Business leaders urges parties talk critical minerals strategy

The relentless march of climate change, a burgeoning tech sector and the ongoing federal election campaign make now the perfect time to explore how to make Canada a world power in the production of critical minerals, the country’s business leaders say.

The Canadian Chamber of Commerce is urging the parties vying to form the next government to spell out their strategies for making critical minerals and rare-earth elements a fundamental part of North America’s economic recovery.

It says Canada is missing a “major opportunity” to be a global leader in producing the metals that power everything from cellphones to electric cars - minerals it says must be at the centre of any serious effort to develop a lowcarbon economy and confront climate change.

“The importance of strengthening trusted and sustainable critical mineral supply chains and reducing our dependence on China is growing for both Canada and the United States,” the chamber says in a release.

“Canada urgently needs a trade and economic strategy for our own critical mineral deposits. Failing to prepare is preparing to fail.”

The chamber wants to see detailed plans for encouraging and expanding domestic production, fortifying vulnerable supply chains and partnering with the U.S., where President Joe Biden’s climate ambitions rest on jump-starting an already red-hot electric-vehicle market.

Canada is already a key source of 13 of the 35 minerals that the U.S. has identified as critical to its economic and national security - it is America’s largest single supplier of potash, indium, aluminum and tellurium, and the secondlargest source of niobium, tungsten and magnesium.

China is the world’s largest rare-earth producer, with more than 60 per cent of global annual production, well ahead of the U.S., Myanmar, Australia and India. Canada, meanwhile, is home to an estimated 15 million untapped tonnes of rare-earth oxides.

It’s a political issue because there’s not yet enough private-sector demand to stimulate the growth of a nascent rare-earth industry without government incentives, said Mark Agnew, the chamber’s senior vice-president of policy and government relations.

“The thing that we hear is that there needs to be that kind of downstream demand to create the financial incentives for it to be extracted upstream,” Agnew said.