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Canadian Media Resource Articles

OPINION: A bold Canadian Arctic strategy isn’t just good policy – it’s good business – by Gary Mar and Mark Norman (Globe and Mail – April 9, 2025)

https://www.theglobeandmail.com/

Gary Mar is the president and CEO of the Canada West Foundation. Vice-Admiral (Ret’d) Mark Norman is a former vice-chief of the defence staff.

Canada is an Arctic nation. It’s about time it started acting like it. Unlike the Scandinavian countries and Russia, Canada has reluctantly viewed itself in this manner, instead considering the North as a sort of national park where development is frowned upon.

The economic value of the region has been played down, and the need to defend that value was discounted under a rosy view of a peaceful world anchored to the benevolent hegemony of the United States. That all changed with the second inauguration of Donald Trump in January, and his rhetoric that Canada should become the 51st U.S. state.

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Unlocking lithium: Pairing technology and expertise to increase project value – by Victoria Martinez (Canadian Mining Journal – April 7, 2025)

https://www.canadianminingjournal.com/

The number of batteries used in energy storage is rising as the world adopts more advanced technologies, particularly green energy and electric vehicles (EVs), thus increasing the demand for critical minerals such as lithium.

Lithium extraction, like many resources, can be a complicated and expensive proposition for mining companies. Typically found in low concentrations, lithium deposits vary from rock to clays to brines with unique impurities from location to location. Lithium supply chains also require high degrees of purity.

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Wesdome to acquire Angus Gold in $28 million deal – by Cecilia Jamasmie (Mining.com – April 7, 2025)

https://www.mining.com/

Wesdome Gold Mines  is acquiring junior explorer Angus Gold in a cash-and-share deal valued at approximately C$40 million ($28 million), expanding its footprint in Ontario’s Mishibishu Lake greenstone belt.

The transaction will quadruple Wesdome’s land position at its Eagle River operation, creating a 400 km² contiguous land package. Wesdome already owns 6.3 million Angus shares, about 10.4% stake in the target company.

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Mining dominates Poilievre’s speedy permits list – by Colin McClelland (Northern Miner – April 7, 2025)

https://www.northernminer.com/

Mining investments make up nearly all the resource projects Conservative leader Pierre Poilievre would approve within a year if elected Canadian Prime Minister this month. Campaigning in British Columbia on Monday for the April 28 election, Poilievre said he would start a “one-and-done” approvals process to accelerate 10 projects. These would need one application and one environmental review, he said.

His list includes NexGen Energy’s Rook 1 uranium project in Saskatchewan, and several in Ontario: First Mining Gold’s Springpole project, Agnico Eagle Mines’ Upper Beaver underground gold and copper mine and roads to access Wyloo Metal’s Ring of Fire project.

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Who Stands to Win in Poilievre’s Canada: Mining Companies – by Philip Preville (MACLEAN’S Magazine – April 7, 2025)

https://macleans.ca/

An aggressive, dig-baby-dig attitude to extraction will benefit the minerals sector

In 2021, the federal government established an official list of 34 critical minerals and metals—including nickel, cobalt, copper and lithium—that are essential to Canada’s economic security and our role in global supply chains.

They’re found in almost every province and territory and used in products like smartphones, photovoltaic cells, semiconductors and electric vehicles. Their extraction is the missing link in Canada’s multi-billion-dollar investment in EV battery plants: the whole idea is for Canada itself to supply those critical minerals, not import them.

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Meet the Albertan Separatists Who Want to Be American – by Rupa Subramanya (The Free Press – April 7, 2025)

https://www.thefp.com/

A growing band of Canadians say their most oil-rich province should join forces with the U.S. ‘Political disruption is what this country needs.’

Jeff Rath, a Canadian constitutional lawyer, rancher, and racehorse breeder who lives outside Calgary, wants his home province of Alberta to become independent and join the United States. The 60-year-old said he will soon lead a delegation of like-minded Albertans to Washington, D.C., for meetings with senior figures in the Trump administration.

He calls it a “fact-finding” mission to gauge whether Washington sees value in welcoming the resource-rich, right-leaning province into the fold. Although no date for the visit has been set and the White House did not return a request for comment about whether a meeting would take place, Rath told me he is certain he could make the case.

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Trump team’s tariff incoherence is worsening the market sell-off, and the Fed won’t ride to the rescue – El-Erian – by Ernest Hoffman (Kitco News – April 7, 2025)

https://www.kitco.com/

(Kitco News) – The Trump administration’s incoherent messaging on tariffs is exacerbating the market turmoil they’ve caused, and the Federal Reserve will not come to the market’s rescue, according to Mohamed El-Erian, Former CEO of PIMCO and current president of Queens’ College, Cambridge.

On Sunday, El-Erian was asked whether he believes Trump’s massive trade tariffs are designed to force negotiations with tariffed nations, or whether they represent the long-term new paradigm for trade with the United States.

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Lakota artist smudges the former gold mine inside the Black Hills – by Graham Lee Brewer (Toronto Star/Associated Press – April 5, 2025)

https://www.thestar.com/

When Lakota artist Marty Two Bulls Jr. looks at the Black Hills of South Dakota, he doesn’t just see its natural beauty. He also sees a scar cut deep into the heart of the universe.

The mountain range is central to the origin story of several tribal nations, including his, and it has become an international symbol of the ongoing struggle for Indigenous land rights and the destruction of sacred sites. To the Lakota, Mount Rushmore is the most visible scar on the mountains. The former gold mine beneath is another, and that’s what motivated Two Bulls to use his performance art to cleanse it.

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Op-Ed: Mining alone won’t lead to critical minerals independence — processing will pave the way – by Erik Groves (Mining.com – April 7, 2025)

https://www.mining.com/

Erik Groves is Corporate Strategy and In-House Counsel at Morgan Companies.

There is a growing chorus of voices championing increased exploration and resource discovery in the global scramble to secure critical minerals. From copper to rare earth elements (REEs), policymakers often fixate on the belief that establishing new ore sources will lead to self-sufficiency.

At first glance, this is a logical approach—after all, production starts with the extraction of raw minerals. However, this approach is misguided if our true goal is to achieve long-term critical mineral self-sufficiency and independence.

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Canada poised to fill some of rare earths void as China curbs U.S. exports in retaliation to Trump tariffs – by Niall McGee (Globe and Mail – April 5, 2025)

https://www.theglobeandmail.com/

China is expanding its export controls on minerals used in strategic industries as part of its retaliation against U.S. tariffs, putting Canada in a position to potentially fill some of the void. U.S. President Donald Trump on Wednesday hit China with additional 34-per-cent tariffs, on top of the 20-per-cent levies he had already imposed. The assault on China is part of Mr. Trump’s global suite of “reciprocal” tariffs targeting countries his administration perceives as treating the U.S. unfairly.

Beijing on Friday fired back, announcing its own tit-for-tat tariffs of 34 per cent on all imports of U.S. goods. But it also announced new controls on the exports of rare-earth minerals, including scandium, samarium, gadolinium, terbium, dysprosium, lutetium, and yttrium to the U.S.

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Opening mines faster in Ontario will add ‘soft power leverage’ over Trump: minister – by Isaac Callan and Colin D’Mello (Global News – April 5, 2025)

https://globalnews.ca/

The man tapped to lead an overhaul of Ontario’s potentially lucrative mining sector says critical minerals buried across the north represent vital “soft power leverage” against the United States. During a recent cabinet reshuffle, Ontario Premier Doug Ford added responsibility for mines to the portfolio of his existing energy minister.

Stephen Lecce, who was trusted by the premier to lead on the complicated education file for years before moving to energy, has now been told to overhaul Ontario’s mining system at speed. His mandate sits at the heart of Ford’s economic plan.

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Lithium company exploring N.W.T. hopes to refine material in Canada, not China – by Jocelyn Shepel (CBC News North – April 04, 2025)

https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/north/

Canada can’t refine the mineral from hard rock right now but companies are looking to change that

A lithium exploration company working in the N.W.T. says getting a mine ready for production could be anywhere from six to eight years away – but already, it’s evaluating how it would get the material refined and battery ready without relying on China.

“It’s likely that Edmonton will be an obvious place for an energy hub for lithium processing in future,” said David Smithson, Li-FT’s senior vice president of geology. According to the International Energy Agency, worldwide demand for critical minerals – like lithium – is expected to double by 2040. Keeping the supply chain within Canada is one of the major tasks ahead.

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Nuclear waste agency looking for Canada’s second deep geological repository – by Allison Jones (Canadian Press/City News Calgary – April 4, 2025)

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An organization tasked with managing Canada’s nuclear waste found one site to store millions of bundles of radioactive used fuel for thousands of years hundreds of metres underground — and now it’s looking for a second.

As the Nuclear Waste Management Organization begins the regulatory process for a deep geological repository site in northern Ontario to store spent nuclear fuel, after a 14-year site-selection journey, it’s also starting to look at the need for another site to hold different types of nuclear waste.

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Driving the ice road: a journey along a community’s disappearing lifeline – by Cloe Logan (National Observer – April 5, 2025)

https://www.nationalobserver.com/

Seen from above, the road could be mistaken for a river or stream. Curving through boreal forest, its palette exists on a spectrum: some parts are white with snow; others dim with muted yellow or glistening blue. When the sun hits, it ceases to hold colour at all and is instead reflective, sending light from above right back to where it came.

The road is an overlapping Venn diagram of synthetic and natural: built from water, manipulated by machine, and at the mercy of weather patterns and temperatures — made increasingly erratic by climate change — even though some humans are utterly dependent upon it.

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OPINION: Mark Carney will not make Canada more prosperous – by Jim Balsillie (Globe and Mail – April 5, 2025)

https://www.theglobeandmail.com/

Jim Balsillie is a businessman and philanthropist. He is a founder and chair of several organizations whose mandates are to build capacity for a stronger Canada.

As economic strategies go, Liberal Leader Mark Carney is the ultimate confidence man. He wants to tax what Canada exports and subsidize what we import. Judging by the poll numbers, many Canadians are somehow persuaded this will lead us to prosperity.

As a candidate for the leadership of the Liberal Party, he pitched himself as an outsider and an unconventional politician who will focus on “getting our economy back on track” – an outsider who’d advised the Liberal government since 2020, during which time Canada’s per capita GDP has been shrinking 0.4 per cent a year, the worst performance amongst the top 50 developed economies, and eventually became the chair of Justin Trudeau’s 2024 Task Force on Economic Growth.

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