Ivison: When George Orwell railed against the use of political language to cloak policy failures, “like a cuttlefish squirting out ink”, he was talking about efforts like the press release that emerged from the Department of Finance late last Friday afternoon.
The headline read: “Final Safeguards to be Imposed to Protect Canadian Steel Workers”.
Finance minister Bill Morneau told Canada’s 23,000 steelworkers: “We have your back” as the industry continued to toil against Donald Trump’s tariffs on steel and aluminum that persist, despite the agreement on a new NAFTA trade deal, the USMCA.
But nothing is quite what it seems in the world of steel production. The government was not adding protective “safeguards” – emergency duties imposed on non-U.S. imported steel – it was taking most of them away.
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