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Canadian Media Resource Articles

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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CHART: Mining stocks massacre as copper price craters by 9% – by Frik Els (Mining.com – April 4, 2025)

https://www.mining.com/

On Friday, the most-actively traded copper contract plunged 9.1% to $4.3880 per pound ($9,670 a tonne) on the Comex market, not far off the day’s lows. Trading was busy with the equivalent of a nominal $11.4 billion worth of the orange metal changing hands.

May delivery copper is now down 18.4% from its record high hit near the end of March on frantic US buying ahead of the tariffs, only just escaping a technical bear market. In London copper did not fare much better, dropping 6.8% to $8,734 per tonne, the lowest since March 2020 at the onset of the covid pandemic.

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Carney’s former firm Brookfield has been accused of breaching Indigenous rights in 4 countries – by Brett Forester (CBC News Indigenous – April 04, 2025)

https://www.cbc.ca/news/indigenous/

Allegations in Brazil, Canada, Colombia and U.S. involve dams, wind farm, other operations

Under Mark Carney’s leadership, global investment firm Brookfield was accused of breaching Indigenous rights or harming the environment in at least four countries, CBC Indigenous has found. Carney, who is running for prime minister as Liberal leader, spent more than four years as vice chair and then chair at Brookfield Asset Management, where he focused on green investing and renewable energy.

During that period from 2020 to 2024, Brookfield businesses faced reports of serious human rights abuses in Brazil, Indigenous resistance in Colombia, a First Nation’s $100-million lawsuit in Ontario and an environmental dispute in Maine.

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Low diamond prices raise risk of early closure of N.W.T. mines, experts say – by Luke Carroll (CBC News North – April 4, 2025)

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

All three N.W.T. diamond mines reported millions of dollars of losses in 2024

All of the N.W.T.’s diamond mines are reporting millions of dollars in losses from last year as they deal with inflation and slumping diamond prices.

With just a short time left in the lifespan of the three mines and more potential economic turbulence ahead, experts believe there is risk the mines could close — and leave the territory with no economic replacement plan — earlier than expected.

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Gold price down over 2% as safe-haven metal falls victim to market selloff – by Staff (Mining.com – April 4, 2025)

https://www.mining.com/

Gold slumped more than 2% on Friday as the metal fell victim to the global markets sell-off following US President Donald Trump’s new round of tariffs that turned out to be more aggressive than expected.

Spot gold fell 2.2% to $3,044.28 per ounce by 10:40 a.m. ET, erasing all of its gains for the week despite setting a new all-time high just two sessions ago. US gold futures lost 1.7% to trade at $3,068.70 per ounce.

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An American mine still has millions of tons of copper, if companies can get to it (Bloomberg/Mining Weekly – April 2, 2025)

https://www.miningweekly.com/

Carved into a mountain range in Arizona’s Sonoran Desert, where temperatures often reach 118F (48C), a vast mining complex more than a century old is on the front lines of a race to unlock millions of tons of copper.

After 154 years of digging at Morenci, all the easily recoverable copper has been mined. Left behind are towering piles of waste rock that hold nearly ten-million tons of the metal seen as critical to global electrification. It’s a cache that could prove key to President Donald Trump’s ambition to boost US production of critical minerals.

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Trump’s ‘reciprocal tariffs’ are a con – and investors are now waking up to his bigger ambitions – by David Rosenberg (Globe and Mail – April 4, 2025)

https://www.theglobeandmail.com/

There is now certainty that this White House trade strategy is both nonsensical and unachievable. Look, we can all accept that China is a menace and a huge cheater, but it would be preferable if the White House specifically dealt with Xi Jinping.

One can certainly make the case that Mexico was the big winner from the NAFTA sucking sound (not Canada). But when President Trump states that the trade plan is “our declaration of economic independence,” what he is, in effect, saying is that he wants America to be “independent” – or “liberated” – from bilateral deficits with all countries running such gaps against the U.S.

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OPEC-style lithium cartel now unlikely, analyst says – by Frederic Tomesco (Norther Miner – April 3, 2025)

Global mining news

The odds of Latin America’s three lithium powers banding together to form a production cartel have almost evaporated due to contrasting economic models, a leading geopolitical analyst says.

Argentina, Chile and Bolivia have previously held discussions with Brazil about the creation of a group – inspired by the Organization of Petroleum Exporting countries, or OPEC – tasked with boosting lithium processing capacity and turning more of their mined metal into batteries. Together, Argentina, Bolivia and Chile – dubbed the Lithium Triangle – hold an estimated 60% of global lithium resources.

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B.C. mining firm seeking U.S. approval to dig in international waters -by Inayat Singh (CBC News Science – April 03, 2025)

https://www.cbc.ca/news/science/

The Metals Company, fed up with sluggish international process, turns to Washington

A Vancouver-based mining company is looking to sidestep the international agency charged with regulating mining in international waters after lengthy negotiations it says have gone nowhere. The Metals Company (TMC) will instead seek permission from the U.S. to start deep-sea mining in the Pacific Ocean, rather than from the UN-affiliated International Seabed Authority (ISA).

Co-founder and CEO Gerard Barron says he believes U.S. could help start mining “much sooner than we would have been under the ISA pathway.” “The United States’ regulator is open. They encourage… dialogue and consultation,” he said. “That’s how companies get projects moving through the permitting process.”

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Building an integrated critical minerals sector in Canada – by Atkins Réalis (Canadian Mining Journal – April 3, 2025)

https://www.canadianminingjournal.com/

A vital investment to meet growing demand and enhance everyday life

It is no exaggeration to say that we could not survive in a modern society without critical minerals; they are found in hundreds of things we use everyday from cell phones and laptops to tea kettles and toothpaste.

Manufacturing, construction, agriculture, artificial intelligence, and clean technologies are just a few examples of the industries that are dependent on this sector, which is set to have a global market value of US$770 billion by 2040.

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