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Canadian Media Resource Articles

Rio Tinto hopes Trump will clear path for Resolution copper project – by Cecilia Jamasmie (Mining.com – April 9, 2025)

https://www.mining.com/

Rio Tinto is optimistic that US President Donald Trump will expedite the final permits approval for its long-delayed Resolution copper project in Arizona. Speaking at the CRU World Copper Conference in Santiago, Rio Tinto’s copper chief executive Katie Jackson said growing US interest in strengthening the copper supply chain could help advance the stalled mine.

“We hope that will be part of getting projects like Resolution to move because it has historically been a long process,” she told attendees. The mining giant has spent more than a decade navigating a complex permitting process.

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Strong safe-haven demand sees gold surge as stocks struggle – by Jim Wyckoff (Kitco News – April 10, 2025)

https://www.kitco.com/

(Kitco News) – Gold prices are posting very strong gains and silver is modestly up in midday U.S. trading Thursday. More robust safe-haven demand amid a wobbly U.S. stock market again amid worries about a U.S.-China trade war, as well as a cooler U.S. inflation report are propelling the precious metals traders late this week.

Also, there are still some lingering worries about the stability of the U.S. Treasury market. June gold was last up $100.60 at $3,180.50. May silver prices were last up $0.37 at $30.775. Mostly overshadowed by the tariff news Wednesday, today’s key U.S. consumer price index report for March came in at up 2.4%, year-on-year, and was expected to come in up 2.6% and compares to up 2.8% in the February report.

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Power Metallic CEO sees ‘monster-size’ deposit at Nisk – by Frederic Tomesco (Northern Miner – April 10, 2025)

https://northernminer.com/

Power Metallic Mines’ Nisk polymetallic property is probably at least as large as Anglo American’s 44-million-tonne Sakatti copper-nickel-platinum project in Finland, CEO Terry Lynch said.

Nisk – which is located in Quebec’s James Bay region and includes deposits of copper, nickel, platinum-group metals, silver and gold – could even one day rival Vale’s (NYSE: VALE) Voisey’s Bay mine for size, Lynch said Wednesday. Voisey’s Bay, which has been estimated to contain about 140 million tonnes, is Canada’s biggest nickel mine and one of the world’s largest.

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Prime Minister Mark Carney vows to speed permits, make Canada energy superpower – by Laura Dhillon Kane and Thomas Seal (Bloomberg News – April 9, 2025)

https://www.bloomberg.com/

Prime Minister Mark Carney pledged to make Canada the world’s “leading energy superpower” through a plan that includes establishing a single office that would decide on major projects within two years.

The Liberal Party leader said at a campaign stop in Calgary that his government would create a Major Federal Project Office with a “one project, one review” mandate. The aim would be to eliminate duplication of federal and provincial environmental assessments, speeding up reviews.

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Mine electrification in Canada: An industry in transition – by Amanda Fitch (Canadian Mining Journal – April 9, 2025)

https://www.canadianminingjournal.com/

Canada’s mining sector is making strides in electrification, driven by technological advancements, policy support, and infrastructure investments. The increase in demand for critical minerals in Canada is evident and is the result of mining companies integrating electrified solutions.

These solutions include battery electric vehicles (BEVs) and electrified infrastructure to enhance sustainability and efficiency while balancing innovation with operational realities. Canadian mines have been pioneers in integrating BEVs into their operations with over a decade of use in the industry.

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Why Canada’s long-term fate could hang on unlocking the Arctic — now – by Joe O’Connor (Financial Post – April 9, 2025)

https://financialpost.com/

Donald Trump has forced a new urgency on the campaign trail and up and down the country to unleash the North’s potential or risk Arctic sovereignty and a northern treasure trove of resources

Brendan Bell knows what it is like to be ignored. It wasn’t so many months ago that the chief executive of West Kitikmeot Resources Corp., an Inuit-owned company proposing to build a road and deepwater ocean port in the Arctic, was spending a chunk of each day waiting for non-Arctic people to return his phone calls to discuss the project.

“This road is not a new idea,” he said. “Roads have a long history in the North.” Do they ever. Yet that history can be summarized as roads — and major infrastructure projects of all types — may get proposed for the Arctic, but they generally don’t get built. No surprise then that Bell had been contending with an utterly non-urgent vibe from other people in relation to the Grays Bay Road and Port Project. That is until recently, when a lot of those same people started calling him back.

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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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