The following text is based on remarks delivered by the Honourable Mélanie Joly, Minister of Industry and Minister responsible for Canada Economic Development for Quebec Regions, to business groups and chambers of commerce in October 2025:
It's a pleasure to be here with all of you, leaders that understand a simple truth: that economic strength is the backbone of national strength.
We're living in a much more complicated, complex, and dangerous world. I've seen it firsthand, having done diplomacy as foreign minister.
I used to be on the diplomatic front of the trade tensions, and now I'm much more on the economic front. I used to work on the causes, and now I'm working on the consequences. And I've seen the security environment of the world deteriorate over the last few years with wars, yes, but also through increased economic tensions.
And we know that security and economy go hand-in-hand.
When you think about it, our old alliances don't necessarily work anymore, and the concept of an ever-expanding consumer base through free trade is in jeopardy.
So, what do we do? Because fundamentally, we need to create economic growth in our country. It is important for us to be able to offer ourselves and Canadians a just society, a social safety net, for Canadians to be able to trust each other, to be able to care for one another, and ultimately to keep peace at home. We know that we'll continue to deal with uncertainty, that will be a reality for all businesses. This will definitely be the government's reality. And we know that there are things we cannot control, but there are a lot of things we can control.
So, let's focus on what we can control.
Our mission, as you've heard from the Prime Minister, is to build one strong Canadian economy. And we have everything any country on Earth would like to have. Obviously, we have great people, talent, natural resources.
We have also peace, order, and good government. So, let's make sure that we play to our strengths, and let's also make sure that we can work on a very important plan.
And here's the plan: First, we will protect. Second, we will create, and third, we will attract.
Let's start with the first pillar: Protect. Protect industries and protect jobs. We're working in a reality where we know that we still have sectors of the economy that are victims of tariffs. Of course, we're talking here about steel, aluminum, auto, lumber, and copper.
And here's what we're going to do. Short-term, we will protect our market. We'll make sure that we support the industries, the businesses in these sectors.
Medium-term, we need to make sure that they can adapt and pivot. They need to be able to seek out new markets, and they need to be able to develop new products. And we're putting money on the table with a new $5 billion Strategic Response Fund, and through the support of our regional development agencies.
And finally, longer term, we need to be relentless in building a domestic market, through our defence investments, our Buy Canadian policy, our housing strategy, and our national major projects.
Let me give you a couple of examples. Think about steel. There are several very important plants across the country. One is Algoma, which is Canadian-owned and very dear to Ontario and very dear to Sault Ste. Marie. Algoma Steel. We just invested to make sure that they would have loan support-$400 million. But you know what? While Algoma Steel's business model was basically linked to the US auto market, they now have a new order of steel from Irving Shipyard in Halifax, which is building Canadian frigates for our navy.
It's a beginning. Obviously, it's not the only solution, but we need more of that. And they now have an MOU with Seaspan, which is the other shipyard on the Pacific side in Vancouver.
I was also talking to you about the importance of developing new markets. Trade diversification is happening. I'll give you another example, in aluminum-Alouette, in the northern part of Québec. Alouette, first quarter of this year, was exporting a vast majority of its production to the U.S., and only 4 per cent to Europe. In the second quarter, 57 per cent of its production is being sent to Europe.
So, folks, it can happen, even in a very important sector such as aluminum.
Next, the auto sector. Let me be clear: we will fight for every single job in the auto sector. We will make sure that we coordinate with the workers, with labour movement, with the plants, with the companies, with the industries, because we know that we need to be there for the auto sector. And we've been there. When we had countermeasures, we developed a remission system.
And through the Strategic Response Fund, we're looking at making the right strategic investments in these plants. But let me be again very clear: the Ontario economy cannot do well if the auto sector doesn't do well. We all know that. But I'm from Quebec. I understand that if the Ontario economy doesn't do well, the economy of the country doesn't do well. So, that's why we'll fight and make sure that we have a strong auto sector in Ontario.
When it comes to protecting jobs, we won't let these industries down, and we will do that for the sake of our workers, our industries, and our nation.
Now, the second pillar of this plan: Create. Create jobs and, of course, beyond this, create industries. In every single crisis, there is an opportunity. We need to act with audacity, purpose, and determination. While we know some things are beyond our control, creating jobs is something we can control. And we can do it three ways. And I'll start by talking about our investments in defence, because we will be investing in defence like never before.
And when I talk about defence, let's be very clear, it is about dealing with a variety of threats against our country. Land, sea, and air may be top of mind. But it also means cyber, as well as threats to our health like pandemics or even climate change impacts such as wildfires. So, we have a large definition of defence.
We will be working on a defence industrial strategy. And in the context of this defence industrial strategy, we will be buying, so it's buy, build, and partner.
What do I mean by that? When we're looking at the military capabilities of our Canadian Armed Forces, sometimes there are things that we don't already build in Canada. So, obviously, we need to buy. The best example is our submarine procurement right now. And now there are two companies that are competing to have access to our market, to our procurement. Either Germany and Norway, which is the consortium led by TKMS, or South Korea, Hanwha. We will make sure that, regardless, whether it's TKMS or Hanwha, that there will be Canadian content, that Canadian companies will be part of the supply chain, and ultimately, we'll have IP control and we'll create jobs through that procurement.
So, that's what I mean by buy. Now, we can build. We can build even more with our money, basically our investments in defence. Earlier, I was referring to our shipyards. We've had a National Shipbuilding Strategy for 15 years. We have Irving building great ships on the Atlantic side. We have Seaspan on the Pacific side in Vancouver, and we have Davie in Québec City. They're building world-class ships and Arctic icebreakers.
At this point, what we want from these shipyards is not only to help develop the military capabilities of our brave men and women serving our Armed Forces, it's more than that. They need to export. All countries on Earth are increasing their defence spending, well, particularly NATO countries. So, there's a market out there. Our shipbuilding industry is maturing and that's why we're thinking of helping them export.
We know that we can do even more. De Havilland in Calgary is building fantastic water bombers. You know, these Canadian water bombers that we saw in LA, Calgary manufactured. So, we can make sure that we build the water bombers here. We can also build the right satellites. In short, we want to make sure that we build for Canada, but also for the world. And we're thinking obviously about artificial intelligence (AI), and we have a great Canadian company that is called Cohere, which is from Ontario, and we'll make sure that we build Cohere.
And finally, we will partner. Sometimes we can be stronger through a joint venture. So, what we're seeing right now is Bombardier and a Swedish company called Saab working together to develop the best surveillance plane in the world, which is called the GlobalEye. UAE just bought two. France just bought, and other countries I'm hearing are also very interested. We need to make sure that we partner with Sweden on this because there's a market. We will build these planes here, and also in Sweden, and we'll make sure that we sell it to the world.
So, buy, build, partner, this is how we'll be creating jobs through our Defence Industrial Strategy.
We know that we can build the best ships, the best planes, the best drones and have very strong supply chains across the country. We can have researchers, engineers and welders at work. We can have the Business Development Bank of Canada (BDC), and we will have the National Research Council (NRC), our research councils and the Canadian Space Agency that will be involved in supporting this ecosystem. And we just announced a new Defence Investment Agency to make sure that we're going faster, and ultimately, we will use the power of procurement to create jobs. Because ultimately, what I've learned is companies would rather have contracts than subsidies from the government.
So, we're still talking about creating jobs. We're still in the second pillar of the plan. We've talked about the Defence Industrial Strategy. Something that is really important to the Prime Minister is definitely major projects. You've heard what we're doing to build one strong Canadian economy. We've also passed Bill C-5 to make sure that approval of projects could be faster. We've put into place the Major Projects Office. We now have a new president, Dawn Farrell. We've referred five projects to the new Office to get them across the finish line, and they're in energy, mining, transport. And just through this first tranche of five projects, $60 billion in private investments. Thousands of jobs.
Canada will be the first G7 country building small modular reactors in Darlington, Ontario. That's 3,000 jobs. And of course, we're talking about the high-speed train between Toronto and Québec City.
Taken together, we will be creating thousands of jobs in engineering, construction and throughout supply chains with SMEs. And we will be building communities, and we will be working with Indigenous communities, which is so important because they need to be able to be at the decision table. We'll make sure that they have that space at the decision table, that they can have equity stakes in these major projects and develop economic development levers that are so important for Indigenous communities across the country. This is reconciliation in action.
Meanwhile, while we're working on all these major projects, think about steel and aluminum. This will increase the demand, and therefore we need to make sure these different steel companies are working together with all these major project proponents.
And finally, when it comes to creating jobs, we will be building Canadian champions. And I know this is something that government officials have not necessarily talked a lot about in the past because it was a bit taboo. But I'm from Montréal. And we're very proud of having very strong Canadian companies such as CGI, CAE, Alimentation Couche-Tard, Bombardier. We need more of that. In Toronto, we have, indeed, Agnico, super important. We have Thompson Reuters. We have Maple Leaf Foods. Across the country we have Aritzia, Lululemon. We need more. We need to scale these companies. We need bigger Canadian companies. And we need to make sure that these companies become bigger and at the same time that we have more of these Canadian champions.
Why? Obviously, to create jobs here at home and around the world. But in a much more complicated world, what do we need? We need to increase our influence. We need more soft power. And that is why building strong Canadian companies is important. And we will make sure that we open markets for them, that we promote them, that we help them grow, and ultimately that they're strong at home and abroad.
Third pillar of the plan: attract. Attract investment, attract talent. Let's start with attracting talent. As other countries are undermining academic freedom and research, we will invest, and we will double down. We believe in science, and we believe in research.
My parliamentary secretary and I have been spending a lot of time meeting universities and researchers. And we know that they're also extremely important to our education system, but also to our economy. Our goal is to attract the best talent on Earth and to grow even more homegrown talent. So, we will work on attracting even more talent from the rest of the world.
And finally, my last point on attracting investment. We know that investors are looking right now at de-risking and some of them are much more exposed to certain markets. And we can help them de-risk. We can offer investment certainty. We can reduce red tape, and we will do so. We can offer much more transparency, and we will. And we can speed up permitting, and we will be doing that working with different levels of governments and with Indigenous communities. Ultimately, what investors are looking for is a stable environment with no surprises, and we can offer that. So, we will make sure that we seize this opportunity.
And my job in government is also to attract foreign direct investment, FDI. So, we will be open for business, and we will attract investments from Europe, from Asia and from the Gulf countries. And this will be good for Canadians. This will be good for Indigenous communities. And Canada tops the charts when it comes to attracting this type of foreign direct investment because it's working. Canada is one of the best places in the world to put capital to work.
In conclusion, my message to you is this: let's work together on building one strong Canadian economy, by protecting, by creating and by attracting.
I brought you my best ideas. But I am ready to be challenged because this is an important moment. These are not abstract policies. We have a vision. We have a plan. These are real investments in real people that will generate real growth right here at home.
We have a generational challenge to solve, but a generational opportunity to seize. So, let's work together.
Thank you.
