Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, right, speaks with Vincent Laniece, of Vital Metals, during a tour of the Vital Metals rare earths element processing plant in Saskatoon on Jan. 16, 2023.Liam Richards/The Canadian Press
George Salamis, Lieutenant-Colonel (Hon) of the Royal Westminster Regiment, is executive chair of Integra Resources, a Canadian-based mining company that develops gold and silver mines in Canada and the U.S. Mike St-Pierre is a Lieutenant Commander in the Royal Canadian Navy.
A global race is under way to secure critical minerals essential to power the next generation of civilian and military technology and to electrify the future. Control of global supply chains has become the new strategic centre of gravity, where access to minerals and metals are strategic weapons. The West is losing the resource war that targets our core social and political values. At stake is the national security of the West.
Over the past four years we have witnessed rampant vulnerabilities in global supply chains, made worse by our reliance on foreign sources – particularly raw materials and critical minerals mined and processed by Russia, China and their proxies. Their grand strategy succeeds by the wholesale capture of not only upstream mining, but downstream refining; Western supply chains are outmatched by our autocratic rivals.
In this war Canada is uniquely capable of turning the tide, but we are not even competing. Our country is awash in bureaucracy and red tape, and content in a state of apathetic stagnation. Canada must compete to win with our greatest weapon: our natural resources.
It takes 10 to 15 years to obtain a permit and build a new mine in Canada or the United States, if it gets permitted at all. The barriers to success are almost insurmountable. Given the dire scarcity of financing, bureaucratic hurdles and regulatory strangulation, not to mention opposition from special interest groups, Canada handcuffs itself.
Overreaching purpose-driven values and so-called ethical investing have deprived rational thinking and resulted in rising disorder across the international financial system, demonstrated most forcefully by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in February, 2022. Prior to Russia’s invasion, ESG funds favoured Russian energy stocks over Canadian energy stocks. Those calling themselves ethical investors and ESG-driven fund managers have much to answer for – not only have they not maximized profits for their investors, but they have also missed the global strategic trend and, most importantly to their stated agenda, have a distorted understanding of ethics.
Investment has all but dried up in early-stage exploration companies to discover the minerals and metals that become the mines of the future. Canadian capital markets, once a beacon of leadership in buying, selling and financing junior mining companies willing to take risk, are moribund.
We must pivot. We must expedite the responsible development of our abundant resources to fuel democratic growth and not abandon our supply chain – and our national security – to our adversaries.
We must recognize the power of our resource-driven economy as a key pillar to Canada’s future prosperity, and security for itself and key allies. We have the potential for robust self-reliance to reduce our dependency on foreign sources using strategic partnerships in domestic resource development and related value-added industries.
Investing in Canadian resources must be championed in Parliament, provincial legislatures, pensions funds and other repositories of investment dollars. Incentivizing auto manufacturers to build electric vehicle plants in Ontario and Quebec is but a token infusion into Canada’s stagnant economy and does little for our long-term prosperity or security.
Canada and its allies need a metals and mining accelerator (MMA) program linked to the U.S. Defence Department’s Industrial Strategy. A Canadian MMA strategy, unified across party lines, allied to our core security partners and alongside private-sector actors all pulling toward a common goal can help win the resource war. Smarter government intervention coupled with industry collaboration should be the leadmark.
We need ambitious targets to streamline mine permitting, while maintaining world-leading environmental standards and smart regulation. Expedited permitting will incentivize the private sector to work alongside government to ensure Canadian resource ownership and development and encourage investment by domestic endowments and pension funds. An MMA program needs to be expedient, sharp, aggressive and results-driven. Success must be measured not by camera flashes, but with spades in the ground.
The democratic world needs more Canada – our critical metals, our world-class geologists and our responsible miners. Canada must champion its natural resources as a bulwark in this economic war, for without it the future is neither democratic, electric, nor free.