Missing link in government strategy is the millions needed to build the mines
The head of Canada’s top mining association said Ottawa’s strategy to build an electric vehicle industry could fail if it doesn’t encourage miners through tax credits and other incentives to construct the mines needed to produce critical minerals that power EVs, such as nickel and lithium.
Existing policies have encouraged the hunt for new mineral deposits in Canada, and have brought investment from big automakers and battery companies such as Volkswagen Group and LG Energy Solutions in the past year, said Pierre Gratton, head of the Mining Association of Canada.
But the government “appears to have taken for granted” miners, who require millions of dollars to construct mines, Gratton said ahead of the federal budget on March 28.
“We have projects now that are almost shovel-ready but they are having trouble raising financing,” said Gratton, who represents a group of about 50 of the country’s biggest miners. “They sort of have taken our sector for granted, just assumed that Canada is a mining powerhouse, and we are going to be fine, but we are not.”
For the rest of this article: https://financialpost.com/commodities/mining/miners-seek-aid-before-federal-budget