BREAKING: South Korea Just Picked This Tiny Canadian Steel Town to Build Its War Machines

Added: 2026-06-03

[00:00:00]Breaking tonight, a South Korean defense giant just told the world that the next generation of armored war machines built for NATO's front lines will be poured from Canadian steel. Not just any steel, steel made in a mill on the edge of the St. Mary's River in a city most people on this continent couldn't find on a map.

[00:00:21]The company is Hanwha. The place is Sault Ste. Marie, Ontario.

[00:00:26]And the deal announced this week could mark the exact moment Canada stopped buying its defense from everyone else and started building it at home.

[00:00:34]Here's what happened.

[00:00:36]Hanwha confirmed it will use steel from Algoma's Sault Ste. Marie plant to build armored weaponized military vehicles inside Canada.

[00:00:44]But there's a catch and it's an enormous one. The whole thing hangs on Hanwha winning the most lucrative defense contract this country has seen in a generation. The bid to build Canada's next fleet of submarines.

[00:00:58]Translation? The steel deal is the prize Hanwha is dangling to win the submarines. And Ottawa is letting them dangle it.

[00:01:06]To understand why this matters, you have to understand what Algoma actually is.

[00:01:12]For decades it was just another aging steel maker, the kind of plant that politicians visit for photo ops and then forget.

[00:01:20]But Algoma holds a secret almost nobody outside the industry talks about. It is the only steel producer in all of Canada that can make ballistic grade steel. The hardened plate that stops a round before it reaches a soldier.

[00:01:35]Algoma's vice president of strategy, John Naccarato, said it plainly to reporters.

[00:01:41]There is no other Canadian company that can do this for defense applications.

[00:01:46]Not one.

[00:01:47]Dear viewers, sit with that for a second. A country with the second largest landmass on Earth, a founding member of NATO, a nation that sends its sons and daughters into harm's way has exactly one mill capable of producing the steel that armors them.

[00:02:04]And until this week, that mill was making beams and coils for buildings, not battlefields.

[00:02:11]That is about to change.

[00:02:13]The story really begins in April.

[00:02:15]That's when Hanwha quietly signed a memorandum of understanding with the Automotive Parts Manufacturers Association.

[00:02:23]The APMA, the backbone of Canada's auto parts economy.

[00:02:28]The two sides agreed to build five different types of military vehicles right here on Canadian soil.

[00:02:34]The K9 Thunder self-propelled howitzer.

[00:02:37]The K10 ammunition resupply vehicle.

[00:02:40]The Redback infantry fighting vehicle.

[00:02:43]The Chunmoo multiple launch rocket system.

[00:02:47]And a line of ground drone vehicles.

[00:02:49]Out of that agreement, a consortium was born. They named [clears throat] it Project Arrow Defense. And the most important detail is the ownership split.

[00:02:58]51% of it would be Canadian.

[00:03:01]Translation, the controlling stake stays in Canadian hands. The technology comes from Korea, but the company, the jobs, and the steel stay here.

[00:03:12]Now layer this week's announcement on top.

[00:03:15]Hanwha didn't just promise to use Algoma's steel.

[00:03:18]It signed a separate MOU to buy Algoma's products and to hand the company a low-interest loan to convert the Sault Ste. Marie plant so it can roll steel beams.

[00:03:29]A foreign defense firm financing the modernization of a Canadian mill.

[00:03:34]Think about how rare that is.

[00:03:36]And the man who runs the auto parts association couldn't hide his excitement. APMA President Flavio Volpe stood up after Monday's announcement in Vaughan, Ontario, and put a number on it.

[00:03:49]He said the economic activity from this deal is the equivalent of one brand new car plant.

[00:03:55]One new car plant.

[00:03:57]That means 15,000 direct jobs through the supply chain and another 15,000 indirect.

[00:04:04]30,000 jobs from a single defense consortium.

[00:04:09]Volpe didn't stop there and this is where the politics gets raw.

[00:04:13]He pointed out that Canadian auto manufacturing is down 30% right now.

[00:04:18]Down a third. And he named the reason.

[00:04:21]Tariffs from Washington.

[00:04:23]The very industry that built Ontario's middle class is bleeding and the man knows exactly where the bleeding started.

[00:04:30]So here is the quiet brilliance of what Ottawa is doing.

[00:04:34]The federal government has been crystal clear with both bidders.

[00:04:38]Hanwha from Korea and the German shipbuilder ThyssenKrupp Marine Systems, known as TKMS.

[00:04:45]The message to both was the same.

[00:04:47]If you want our submarine money, you bolster our industries. Our autos, our steel, our aluminum.

[00:04:55]The sectors America's tariffs have hammered.

[00:04:58]Translation? Canada is using a submarine contract to rebuild the factories that a trade war is tearing down.

[00:05:06]Defense spending becomes industrial policy.

[00:05:09]A weapons deal becomes a jobs program.

[00:05:12]And it's working.

[00:05:13]Because nobody wants to lose this bid.

[00:05:16]Let's talk about the scale of the need because this isn't theoretical.

[00:05:20]The Canadian Armed Forces requires 250 armored vehicles.

[00:05:25]Vehicles built to operate in the Arctic and to meet Canada's obligations to NATO.

[00:05:31]250 machines that under this plan would be built in Canadian plants by Canadian workers from Canadian steel.

[00:05:40]And here's the part that turns a domestic program into an export engine.

[00:05:45]>> [clears throat] >> That same consortium could manufacture weapon systems for Hanwha's other global customers.

[00:05:51]The company says it already holds thousands of armored vehicle orders from six other NATO nations.

[00:05:58]Picture that. A factory floor in Ontario building combat vehicles not just for Canada, but for allies across Europe.

[00:06:07]Sault Ste. Marie steel shipped to NATO's eastern flank.

[00:06:11]If you've ever wondered what it actually looks like when a country decides to stop being a customer and start being a builder, this is it.

[00:06:20]If this is the kind of story you want followed closely, the channel that follows it is this one. Stay with us.

[00:06:26]But Hanwha isn't running unopposed and the German bid is no pushover.

[00:06:32]TKMS doesn't have an auto component the way Hanwha does.

[00:06:36]What it has instead is a web of agreements stretching across Canada's defense and energy sectors. And the Germans came with a number that's hard to ignore.

[00:06:45]Their defense minister, Boris Pistorius, was in Ottawa last week for a defense conference.

[00:06:51]And he told reporters the economic benefits package attached to the German bid would raise Canada's GDP by more than 86 billion dollars over the lifespan of the submarines.

[00:07:03]86 billion.

[00:07:05]The German bid also includes building submarine maintenance and sustainment facilities on both Canadian coasts, east and west, for the next 30 to 40 years.

[00:07:15]And then there's the energy card. Just last week Germany announced it would buy 1 million tons of liquefied natural gas from Canada.

[00:07:24]To understand why, you have to follow the chain.

[00:07:28]Before Russia's war on Ukraine in 2022, Moscow was Europe's main gas supplier.

[00:07:34]When that door slammed shut, Germany turned to the Middle East.

[00:07:38]But then conflict involving the United States, Israel, and Iran choked off supply routes through the Strait of Hormuz.

[00:07:46]Door after door closing.

[00:07:48]And there stands Canada, stable, friendly, and full of gas. Korea sees it, too.

[00:07:55]South Korea is the world's third-largest LNG importer, and it's signaling that it wants far more of that gas to come from Canada, potentially several times what it buys today.

[00:08:07]Dear viewers, do you see the shape of it now?

[00:08:10]This was never really about submarines.

[00:08:12]Submarines are the doorway.

[00:08:15]Behind that door sits steel, jobs, natural gas, and a generation of industrial revival.

[00:08:22]Two of the most advanced economies on the planet are competing, competing for the right to invest in Canada.

[00:08:29]After years of being treated as a junior partner, Canada is finally the one holding the pen.

[00:08:36]Which brings us to the decision itself, and the timeline is tight.

[00:08:41]The Prime Minister says the winner will be announced by the end of June.

[00:08:45]That's not an accident. It lands just before July 1, the day the Canada-United States-Mexico Trade Agreement, CUSMA, comes up for review.

[00:08:55]Canada wants this win locked in before it sits down across the table from Washington again.

[00:09:01]A signed industrial deal is a much stronger hand than a promise.

[00:09:06]But there's a twist.

[00:09:08]Defense Minister David McGuinty has hinted Ottawa might not pick just one.

[00:09:13]There are 12 submarines on the table, and the government's preference is not to split them between the two bidders.

[00:09:20]Yet McGuinty refuses to rule it out.

[00:09:23]He says the real goal is a fleet that's interoperable, international, and serviceable.

[00:09:29]Splitting it, he warned, would make everything more complicated. Billions are already going into the bases at Esquimalt and Halifax, too, retrofit them. More complicated, he said, but not impossible.

[00:09:42]Translation, even the minister won't close the door.

[00:09:46]Which means both Korea and Germany still have a reason to keep sweetening the pot right up to the final hour.

[00:09:53]And the longer they sweeten it, the more Canada gains.

[00:09:57]So, zoom back out with me.

[00:09:59]A steel mill in a quiet northern Ontario city, written off for years, suddenly sits at the center of a multi-billion-dollar contest between two world powers.

[00:10:10]Whoever wins, Algoma's furnaces get hotter.

[00:10:13]Whoever wins, Canadian workers build the machines. Whoever wins, the steel that armors NATO soldiers gets poured on the shores of the St. Mary's River.

[00:10:23]This is what sovereignty actually looks like when it's built from the ground up.

[00:10:28]Not slogans, not flags, furnaces, factories, and 30,000 jobs.

[00:10:34]A country that once shipped its raw materials away and bought back the finished weapons is finally deciding to do both halves itself.

[00:10:43]Two centuries ago, when this land was young and threatened, men like Isaac Brock understood a hard truth.

[00:10:49]A nation that cannot defend itself does not stay a nation for long.

[00:10:54]That lesson got buried under decades of comfort and cheap imports.

[00:10:59]It's being dug up again, not in a speech, but in a steel mill.

[00:11:03]The same instinct expressed in molten metal instead of musket fire.

[00:11:08]And the timing is no coincidence.

[00:11:11]A trade war forced Canada to ask a question it had avoided for a generation.

[00:11:16]What can we actually make on our it moves me, if you want to watch Canada's industrial comeback unfold deal by deal, then you're already in the right place.

[00:11:29]This is the channel built for exactly this moment and the conversation only gets bigger from here.

[00:11:36]The winner lands by the end of June.

[00:11:39]The clock is running and whatever Ottawa decides, one thing is already certain.

[00:11:44]>> [clears throat] >> The steel will be Canadian.

[00:11:47]This is Canada next. I'll see you tomorrow.