If you take a drive through some of the rural parts of the Corridor you’ve likely noticed the countless dairy farms in operation. What you see is the visible part of one of the strongest agribusiness sectors in Eastern Ontario.
The Land Behind the Numbers
Dairy farming is by no means a small operation in the Corridor with about 24% of the region’s land going to farming with dairy cattle and the crops that feed them taking up a large part of that. Looking at Ontario as a whole, the province holds about 32% of Canada’s national milk production quota and within the province the Corridor is punching well above their weight. The region’s soil along the river drains significantly better than clay belts a bit further north which gives feed crops a better environment to grow and helps to keep feed costs down. Aside from the location and logistical advantages the region offers, this is one of the main reasons farms tend to stay here.
The Jobs Nobody Thinks About
When you think of a dairy farm the first job created that will pop into your mind is of course the farmer who runs the farm, this however is just scratching the surface. When you take a step back you’ll see the farm requires equipment dealers, feed suppliers, shipping companies, processing, maintenance, and more to run a successful operation and each of these are additional jobs that need to be filled. This not only creates job opportunities but allows more money to stay local by making use of local suppliers, experts, and facilities and get reinvested into the surrounding community. The diverse range of industries across the Corridor allows for almost everything a business operation could need to be quickly and easily accessible.
Sustainability Isn’t the Marketing Angle Here
Sustainability isn’t just a buzzword when it comes to farming in the Corridor. It shows up everywhere in the way barns and facilities are designed, manure management, water user, feed conversion rates, and more. Apart from consumers more commonly searching out more sustainable options than ever before, sustainability is simply a smart business practice. Farms that reduce water use and improve their feed conversion aren’t just doing that to be green, it’s also because it lowers their costs as a whole.
If You’re Looking at the Region
The dairy sector here offers something harder to find than available land: an established, stable supply base with room to grow around it, sitting inside a Corridor where land and capital costs already run well below the GTA.
SLCEDC works alongside businesses through every stage of that decision, from the first site visit through construction and hiring. If dairy processing or agribusiness investment is on your radar for the Corridor, get in touch. We’ll be happy to walk through your plan with you.
Canada faces a defining economic challenge. American tariffs are threatening the manufacturing base that has sustained communities across eastern Ontario for generations. Factories are reducing production, workers are losing jobs and companies are reconsidering investment. The federal government must make Canadian manufacturing a national priority, pursuing two strategies simultaneously: accelerating negotiations to preserve access to our largest trading partner while investing in the long-term diversification and competitiveness of Canadian industry.
The critical distinction is time. Developing new export markets will take years; our manufacturers, their suppliers and the families who depend on them cannot necessarily afford to wait.
Eastern Ontario’s prosperity was built on manufacturing. Following the Second World War, companies including DuPont, Black & Decker, Procter & Gamble, Hershey and Alcan established substantial operations across our region. Their investments created thousands of well-paid jobs and supported generations of families, generating opportunities for local suppliers, contractors, transportation companies and countless small businesses. Canada’s postwar economic success rested partly on a practical understanding of geography and trade: we developed domestic industrial capacity while securing access to the enormous American market. The 1965 Auto Pact and subsequent trade agreements deepened continental integration, allowing Canadian manufacturers to participate in supply chains essential to our prosperity. Today, that relationship is under threat.
The consequences are already apparent. In September, Novelis announced reductions affecting approximately 80 employees at its Kingston aluminum facility, directly attributing reduced production to American tariffs. INVISTA closed its Maitland chemical facility last year, affecting approximately 100 jobs, and subsequently announced further layoffs in Kingston. Although these corporate decisions have different underlying causes, they illustrate the vulnerability of eastern Ontario’s industrial economy. Every lost manufacturing job has consequences extending well beyond the factory: industrial employment supports relatively productive, well-paid work and creates demand for suppliers, transportation companies, contractors, engineering, retailers and municipal services. When a plant reduces production, an entire regional economy feels the effects.
The broader economic threat makes preserving that industrial base urgent. The Bank of Canada has warned that American trade restrictions are reducing Canadian exports, investment and potential economic output. Its January outlook projected that Canada’s GDP would be approximately 1.5 per cent lower by the end of 2026 than anticipated before the tariff shock. This is not simply a trade dispute; it threatens productivity, wages and ultimately our standard of living. The federal government’s response must recognize an uncomfortable economic reality: we cannot rapidly replace the American market.
In 2025, the United States purchased 71.7 per cent of Canada’s merchandise exports. For eastern Ontario manufacturers producing aluminum, steel, chemicals, machinery, electrical cable and fabricated products, American customers frequently represent years or decades of commercial relationships. Anyone who has built a manufacturing business understands that developing new customers is expensive, demanding and time consuming. New markets require distribution networks, product certification, regulatory compliance, technical qualifications, competitive pricing and trusted commercial relationships. Major industrial purchasing decisions frequently involve qualification and procurement cycles measured in quarters or years. Winning a new customer does not necessarily replace the production volume, established supply chains or economies of scale associated with an existing American account. Geographic proximity, integrated transportation infrastructure and decades of continental investment provide commercial advantages that cannot simply be recreated overseas. Diversification is essential, but it is a long-term industrial strategy, not an immediate substitute for the United States.
The first priority must therefore be accelerated negotiations with Washington. Canada needs a durable agreement that restores predictable market access and protects Canadian production, investment and employment. Negotiation does not mean capitulation or accepting every American demand. It means recognizing that preserving our existing industrial economy is fundamental to Canada’s national interest. Confusing diversification with an immediate replacement for American business risks sacrificing productive Canadian companies before alternative markets can sustain them.
The second priority must be a comprehensive manufacturing strategy. Canada should accelerate diversification into European and Asian markets, remove interprovincial trade barriers, strengthen domestic supply chains and use infrastructure and defence procurement to support Canadian industrial capacity. Public investment should encourage automation, productivity, research and development, and the growth of Canadian-owned manufacturers. The St. Lawrence Corridor already has companies demonstrating that industrial growth is possible. Northern Cables, Canarm, Greenfield Global, Burnbrae Farms and HFI Pyrotechnics represent opportunities across electrical manufacturing, HVAC equipment, renewable fuels, food processing and defence-related production. Federal industrial policy must address the needs of manufacturers prepared to invest, expand production, enter new markets and create Canadian jobs.
This requires more than temporary tariff assistance. Growing manufacturers need investment capital, competitive energy costs, skilled workers, modern infrastructure and practical support for market development. Equally important, we must preserve established industrial sites, their infrastructure and the skilled workforces that make future investment possible. Canada cannot build a stronger manufacturing economy by allowing its existing industrial capacity to deteriorate while waiting for new markets to materialize.
The stakes extend directly to our standard of living. Manufacturing generates productivity, supports skilled employment and creates the economic activity required to sustain wages, public services and prosperous communities. Once production mandates, specialized workforces and capital investment move elsewhere, recovering them becomes extraordinarily difficult. Canada must negotiate now to preserve the markets and jobs that sustain our economy, while diversifying and investing to reduce our vulnerability over time. These are complementary objectives, not competing choices.
Our greatest risk is allowing today’s trade disruption to become a permanent loss of Canadian industrial capacity. We cannot build tomorrow’s manufacturing economy by sacrificing the one we have today. Canadian manufacturing must become a national priority, and the federal government must pursue both strategies with equal determination.
Charlie Mignault is the commissioner of the St. Lawrence Corridor Economic Development Commission.
At Northern Cables, the machinery that churns out steel-clad cable runs 24 hours a day, seven days a week. The push isn’t driven by a flood of new orders. It’s driven by fear.
The Canadian company is rushing to fill warehouses across the United States. It is one of many businesses making goods in Canada for U.S. customers that now face pressure to move their factories south of the border to avoid President Trump’s 50 percent tariffs, which are scheduled to start next week, on their products.
Mr. Trump’s latest tariff salvo hits particularly close to home for Northern Cables. Its factory, partly housed in a former Coca-Cola bottling plant, sits about 2.5 miles north of the invisible line dividing Ontario and New York State along the St. Lawrence River.
With half of its business coming from the United States, the company is now considering a move south. It would be a striking reversal for Northern Cables, which was founded in 1996 to keep cable-making in Brockville, Ontario, after a U.S.-based company closed its plant there and shifted production out of Canada.
But if Mr. Trump’s tariffs on a wide range of goods, including electric cable, take effect as planned on Aug. 19, Shelley Bacon, the company’s chief executive, said that he and Todd Stafford, its president, will have to start looking for an American factory.
“Todd and I are going to have to to go down and go shopping,” Mr. Bacon said, seated at a boardroom table where short lengths of cable made at the factory were displayed under glass. “We have too many jobs at stake here to just do nothing.”
Shelley Bacon, left, the chief executive of Northern Cables, and Todd Stafford, its president, anticipate that if a new wave of U.S. tariffs comes in, they may have to move some production to the United States. Credit Ian Austen/The New York Times
Northern Cables normally divides production of its armored electrical cables — which power everything from office towers to underground mines — evenly between Canadian and American customers. But to stock its U.S. warehouses, about 80 percent of the cable now being wound onto spools that weigh up to 12,000 pounds is being made to American electrical standards. Mr. Stafford estimates that the U.S. warehouses will be emptied within two to three weeks.
Northern Cables, which has 320 employees, is not alone. A survey of 275 manufacturers conducted by the polling firm Angus Reid for KPMG found that 29 percent had moved some or all of their production to the United States since Mr. Trump started his trade war with Canada. Another 13 percent more were considering it. (The survey was conducted in May before Mr. Trump announced his latest 50 percent tariffs.)
“If the trade and tariff uncertainty continues and if there is not a focus from the government on some of the systemic issues that impact manufacturing in Canada, these manufacturers may not have a choice but to start moving to the U.S.,” said Anamika Gadia, KPMG’s national leader for industrial markets in Canada. “It’s not necessarily their desire. But they may be left with little choice.”
In Ottawa, Ambico makes highly specialized doors — bullet-resistant, blast-resistant, soundproof, fireproof and eavesdropping-proof — found in buildings, including the Pentagon and the Eisenhower Executive Office Building at the White House complex. Jack Shinder, the company’s chief executive, once had no idea where the steel arriving at his factory was made; it simply came flattened and roughly cut from a processor in Montreal.
Rectangular material that will be made into doors leans against a wall in a factory shop. Partly completed specialty doors at the Ambico factory in Ottawa. Credit Ian Austen/The New York Times
But after the United States imposed a 25 percent tariff on products made largely from steel or aluminum, Mr. Shinder made sure that the supplier sent only U.S.-made steel, cutting the effective tariff rate on the company’s doors, which cost roughly $5,000 to $20,000 each, to about 10 percent.
“So I’m not going to be susceptible for the moment,” Mr. Shinder said. “The problem is what happens when the administration changes its mind tomorrow afternoon or next month or in three months? Nobody knows.”
Ambico, started by Mr. Shinder’s father and uncle in 1955, initially only sold metal doors and frames around Ottawa before expanding into Montreal and Toronto. After Mr. Shinder returned in 1980 from university and theological studies in the U.S., he pushed to expand into upstate New York. It was an unconventional idea at the time for a small Canadian manufacturer outside the auto industry, years before Canada and the United States signed their first free-trade agreement in 1989.
“I had this comfort with doing business in America, just 45 minutes from here, ” Mr. Shinder said. “Then we realized that there was a lot more business in the upper-tier states than there was in Ontario and Quebec — and there wasn’t the competition.”
About two-thirds of Ambico’s business now comes from the United States. Still, Mr. Shinder said, he will not move the company south.
“The 120 people that I employ here know that I’m not,” he said. “But how am I going to sustain my business is really the question.”
A man in a short-sleeved shirt rests his hand on his hip and looks out over a factory floor. Jack Shinder, the chief executive of Ambico, at the company’s specialty door plant in Ottawa. Credit Ian Austen/The New York Times
A few years ago, Ambico explored opening a second plant in upstate New York but abandoned the idea after concluding it could not find enough workers. Instead, Mr. Shinder plans to license some of the company’s technology to American door makers and expand into Europe, where Ambico is now certifying its doors for European standards. He expects that market to replace only about 15 percent of the company’s business.
He said that he expects the company may lose money for one or two years because of the tariffs. “I think we can weather the storms,” he said. “I do. Maybe I’m being naïve.”
Northern Cables is also eyeing Europe, though the path is harder. European electrical standards do not currently allow armored electrical cable to be used as industrial wiring, so cables must be threaded through steel pipes instead. Mr. Stafford said the company is seeking approval to change that, but expects the process could take 15 years.
Mr. Trump is not Northern Cables’ only trade headache. Mr. Bacon said that after the United States imposed steep tariffs on electrical cables from China, those products began flowing into Canada.
China exported about 538 million Canadian dollars worth of wire and cables to Canada in 2024, up from 327 million dollars in 2015. (In 2024 Canada imported 872 million dollars in cables from the United States and shipped cables worth 704 million dollars to American customers.)
“We’re getting hammered at in Canada by Chinese imports,” Mr. Bacon said, adding that he’s frustrated by what he views as a lack of interest in the Canadian government about the situation, although Canada recently imposed tariffs on some smaller cables from China, a minor product in Northern Cables’ portfolio.
A half dozen large spools of copper wire. Much of the copper used by Northern Cables comes from the United States. Credit Ian Austen/The New York Times
Like Mr. Shinder, Mr. Stafford said he was worried about finding enough workers for an American plant that would not entirely escape tariffs. Canadian companies would still need to import large amounts of aluminum because the United States has limited capacity to produce the metal. Right now that aluminum faces a 50 percent tariff.
But if new Trump tariffs take effect on Aug. 19, Mr. Stafford said the company will move quickly.
“We’re going to have to go into overdrive to figure out: Where can we get some space, where can we put some machines? How can we start this process?” he said. ”We’ve started now, but just quietly right now.”
Business is booming for HFI Pyrotechnics, as the company has announced an enormous $120 million expansion at its Edwardsburgh Cardinal facility, located just outside of Domville.
Funded through a combination of new contracts, internal funds and government investments, the work is expanding the company’s infrastructure, production capacity and technical capabilities to meet the rising global demand for its military training and search-and-rescue operations.
“Securing this initial $120 million in new contracts and investment is a turning point for HFI,” said Rhiannon Iles, president of HFI Pyrotechnics. “The Township of Edwardsburgh Cardinal’s land bank, completed this past April, made the land available for us to grow, and we are investing to develop it with new buildings, equipment, and utilities. It sets us up for further investment over the next five years as we grow, add local jobs, and help strengthen Canada’s defence supply chains.”
A C8 smoke grenade was deployed as a demonstration at HFI Pyrotechnics’ expansion event on Thursday, July 23, 2026. Photo by John Lawless /The Brockville Recorder and Times
HFI celebrated this milestone with a groundbreaking event Thursday morning, attended by local dignitaries such as MP Michael Barrett, MPP Steve Clark and Edwardsburgh Cardinal Mayor Tory Deschamps.
The groundbreaking signified the beginning of the construction of a new laboratory for quality assurance, which aims to help with innovation and research and development.
“This expansion is incredibly important to our council, not only because it brings high-quality, good-paying jobs to our community, but because it transforms lands that sat unproductive for far too long into a hub of opportunity,” said Deschamps. “We are proud to support HFI’s continued success and look forward to the long-term benefits this and other future projects will bring to Edwardsburgh Cardinal.”
HFI said the $120-million investment is the first phase of a five-year growth plan, with more expansion news to follow.
Over the next one to two years, HFI will invest in new buildings, civil work, and heavy equipment across the site. That work includes the land bank acquisition; a major project on the production floor to increase capacity for marine location markers with new industrial equipment to raise output; hydro and bandwidth upgrades; and, construction across the site that will include new buildings, access roads, and supporting infrastructure.
The investment will bring new contracts, new infrastructure, and new research programs to the site, which will equate to work that is already creating jobs at one of the largest employers in Leeds and Grenville. The company has added 50 positions since November and expects to add more through the rest of this year as production grows.
“When I started in 2020 there were 57 employees, and now including the expansion in November, we’re over 150,” said Iles. “In that time, we’ve built some great relationships with the U.S. and some of our other NATO partners. We have shipments going out to Germany, the Netherlands, and Poland all in the next month or so.
“But Canada is our No.-1 customer and our most important customer.”
HFI designs, manufactures, and supplies specialty pyrotechnic products for military, defence, and commercial customers worldwide. Its products help train and protect armed forces and support search-and-rescue and safety operations.
Power cable manufacturer Northern Cables’ production facility in Brockville, Ont., July 21. The Trump administration’s latest round of tariffs, invoked using Section 338 of the Depression-era Tariff Act, would directly override USMCA exemptions, an outcome Northern Cables’ president Todd Stafford says would be ‘devastating.’ Photo: James Paddle-Grant/The Globe and Mail
The White House has ramped up its trade war with Canada by threatening tariffs on a seemingly esoteric list of goods that would deliver a serious blow to companies caught in the crosshairs, even if the broader impact on the country’s economy should be limited.
On Monday, President Donald Trump issued a trio of executive orders imposing 50-per-cent tariffs on more than 500 categories of products, ranging from larger sectors such as electronic equipment and furniture to a hodgepodge of products including hockey sticks, Canadian whisky and even some antiques.
The tariffs, which are set to take effect on Aug. 19, would apply to roughly US$20-billion of imports from Canada, which represents roughly 5 per cent of Canada’s shipments to the U.S. in 2025.
From wine to whey to wigs, here are the Canadian goods targeted by Trump’s new 50% tariffs
“We’re talking about a 50-per-cent tariff, which is pretty major. The microeconomic impacts are actually potentially quite severe,” said Stuart Bergman, chief economist at Export Development Canada.
The new duties, which Mr. Trump invoked using Section 338 of the Depression-era Tariff Act, would directly override the U.S.-Mexico-Canada Agreement exemptions. When the Trump administration’s emergency tariffs were in place, prior to being overturned by the U.S.’s top court, more than 80 per cent of Canadian exports were shielded by USMCA.
For manufacturers like Northern Cables Inc., a commercial and industrial power cable manufacturer based in Brockville, Ont., losing that protection would be “devastating,” the company’s president Todd Stafford said.
“There’s 30 days, so it could change 15 times, but as written now, that’s probably half our business,” he said.
If the tariffs do go through as threatened, however, the only alternative for the company would be to open a manufacturing facility in the U.S., he said. Northern Cables currently operates all three of its manufacturing facilities in Ontario, but has several warehouses spread across the U.S.
“We could probably get some form of operation in probably nine to 12 months.”
Across the electrical equipment and electronics sector, one of the industries hardest hit by the tariffs, companies are scrambling to quantify the potential damage.
As an industry, 90 per cent of the sector’s exports go to the U.S., said Cherith Sinasac, director of government affairs for Electro-Federation Canada, a trade group representing hundreds of electrical and automation companies.
That’s a pattern across many of the sectors targeted this week, EDC’s Mr. Bergman said.
“The industries that were chosen are among some of the industries that have the highest U.S. market concentration. I don’t think that’s by accident,” he said.
At Durham Furniture Inc., a manufacturer of solid wood bedroom furniture northwest of Toronto, Luke Simpson, the company’s president, is taking a wait-and-see approach to the new tariffs because of the history of Mr. Trump’s on-again, off-again threats since the start of 2025.
Still, on Tuesday he fielded an anxious call from one U.S. customer set to take delivery of products for its showroom later next month asking if it should cancel its order in light of the tariffs.
“We assume it’s a negotiating tactic but no one has any idea what is going to happen,” he said. “The uncertainty of it means how do you possibly add new customers?”
A swath of the furniture industry was already reeling from Section 232 tariffs targeting U.S. imports of cabinets, said Gilles Pelletier, president and chief executive officer of the Quebec Furniture Manufacturer’s Association, so a 50-per-cent tariff on other furniture products “is pretty much an embargo,” he said. If the tariffs do take effect, those furniture products would “get more tariffs than China or Vietnam, which is ridiculous.”
One aspect of the new tariffs that makes them so damaging is that they generally target small- and medium-sized exporters, a segment that accounts for roughly two-thirds of private sector jobs in Canada.
Cheekbone Beauty founder and CEO Jenn Harper. ‘As a small business we have a lot less room to absorb something like this,’ she says. Photo: Courtney Michaud/Supplied
At Cheekbone Beauty, Canada’s first Indigenous-owned cosmetics brand, founder and CEO Jenn Harper said she was caught off guard by the new tariffs, which would include lipstick, eye-makeup and other cosmetics.
While the St. Catharines, Ont.-based company has about a dozen full-time and contract employees, it has made big inroads into the U.S. market, including a deal to carry its products in close to 150 JCPenney stores. Roughly one-quarter of its e-commerce sales are also to the U.S.
The company was already absorbing some tariffs on Italian-made goods it sold in the U.S., “but at 50 per cent that’s too much for us,” she said. “As a small business we have a lot less room to absorb something like this.”
On the other end of the business-size scale, Vancouver-based mining giant Teck Resources Ltd. could be caught up in the new tariffs, though the impact will be minimal through tariffs on refined lead.
Last year, Canada exported US$224-million of the product to the U.S., but in a statement Sarah Payne, a spokesperson for the company, said refined lead sales account for only 2 per cent of the company’s revenue.
“We do not currently anticipate a material impact as a result of tariffs,” she wrote.
The new tariffs are also set to impact a broad range of Canadian forest products.
The sector already faces significant trade barriers in the U.S., including long-standing duties on softwood lumber and more recent Section 232 tariffs. Expanding the tariffs is deeply disappointing, Derek Nighbor, president and CEO of Forest Products Association of Canada and the Canadian Wood Council said in a statement.
“Forest sector workers and communities across Canada have been dealing with escalating and unnecessary U.S. trade actions for far too long and it continues to hurt Canadian and American families alike,” he said.
While the targeted nature of the tariffs would minimize the impact on the broader Canadian economy, economists said it would still leave its mark.
“If these tariffs are kept in place permanently, real GDP growth could be about 0.1 percentage points lower in the long run,” according to a report from economists at Desjardins.
Meanwhile, “heightened uncertainty could dampen business confidence and curb investment plans,” they wrote.
With the 30-day window before the tariffs take effect, some companies are planning to move as many goods across the border as possible, a pattern that played out in the lead-up to Mr. Trump’s first round of tariffs on Canada and Mexico in early 2025.
Mr. Stafford, at Northern Cables, said that while his company will try to fill their U.S. warehouses with their finished goods before the new tariffs are implemented, his seven warehouses can only hold about two weeks’ worth of manufacturing supply.
In the meantime, Mr. Stafford said the tariffs will force a temporary delay of hiring and capital spending plans, and the company will “not make any decisions until we see which way things are going.”
Canada has faced defining moments before – moments where external pressures tested not just our economy, but our resolve as a country. This is one of those moments.
In 2020, Trump advisor and son–in-law Jared Kushner publicly stated that it was the U.S. administration’s deliberate strategy to create an agreement with Canada that “weaponized uncertainty,” so that the United States could return years later to exact further concessions. Today, under President Donald Trump, the trade war with Canada continues on script.
However, it is my hope we are not quietly accepting a diminished standard of living while potentially losing our place in the global economy because of Mr. Kushner’s scheme. This is not simply a trade dispute. It is a test of whether Canada will act with intention – or be acted upon.
Why buy Canadian? Let’s evaluate the present moment we are in. Ontario’s unemployment rate sits at 7.6 per cent (the United States rate remains at 4.3 per cent). Nearly one in seven young Canadians cannot find work. Our manufacturing sector has lost over 55,000 jobs since the tariff war began. Steel workers, auto assemblers, forestry communities, and farmers are absorbing a hit that was imposed on them – not earned.
At the same time, we must confront a deeper and more structural reality. Forty years after the advent of the” knowledge economy,” Canada still does not have a coherent national strategy to capture and retain wealth. This is now showing up in the data in ways we can no longer ignore. Canada’s GDP per capita has declined from roughly 90 per cent of U.S. levels in 2010 to approximately 75 per cent today.
That is not a cyclical fluctuation; it is a structural erosion of relative prosperity. You can see it every time you leave your house.
Recent reporting from Statistics Canada this week further confirms that inequality is widening across the country. Lower- and middle-income Canadians are experiencing weaker wage growth, losing savings capacity, and increasingly relying on debt simply to maintain consumption. In contrast, gains are accruing disproportionately to those with access to capital and financial assets. This divergence should concern anyone interested in long-term economic stability and social cohesion.
This is not a reason to retreat. It is a reason to act – with clarity, with discipline, and with purpose.
And how should Canadians act? When you choose Canadian steel, Canadian lumber, Canadian food, and Canadian services, you are not engaging in symbolism – you are exercising economic agency. You are making a deliberate choice about where value is created and who benefits from it.
You are keeping a wage in a London household where the unemployment rate is 9.1 per cent.
You are keeping a shift running in a Hamilton mill where the unemployment rate is 7.2 per cent.
You are keeping a young person in their first job instead of their first unemployment line.
This is what economic citizenship looks like in practice.
We need a persistent and principled approach to Canadian economic nationalism – not as a slogan, but as a co-ordinated national behaviour.
Here’s what “Buy Canadian” actually does: it keeps demand, jobs, and margins inside our borders when export channels are under siege; it reduces our dependence on U.S. inputs in sectors we cannot afford to hollow out; it signals to every foreign policymaker watching that Canada can redirect its economy – and will; it turns consumer and procurement decisions into genuine negotiating leverage in the face of U.S. pressure; it sustains the forestry towns, auto hubs, and farming communities that built this country.
As a nation, we have weathered harder moments than this. But this moment is different in one important respect: the risks we face are not only external – they are also structural and internal. Slowing productivity, declining relative incomes, and widening inequality are all signals that Canada is at a crossroads.
The question is not whether we recognize the challenge. The question is whether we respond to it together. Reach deep into the well of the Canadian identity. We should remind ourselves: we are not a branch plant. We are not a client state. We are an innovative, resource-rich, highly skilled economy of 40 million people who have every capacity to support one another in the face of external pressure. And in moments like this, national strength is not expressed in rhetoric – it is expressed in decisions.
So, to every procurement leader, business owner, and supply chain manager reading this: ask your suppliers where their goods are made. Ask them to source Canadian where they can. Ask them to stand with Canadian workers.
Because this is how a country stabilizes itself under pressure – one decision at a time, multiplied across millions.
We need to support our workers now. We need to remain economically independent. We need to protect those being left behind. We need to recommit to the common good.
Let’s not drift into a lower standard of living by default. Let’s choose a higher one – deliberately, collectively, and with confidence. Buy Canadian. Invest Canadian. Build Canadian. Be Canadian.
Charlie Mignault is the commissioner of the St. Lawrence Corridor Economic Development Commission.
As Canada sent its first astronaut to travel to the moon, a local company helped bring him back to Earth.
HFI Pyrotechnics, a Prescott-area pyrotechnics company, supplied the marine marker that was used to outline the target landing zone and its conditions during Artemis II’s splashdown after its 10-day mission in space.
The use of this marker came as a complete surprise to everyone at HFI Pyrotechnics, and the company’s president did a double-take when she was watching the live broadcast of the spacecraft’s landing.
“I was watching it and wondered if I was seeing things,” said Rhiannon Iles, president of HFI Pyrotechnics. “I rewound the newscast and confirmed what I thought I saw, it was definitely our smoking marker. I couldn’t believe what I was seeing.”
HFI Pyrotechnics has been the sole supplier of marine location markers for the United States Navy since 2012, and since the navy was involved in the splashdown, Iles knew it had to be their marker being used out on the Pacific Ocean.
In this unique case, the marker was used to indicate where the target landing spot was for the spacecraft, and the smoke that it emits is used to calculate the wind and current’s speed and direction.
“From the broadcast I couldn’t tell which model they used, but I know it’s ours,” said Iles. “We’ve been the only ones that supply markers to the U.S. navy for many years, and it’s unlikely they’d have 15-year-old inventory that they’d be using.”
The marker has a saltwater-activated battery, so when it hits the saltwater, the battery completes the circuit and initiates pyrotechnics.
That ends up lighting the red phosphorus candle inside it, which creates the flame and smoke.
A member of United States Navy gets ready to deploy a marine location marker made by HFI Pyrotechnics. Photo by HFI PYROTECHNICS
When the navy isn’t using them for once-in-a-generation space missions, it typically uses them in man-overboard missions, drills and surveying.
“It’s actually pretty low-tech,” said Iles. “There’s no GPS beacon, no electronic stuff – it’s truly analog and unable to be scrambled. Once it’s done, it sinks.”
Along with being the sole supplier of markers for the U.S. navy, HFI Pyrotechnics is also the sole supplier for the Canadian Armed Forces.
For a company located in small-town eastern Ontario, HFI Pyrotechnics is a significant player in the industry.
“The U.S. navy put out a request for a quote, and we just simply bid on it and won,” said Iles. “In Canada, we also have an exclusive contract with the military to be the sole-source provider for marine markers, as well as other devices.”
Even though the company is located nearly 4,500 kilometres away from where this mission ended up landing, it was still able to be a small part of this historic moment in humanity’s journey to space.
“It was so cool to see our little marine marker show up on the big stage,” said Iles. “For a small company in eastern Ontario, this was an incredible moment for us. This Artemis mission symbolized togetherness, supporting each other, and international co-operation. I’m happy we were able to play a small part in that.”
In 2020, Trump advisor and son–in-law Jared Kushner publicly stated that it was the U.S. administration’s deliberate strategy to create an agreement with Canada that weaponized uncertainty, so that the United States could return years later to extract further concessions. Today, under President Donald Trump, the trade war with Canada continues on script. It is my hope we are not quietly accepting a diminished standard of living while potentially losing our place in the global economy because of Mr. Kushner’s scheme.
Why buy Canadian? Let’s evaluate the present moment we are in. Ontario’s unemployment rate sits at 7.6% (the United States rate sits at 4.3%). Nearly one in seven young Canadians cannot find work. Our manufacturing sector has lost over 52,000 jobs since the tariff war began. Steel workers, auto assemblers, forestry communities, and farmers are absorbing a hit that was imposed on them—not earned.
At the same time, we must confront a deeper and more structural reality. Forty years after the advent of the knowledge economy, Canada still does not have a coherent national strategy to capture and retain wealth. This is now showing up in the data in ways we can no longer ignore. Canada’s GDP per capita has declined from roughly 90% of U.S. levels in 2010 to approximately 75% today. That is not a cyclical fluctuation—it is a structural erosion of relative prosperity. You can see it every time you leave your house.
Recent reporting from Statistics Canada this week further confirms that inequality is widening across the country. Lower- and middle-income Canadians are experiencing weaker wage growth, losing savings capacity, and increasingly relying on debt simply to maintain consumption. In contrast, gains are accruing disproportionately to those with access to capital and financial assets. This divergence should concern anyone interested in long-term economic stability and social cohesion.
This is not a reason to despair. It is the reason to act. And how should Canadians act?
When you choose Canadian steel, Canadian lumber, Canadian food, and Canadian services, you are not waving a flag—you are making a rational economic decision in a moment that demands it. You are keeping a wage in a London household where the unemployment rate is 9.1%. You are keeping a shift running in a Hamilton mill where the unemployment rate is 7.2%. You are keeping a young person in their first job instead of their first unemployment line. We need a persistent and principled approach to Canadian economic nationalism.
Here’s what “Buy Canadian” actually does:
It keeps demand, jobs, and margins inside our borders when export channels are under siege
It reduces our dependence on U.S. inputs in sectors we cannot afford to hollow out
It signals to every foreign policymaker watching that Canada can redirect its economy—and will
It turns consumer and procurement decisions into genuine negotiating leverage with President Donald Trump
It sustains the forestry towns, auto hubs, and farming communities that built this country
As a nation, we have weathered harder moments than this. But this moment is different in one important respect: the risks we face are not only external—they are structural and internal. Slowing productivity, declining relative incomes, and widening inequality are all signals that Canada is at a crossroads.
We must remind ourselves – we are not a branch plant. We are not a client state. We are an innovative, resource-rich, highly skilled economy of 40 million people who have every reason to support one another in the face of external pressure. So to every procurement leader, business owner, and supply chain manager reading this: ask your suppliers where their goods are made. Ask them to source Canadian where they can. Ask them to stand with Canadian workers—because we need to support our workers now. We need to remain independent. We need to support those being left behind. We need to recommit to the common good. Let’s not settle for less – let’s demand more from ourselves.
As Canada ramps up its military spending, opportunities arise for local businesses and industries, a roundtable discussion heard last week.
Twenty-four industry leaders, primarily from the St. Lawrence Corridor, gathered on Jan. 19 at Prescott Town Hall for an industry roundtable on economic opportunities at the federal level.
The local leaders met with the Jenna Sudds, Parliamentary Secretary for the Ministry of Government Transformation, Procurement and Public Services, and Secretary of State for the Ministry of National Defence.
Hosted by David Beatty, chairman of Brockville-based Canarm, and Rhiannon Iles, President of HFI Pyrotechnics, located north of Prescott, the event brought together key stakeholders from industry, education, and job training services, organizers said.
The roundtable’s primary objective was to review opportunities arising from the “Carney Blueprint for Economic Growth and Defence,” specifically examining how local sectors can engage in, and realign business practices with, the government’s stated priorities.
“We could exchange, first hand, the opportunities and the challenges that lie ahead to leverage existing and forge new business practices,” said Sudds, the Liberal MP for Kanata, in a prepared statement. “These sessions are timely and needed.”
Organizers said the roundtable discussions touched on three main points, starting with the “Buy Canada Policy,” where Sudds outlined the new policy and the specific opportunities it creates for domestic industry.
They also discussed defence and dual-use technology. With Canada committing to its NATO spending targets, the roundtable explored strategic opportunities for industry within the defence sector.
Lastly, the topic of government support programs was talked through, where attendees were briefed on programs available through FedDev Ontario, particularly those introduced to support businesses affected by recent tariffs.
The session also included a dedicated question period facilitated by Beatty and Iles, allowing participants to address specific concerns regarding government engagement processes.
The event emphasized the critical link between industry readiness, educational alignment, and job training services in meeting the demands of these new federal initiatives, said organizers.
“Thank you for taking the time to discuss how Canada’s evolving economic and defence priorities can unlock new opportunities for industry-service open investments, jobs and regional growth, particularly for us SMEs,” said 401 Electric president Barry Moss, as quoted by event organizers. “We ended the session with a number of concrete next steps.”
Iles, one of the event’s organizers, says the roundtable was a success and she hopes to host another one in the future, potentially dealing with international trade.
“The roundtable generated a lot of energy for our company, HFI, to see what’s available and where we can leverage businesses and services locally,” she said in a statement of her own. “We want to have more of these, because we’ve heard loud and clear from our political contacts that getting MPs to the region to see what’s here is one of the best ways to influence engagement and increase visibility.”
Shelley Bacon, left, the chief executive of Northern Cables, and Todd Stafford, its president, anticipate that if a new wave of U.S. tariffs comes in, they may have to move some production to the United States. Credit Ian Austen/The New York Times
A man in a short-sleeved shirt rests his hand on his hip and looks out over a factory floor.
A half dozen large spools of copper wire.
