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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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‘Trailblazing’ leader has had ‘extraordinary impact’ on mining industry – by Staff (Timmins Today – April 6, 2025)

https://www.timminstoday.com/

Wyloo announced its vice-president of Indigenous enterprises, Glenn Nolan, will retire this year

Glenn Nolan, a respected leader with more than five decades of experience in Northern Ontario’s mining sector, is set to retire this year.

Australian Ring of Fire developer Wyloo made the announcement in a social media post on March 31, paying tribute to Nolan with a lengthy profile on its website outlining his many achievements and contributions to the sector.

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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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Is Indonesia’s ‘Nickel Nationalism’ A Smart Strategy? – Analysis – by Dr. Sameer Kumar (Eurasia Review – April 4, 2025)

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Indonesia sits atop the world’s biggest nickel reserves – a metal essential for electric vehicle (EV) batteries and the renewable energy transition. In recent years, Jakarta has boldly wielded its resource might by banning exports of raw nickel ore to force global companies to invest in domestic processing.

This “nickel nationalism” has catapulted Indonesia into becoming a major player in the EV supply chain, attracting billions in foreign investment and fostering local industry. President Joko Widodo touts it as a smart strategy to move Indonesia up the value chain.

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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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As Chile revs up lithium plans, Indigenous groups demand more control – by Daina Beth Solomon (Reuters – April 7, 2025)

https://www.reuters.com/

Chile’s Indigenous communities in the lithium-rich Atacama Desert are in talks with two of the nation’s biggest miners to gain more influence over plans to increase extraction of the battery metal, according to the companies and community sources.

The negotiations with Chile’s State-run Codelco, the world’s biggest copper producer, and Chilean lithium producer SQM, come as the companies are close to finalizing a partnership that will mark the state’s entry into production of the metal that is crucial for electric vehicle batteries.

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China deploys rare earths as weapon in trade war with Trump (Bloomberg News – April 7, 2025)

https://www.bloomberg.com/

China has expanded its use of critical minerals as a trade weapon with curbs on exports of rare earths, threatening to shake-up the global supply of key materials used widely in high-tech manufacturing from electric vehicles to weaponry.

As part of its retaliation to President Donald Trump’s so-called reciprocal tariffs on imported Chinese goods, Beijing said Friday it will tighten controls on exports of seven types of rare earths. The country is by far the world’s biggest supplier of the minerals, which comprise 17 elements in the periodic table.

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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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