The Globe and Mail reports in its Wednesday edition that Jim Ritchie, owner of B.C.-based steel distribution company Cascadia Metals, got a big shock in July. The Globe's Niall McGee writes that Stelco, his top Canadian supplier of galvanized steel, told him it was shutting down for maintenance, and advised him that if he could find an alternative source for his steel he should jump ship. "They just went dark, and we're like, 'Guys, you can't just disappear like this,'" Mr. Ritchie said. Cascadia recently invested $30-million in a plant expansion in Brandon that was specifically set up to buy domestic steel. Stelco was the company's preferred supplier, with Cascadia buying about 50,000 tonnes of galvanized steel from the company this year. Canadian galvanized steel prices have been climbing higher all year, in part because of the stringent tariff rate quotas Ottawa imposed to drive cheap imports out of the market. Cascadia was later informed that Stelco had started exporting steel slab manufactured at Lake Erie Works in Nanticoke, Ont., to the United States. Stelco's parent company, Cleveland-Cliffs, had apparently made a business decision to prioritize its U.S. slab customers over its Canadian galvanized clientele.