Canada’s federal government will put C$193.3 million into Quebec’s aluminium industry under the Strategic Response Fund, Industry Minister Melanie Joly announced on October 23 in La Baie. The money is split between the country’s two big primary producers and is explicitly framed as a response to tariff pressure on Canadian industry.
The larger share, C$164.8 million, goes toward Rio Tinto’s C$818.5 million programme across its Saguenay-Lac-Saint-Jean operations. The projects include a new billet casting centre at the Alma smelter, which moves the company further into value added products, and modernisation of the anode baking furnaces at the Grande-Baie smelter, covering infrastructure upgrades and equipment refurbishment aimed at reliability and productivity. Rio Tinto produces roughly half of its group aluminium output in Quebec, so the Saguenay complex is central to its global aluminium business.
The remaining C$28.5 million supports Aluminerie Alouette’s C$135 million project to modernise and optimise electrolysis at its Sept-Iles smelter, North America’s largest primary aluminium plant at about 633,000 tonnes a year. The contribution is partially repayable, and Alouette says the work is expected to cut annual emissions by about 25,000 tonnes of carbon dioxide equivalent.
Ottawa expects the combined C$953.5 million of investment to maintain about 6,000 full time jobs and create 65 work placements. Joly also pointed beyond the two smelters, arguing that too much Canadian aluminium is processed in the United States and shipped back at higher cost, and that Canada needs more domestic rolling capacity.
Jurisdiction watch: this is subsidy as trade defence rather than resource nationalism. No ownership, royalty or permitting terms change for either company; the state is co-funding decarbonisation and downstream capacity at existing smelters. Rio Tinto shares eased 0.86 percent in the latest market tables to $83.42, in line with a soft week for the diversified miners rather than a reaction to the announcement.