Ottawa needs to remind Trump that Canada’s critical minerals are more accessible to the U.S., miners say
Some Canadian miners say they won’t be “losing sleep” over the possibility of tariffs being levied by the United States on critical minerals due to the immense demand for them from Europe and other regions, but they do want Ottawa to use these “tense times” to quickly resolve the sector’s permitting troubles.
It takes about 10 to 15 years to build a mine in Canada today, given the time it takes to explore deposits, get the required permits, look for investments, build infrastructure in rural areas and figure out a profitable way to extract the minerals.
The federal government has been working with the mining industry to eliminate unnecessary hurdles and speed up the permitting process, but more needs to be done, miners say. “We have to start to do things more seriously and accelerate permitting, diversify our markets, bring down internal trade barriers … and actually try to sort of restart Canada,” Pierre Gratton, chief executive of the Mining Association of Canada, said.
For the rest of this article: https://financialpost.com/commodities/mining/miners-trumps-tariff-threat-resolve-permit-delays