The Globe and Mail reports in its Saturday edition that with Canadian steel exports to the United States in free fall, Ottawa has taken a series of escalating steps to shore up demand for the country's steel mills by restricting imports of foreign-made metal and helping with rail-transport costs from Ontario to the West. The Globe's Mark Rendell writes that Ottawa's hope is that by restricting imports and subsidizing transportation costs, the glut of metal in Eastern Canada will be able to find a home in Alberta and British Columbia creating, over time, a new domestic equilibrium for a highly disrupted market. According to several importers, it costs around $50 a tonne to bring steel across the Pacific and in through the Port of Vancouver. That is compared with $150 to $200 a tonne to bring steel from Ontario to Vancouver by rail. Ottawa now plans to subsidize the cost of shipping steel and lumber by rail, starting in the spring. This will involve the feds paying CNR and CP directly, with the goal of cutting interprovincial freight rates by 50 per cent. There is also the thorny issue of price itself. Imported steel, particularly from Asia, is both overproduced and much cheaper than North American steel.