My father, Harry Zekelman, suddenly passed away at the age of 68. He left my two brothers, Alan, 23, and Clayton, 17, and me at the age of 19 a few struggling real estate assets and a nearly bankrupt little tube-making operation in the small farming town of Harrow, Ont. We were not prepared to be business owners, but we dug in, took it one day at a time and figured out how to make steel tubing.

Several months thereafter, I was invited to visit our supplier, Dofasco Steel, in Hamilton. We were a tiny customer, maybe buying 200 to 300 tons per month. The tour started at the soaking pits, a huge box structure from which a crane would extract a red-hot glowing block of steel called an ingot. The heat was intense, almost burning your skin from 150 feet away.

I was hooked. The power and the energy were mesmerizing. It looked like someone had pulled off a chunk of the sun and the giant crane was taking it away for playtime. The ingot was manipulated through a series of rollers (such as a rolling pin with dough) to become a steel coil that we would use to make hollow structural steel tubing, or HSS. I was amazed at the engineering, chemistry, power and skill it took to harness these resources to make

steel . I now understand just how much steel impacts our lives. Life as we know it would not exist without the multitude of products made from steel. Cars, power plants, farming equipment, airports, buildings, roads, bridges, data centres, schools and hospitals are all made possible by steel. Made by people, extraordinary people, skilled and proud of what they do, what they create and how they contribute. We depend on these people.

We built a business that is now the largest pipe and tube manufacturer in North America, with 19 locations consuming 2.8 million tonnes of steel a year. To put that into context, that’s more than the entire output of Stelco Holdings Inc. We employ more than 3,000 teammates. We built this business out of love and a passion for what we do and for who we do it with.

People have said to me, “You must be proud to be a self-made man.” I am not self-made; every single teammate we have deserves a hand in this success and we treat them as such. We are most proud of that — the families and the communities that have all built themselves around what we have been able to do — and that’s the real story and we need to do much more of this.

For years, elites have frowned at people who carry lunchboxes and get their fingernails dirty. As a result, young people have avoided entering the

trades . Have you tried to hire a reliable plumber, carpenter, welder or bricklayer lately? Can you imagine what our world would look like if we let our steel industry die? We would be forced to depend on imports for our most essential needs.

COVID-19 taught us that in challenging times, global supply chains cannot be relied upon. It becomes every man for himself. Foreign countries did not care about supplying us and when they did, they charged an arm and a leg.

If we must depend on foreign steel for everything mentioned above, we are doomed. How will our workers support their families when foreign countries decide to cut off our steel? The strong, calloused hands that build our buildings, harvest our food and energy, and make our cars, ambulances and fire trucks will have nothing to work with.

It is incomprehensible to me that we let foreigners have 65 per cent of our domestic steel market even though we have the capacity to supply virtually all of it. Canada produces 13 million tonnes of steel annually and consumes almost 14 million tonnes. Despite this, we import eight million tonnes of steel annually.

Three million tonnes of these imports come from the United States and five million tonnes from countries such as China, Korea, Vietnam, India, Thailand, Indonesia, the United Arab Emirates, etc. The top three importers into Canada are also the top three export destinations for Chinese steel.

Understand how this works: China exports its excess steel by dumping it on the world market and the subsidized Chinese steel displaces the steel made in other countries. These countries (Korea, Vietnam, India, Thailand, Indonesia, UAE, etc.) ship their steel (or transshipped Chinese steel) at below-market prices to Canada, which displaces Canadian steel that is then exported to the U.S. China has created the problem with massive overcapacity, but every other country is caught in the mess.

The U.S. finally said enough is enough and is blocking out, through

tariffs , the excess capacity that is destroying its homegrown steel industry. Canada’s practice of shipping its excess steel to the U.S. is being blocked out as well.

The U.S. and Canada could have a very balanced steel trade if the Canadian market wasn’t flooded with other unfairly traded imports. The Canadian government needs to follow the U.S. lead and block out the displaced steel capacity of other countries that is capturing our domestic market.

Then, Canadian steel mills could supply our home market and have 65 per cent to 75 per cent of the domestic share and ship the balance to the U.S. without angering our southern neighbours. Canada would ship the U.S. three million tonnes, the U.S. would ship us three million tonnes, and Canada would then supply the rest of this country with what it can, with a small amount of imports coming from other countries. Everyone is happy.

Unfortunately, our government’s stupidity and stubbornness allow Vietnam, Thailand, the UAE, China, India and others to ship their excess here and displace Canadian steel, angering our largest trading partner, the U.S.

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Those countries do not pay taxes here, employ people here or support the communities here. To make it worse, we are not even able to sell our steel in their markets. Why do our politicians protect them and not us?

Barry Zekelman is executive chair and chief executive of Zekelman Industries.