OTTAWA, April 4 (Reuters) – Canada’s federal budget will include an investment of at least C$2 billion ($1.6 billion) for a strategy to accelerate the production and processing of critical minerals needed for the electric vehicle (EV) battery supply chain, two senior government sources said.
Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s government, which is due to release its budget on Thursday, will make the investment to ramp up the extraction of processing of critical minerals including nickel, lithium, cobalt and magnesium, said the sources who are familiar with the matter but were not authorized to speak on the record.
The investment could be spread over more than one year, but the sources declined to comment on the time frame. Canada last month announced financial support for building two facilities that will make battery materials for electric vehicles, and one battery gigafactory, but no agreements have yet been announced for mineral extraction or refining.
“There are some particular projects that we are looking at and working on at the present time,” Natural Resources Minister Jonathan Wilkinson said in a recent telephone interview with Reuters.
For the rest of this article: https://www.reuters.com/business/exclusive-canada-spend-c2-bln-mineral-strategy-ev-battery-supply-chain-2022-04-04/