Opinion: Canada must build to rebuild

Photo by Jason Payne

The following opinion article was originally published in The Vancouver Sun on July 10, 2025.

Click here to read the article on The Vancouver Sun website.

---

Many Canadians are understandably frustrated by B.C. Ferries’ $1.2-billion decision to buy four new vessels from China. The situation seems absurd. Canada boasts more ocean coastline and more fresh water than any country. It has a long-standing shipbuilding industry. Yet it has no shipyards able to bid on a domestic procurement contract for B.C. Ferries?

The unfortunate truth, we now know, is that the tender was simply not viable for Canadian shipbuilders. B.C. Ferries structured the bidding process to emphasize lowest cost over other considerations that would favour Canadian shipbuilders, such as domestic content requirements. Questions have also been raised about the capacity of B.C. shipyards to bid and compete on one major project without the promise of continuous work.

To make matters worse, Canadians later learned that the Canada Investment Bank (CIB), a federal Crown corporation, provided $1 billion in low-interest financing for the purchase of the foreign-made vessels, without any binding commitments concerning domestic content.

No one was more surprised about this than federal Minister of Transportation and Internal Trade Chrystia Freeland, who wrote to Mike Farnworth, B.C.’s Minister of Public Safety, about her “great consternation and disappointment” over B.C. Ferries’ decision. Apparently, Freeland was unaware the CIB had already committed in March 2025 to finance the purchase.

It is essential that Canadians know the reasons behind this procurement policy debacle. On Monday, the federal Transport Committee voted to have cabinet ministers and the chief executive of the CIB explain themselves.

We should also use this moment to take a deeper look at Canada’s enduring and structural industrial decline and failure to pursue a comprehensive industrial strategy.

For decades, an unqualified faith in the free market has hollowed out Canada’s industrial base, leaving its manufacturing sector less competitive and dependent on foreign supply chains. At the same time, global overcapacity, dumping and aggressive subsidization of foreign producers by their governments have undercut Canadian producers’ ability to compete globally.

For example, Seaspan, Canada’s major West Coast shipyard, has stated that Canadian companies simply cannot compete for commercial shipbuilding contracts against low-wage countries with lower employment standards, lower environmental standards and lower safety standards.

Yet, amid a trade war, with Canadian exports facing punitive tariffs and leaders pledging revitalize domestic supply chains, $1 billion in federal financing goes out the door, no strings attached.

The government of Prime Minister Mark Carney, for its part, promises a policy of domestic procurement prioritizing Canadian steel and aluminum in nation-building projects and defence. But surely we cannot call for self-reliance while outsourcing critical infrastructure to countries that undercut domestic industry and supply chains through overcapacity, dumping, subsidies and unfair trade.

The answer is to start now — strategically, deliberately, and urgently — to rebuild and renew Canada’s industrial foundations. That means sustained investment and expansion of manufacturing, building energy sovereignty in conventional and clean energy sources, including long-term order pipelines, enforcing Buy Canadian and Buy Clean procurement policies and, most importantly, developing a national industrial strategy that treats economic resilience and domestic industrial capacity as a matter of national public interest.

Canada must also get serious about protecting its domestic market. Critics who naively argue that trade barriers do more harm than good ignore the strategic policy context. Targeted tariffs and other actions designed to insulate and promote domestic industries are key trade policy tools that are most powerful when paired with a broader industrial strategy promoting key sectors and good jobs. In the U.S., under the Biden administration, tariffs were combined with targeted financial support for key sectors under the CHIPS and Inflation Reduction Acts, which spurred billions in investments in new industrial capacity and good union jobs.

Canada can no longer sit idly by as the global economy shifts. In a world of rising protectionism and fragile supply chains, building at home is imperative. The next billion-dollar infrastructure project should invest in Canadian capacity, Canadian jobs and Canadian communities — not subsidize foreign competition.

Marty Warren is National Director of the United Steelworkers union.

Share on Facebook Share on Twitter