand requiring the company to fix or justify the non-compliance.
If that does not resolve the issue, El Hadri says Ottawa could go to superior court where a judge could order the company to comply, impose penalties or even order a sale of the business.
She says the federal government’s options and how successful any enforcement action might be depend on the exact wording of the undertakings Cleveland-Cliffs agreed to.
“The actual agreement that the federal government made with Cleveland-Cliffs is not public, it’s confidential and privileged,” said El Hadri, founder of Hadri Law in Toronto.
“We only have a summary of those undertakings on the government’s website,” she said. “We don’t know exactly what it was committed to.”
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Sept. 30, 2026.
