How well do you remember these stories?Felipe Fittipaldi/Glode and Mail
Welcome to a special edition of The Globe and Mail’s business and investing news quiz. Join us to test your knowledge of Mission Critical, the Globe series looking at Canada’s ambitions to become a critical minerals mining superpower.
Our reporters have started to explore several themes such as competition, money, environmental costs, geopolitics, Indigenous participation and regulations affecting Canada’s critical minerals sector – and what it will take for Canada to become a global player in that industry. We’ll continue to quiz you by adding questions from each feature in the series, so you can build your critical-minerals-know-how and become an expert by the end.
Get caught up on our latest Mission Critical stories: So far, we’ve published stories about how foreign companies are benefiting in Canada over domestic companies; how Ottawa and Bay Street squandered the chance to finance the critical minerals revolution; and how the country is struggling to carve out a niche in supply chains for electric vehicle batteries – despite billions of dollars in subsidies.
What do you remember from these stories? Take our quiz and find out.
d. Gold was the top-ranked commodity by value of production in Canada in 2021 with a value of $13.7-billion. The top three commodities in 2021 were gold (25 per cent), coal (14 per cent), and iron ore concentrates (12 per cent). Gold has the most appeal right now because the price of bullion is still hovering around US$2,000 per ounce, higher than even in the heydays of the commodity supercycle.
b. $823-million. According to its most recent disclosure, the CPPIB had $823-million invested in Canadian mining stocks, a rounding error in a $575-billion fund.
c. 31. The strategy listed 31 critical minerals. Those minerals are: aluminum; antimony; bismuth; cesium; chromite; cobalt; copper; fluorspar; gallium; germanium; graphite; helium; indium; lithium; magnesium; manganese; molybdenum; nickel; niobium; platinum group metals; potash; rare earth elements; scandium; tantalum; tellurium; tin; titanium; tungsten; uranium; vanadium and zinc.
a. True. The largest stock market in the world for minerals companies is the Toronto Stock Exchange. “But none of the big guys are on it because we let them go,” said Pierre Lassonde, co-founder and chairman emeritus of mining royalty company Franco-Nevada Corp. “We’ve hollowed out one of the key industries in Canada.”
d. “Close-ology.” It was an era when miners lived and died by what’s known as “close-ology,” the wildly popular, but extremely unscientific, art of selling investors on a project that was close to an existing mine with proven reserves. It didn’t matter if a junior company hadn’t yet put out a technical report that could verify its hopes and dreams. Investors were often desperate to get in early at 5 cents per share, to beat anyone else who waited for proof. FOMO – fear of missing out – dominated decision-making.
b. China. Montreal-based SRG Mining Inc. in July announced a tentative deal worth $16.9-million to sell a 19.4-per-cent stake to Carbon ONE New Energy Group Co. Ltd. (C-ONE), even though Ottawa last year announced a virtual ban on the acquisition of Canadian mining companies by China-based enterprises.
a. True. The federal government’s standard line, contained in its critical minerals strategy, is that Canada is “extremely well positioned” to supply these materials. According to federal data, there are currently 17 active mines in Canada that produce some quantity of the five minerals used in EV batteries.
c. The company called off a restructuring. At the 11th hour, Teck called off a restructuring that had been years in the making, after failing to garner enough support from shareholders. On the day of that grim announcement, the atmosphere at Teck’s annual general meeting was akin to that in a morgue. Teck’s sombre-faced chief executive officer Jonathan Price and its board of directors were forced to publicly accept blame for putting forward a poorly conceived restructuring.