Canada’s own version of Elon Musk is just as strategic in his political dealings

A.D. Frat  

Elon Musk has had lots of press coverage recently, specifically for his role in financing Donald Trump’s political campaign as well as his talks with Nigel Farage’s far-right Reform UK party in Britain and Germany’s far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) party.

Elon’s political coddlings with far-right forces have been well documented, so much so that some dub him as a new era Henry Ford – a reference to the late automaker’s fascist politics.

But people in this country might want to shine a spotlight on Canada’s own version of Elon Musk, steel baron Barry Zekelman. The industrialist who is the head of Zekelman Industries – a multinational, multi-industry conglomerate – has been just as strategic in his political dealings.

In October 2018, the steel oligarch lambasted then Foreign Affairs Minister Chrystia Freeland for not immediately succumbing to US pressure to impose steel tariffs on global producers, especially China, and to accept a quota formula for steel exports to the US. This was a coordinated effort by Zekelman and Co. to attack their political rivals while diverting people’s attention from the real issue at hand: tariffs imposed on Canadian goods by his political friends down south, which Zekelman profited off through his US subsidiaries.

Another political stunt in 2022 resulted in Zekelman being fined nearly a million dollars by the FEC (Federal Elections Commission) for illegal foreign interference in US politics. He had directed his subordinate executive colleague of US steel tube manufacturer Wheatland Tube (a subsidiary of Zekelman Industries) to donate $1.75 million to one of Donald Trump’s SuperPACs because it aligned with their “corporate interests.”

The corporate interests to which Zekelman referred were the Trump administration’s tariffs on steel imports from South Korea (a key US imperialist ally) and China. Zekelman Industries released plenty of press releases on the topic in 2018 when the donation originally happened.

Clearly, this steel baron would rather sacrifice Canadian sovereignty and workers to line his pockets and those of his favourite protectionist faction within the US capitalist class. As is usual in our monopoly capitalist system, Zekelman and other oligarchs accumulate more power and profits, and all negative outcomes are downstreamed to working people whose families and communities are sold out and harmed every day.

Zekelman rewarded himself for the continuous centralization and consolidation of the steel market by buying Steven Spielberg’s $150 million 282-foot yacht. He renamed his new toy “Man of Steel” and had several glamour articles written about it. Bourgeois hubris knows no bounds.

Nothing is more telling than when Zekelman, after making a (tax deductible) $5 million donation to Windsor’s St. Clair College in 2018, secured a $23 million contract just two years later to build a residence on the same campus using his corporation’s patented “Z Modular” design. He had claimed that the design would “solve Canada’s housing crisis” and end all of our woes. But woe it was when Zekelman Industries closed their Kitchener modular manufacturing facility in June 2024, citing “inefficiency of government regulations … inefficiency of financing for modular homes [and] Canada’s hostile landscape to business.” Zekelman later pivoted his capital towards Alabama, Texas and Arizona.

Why couldn’t the manufacturer continue to operate in Canada and ship their product to other markets? Because, in a tale as old as capitalism itself, workers lose their jobs so that capital can find more profitable markets.

Interestingly, the same month that the factory closed, Zekelman tapped corporate media again to boast about a $1 million donation to the University of Windsor for a “Zekelman Centre of Modular Innovation and Sustainable Construction.”

But by September 2024, announced he was pulling the $1 million dollar donation. This was in response to the university’s agreement with the Palestine solidarity encampment, that it would cease academic relations with Israel until “the right of Palestinian self-determination is realized,” and commit to more responsible investing in light of Israel’s blatant and genocidal disregard for human life and international law.

In less than a decade, Zekelman has made it clear that his only interest is expanding his hoarded treasure. He will pursue that end whether it means making deals with dangerous forces like Trump to force protectionist policies or using donations to desperately underfunded educational institutions as leverage for his own business dealings, even using geopolitical developments as a convenient scapegoat.

Regardless of his reasons, in the end it is always working people in Canada who suffer.

[Photo: Zekelman Industries]


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