Canada to Stockpile Critical Minerals, Designate Priorities Under Defence Production Act

The Canadian government is setting up a critical minerals stockpile designating a list of six key critical minerals as strategic priorities under the Defence Production Act, a move intended to help Canadian producers compete with China by setting minimum prices for the materials and giving companies some certainty of long-term sales.

Energy and Natural Resources Minister Tim Hodgson made the announcement Friday on the sidelines of a G7 energy and environment ministers’ meeting in Toronto. The official statement did not identify specific critical minerals, but CBC cites copper, lithium, graphite, cobalt, nickel, and rare earths as resources for which demand could grow dramatically in the years ahead.

“We need to create the certainty of demand and the certainty pricing so that those mines and processing facilities can get built,” Hodgson told a news conference Friday. The announcement also “enables Canada to launch our own defence stockpiling regime, and to support multilateral stockpiling efforts,” he added.

On Friday, Hodgson announced an initial round of 26 “investments, partnerships, and measures” aimed at unlocking $6.4 billion worth of critical mineral development. The actual investments totalled about $120 million, along with offtake agreements, expressions of interest. or export guarantees totalling up to about $1.2 billion. Specific projects included:

• The Nouveau Monde graphite mine near Montreal;

• Rio Tinto’s scandium production demonstration site in Sorel-Tracy, Quebec;

• Ucore’s samarium and gadolinium production plant in Kingston;

• Torngat Metals’ rare earth production project in Quebec;

Vianode’s synthetic graphite plant in St. Thomas, Ontario;

• North America’s only natural graphite producer, Northern Graphite, for a project near Montreal;

• A half-dozen smaller research projects that connect Canadian firms with international partners.

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Mining Association of Canada President Pierre Gratton said the state intervention was needed to help companies get launched. “Some commodities where China dominates, you can’t get a project off the ground. We have projects across the country that can’t get financing because they’re seen to be too vulnerable,” he said. “China can swoop in tomorrow, lower prices, and the project is dead on arrival.”

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