The strategy for developing Canada’s critical minerals needs a rethink – Richard Mills

2025.11.08

Prime Minister Mark Carney deserves credit for putting the subject of critical minerals at the top of his agenda, alongside port development and other key infrastructure, as his Liberal government aims to sidestep the United States and its current problematic leadership.

Carney’s pro-mining stance is a welcome change from his predecessor, Justin Trudeau, whose government put roadblocks in front of resource extraction through for example Bill C-69, the West Coast tanker ban, and the implementation of a federal carbon pricing regime.

In October, Carney announced he plans to double Canada’s non-US exports over the next decade, to unlock $300 billion in new trade. When quizzed by reporters how he would make that happen, Carney pointed to the federal government’s support for port development, such as the Port of Montreal expansion, and the export of critical minerals from Ontario’s Ring of Fire.

“We’re working closely in term of unlocking that enormous potential,” the prime minister said while standing next to Ontario Premier Doug Ford, who is pushing for speedy development of the Ring of Fire mining project in northern Ontario. (CTV News)

The “bromance” between Carney and Ford may have lost some of its sizzle due to an anti-tariff TV ad that ran during the World Series, but the pair have been shilling the Ring of Fire for months now.

The ROF has been under the spotlight as both Ontario and the federal government look to counter US trade moves and build domestic mining and energy capacity.

The Ford government, particularly, has grown frustrated with the long timelines for opening mines and completing major projects. This is the justification it offered for tabling Bill 5, the ‘Protect Ontario by Unleashing Our Economy Act’.

Passed by Queen’s Park on June 4, Bill 5 aims to speed up mining projects and other developments in areas deemed to have economic importance. The legislation allows for creation of Special Economic Zones, where Cabinet would be allowed to exempt projects from certain environmental and labor laws.

Ford has said the Ring of Fire will be among the first places that get this designation — cutting the time period for project approvals in half.

His government has committed $1 billion to build out the Ring of Fire.

Prime Minister Carney has pledged to work closely with the Ontario government to rapidly develop the area, in part through a ‘One Window’ approach that will enable companies “to navigate regulations faster and with fewer redundancies.” (Sudbury Star)

In March, Carney staked out his position in calling for an “action-oriented economy”, vowing to end the duplicative environmental impact assessment processes for projects deemed nationally significant.

“One project, one review; it’s time to build,” Carney said. (Northern Ontario Business).

Other quotes from Carney and his government on the topic of making Canada into a critical minerals powerhouse, courtesy of AI Overview:

• “Canada can be a powerhouse in the extraction and upgrading of critical minerals.”
  
  “Canada has a tremendous opportunity to be the world’s leading energy superpower, in both clean and conventional energy”. He has consistently included critical minerals as a central component of this “energy superpower” vision.

• The government’s plan involves “aggressively developing projects that are in the national interest in order to protect Canada’s energy security, diversify our trade, and enhance our long-term competitiveness”.

• “We will create a critical minerals production alliance, a G7-led strategic initiative to stockpile and develop critical minerals needed for defence and technology”.

• Regarding the plan to double non-U.S. exports, Carney stated that building port infrastructure and exporting more resources, such as “critical minerals from the Ring of Fire and building that up,” is key.

• He has also emphasized that the development of critical minerals and the associated infrastructure will help Canada meet its increased NATO spending targets, as “a lot of it will count toward that five per cent because of infrastructure spending — it’s ports and railroads and other ways to get these minerals out.”

The Building Canada Act, passed on June 26 as part of Bill C-5, was press-released with the following statement in support of critical minerals: “The Building Canada Act will enable the government to streamline federal approval processes to get major projects built faster. These projects – including ports, railways, energy corridors, critical mineral developments, and clean energy initiatives — will better connect our economy, diversify our industries, access new markets, and create high-paying careers…”

Which projects? Carney announced the first five in September. They include expansion of the Red Chris copper-gold mine in BC; the McIlvenna Bay Foran copper mine project in Saskatchewan; the Darlington Nuclear Project in Clarington, Ont., which will make small modular reactors; and the Contrecoeur Terminal Container Project to expand the Port of Montreal. Read more about them here

Interesting that, despite previous statements from Ford and Carney, the Ring of Fire wasn’t considered enough of a “nation-building project” to make the top five.

Could it be that the ROF, while prospective, is too remote, has no mining infrastructure (roads, rail, power) and would cost too much to build it, has a poor return on investment compared to other existing and profitable Canadian mining camps and will take up to 20 years before delivering it’s fist concentrates? I would like to think so.

Look, I have nothing against the Ring of Fire. I hope we can eventually partner with the many James Bay-area First Nations — all but two of whom are against it — and build the infrastructure needed to develop the Ring’s resources, which include chromite, copper, zinc, gold, diamonds, nickel and platinum group elements.

Where the rubber hits the yet-to-be-built road, is the ROI. If we’re ever going to be a critical minerals powerhouse, we have to go about it the right way. That means spending the money wisely and where we get our quickest and best return. Sadly, that’s not the Ring of Fire.

A recent opinion piece in the Hub, provocatively titled ‘Is Ontario’s Ring of Fire Overhyped?’, is bang on. It states:

In some ways, the Ring of Fire has never deserved the hype it receives, from being described as a “trillion dollar project” and “the next oilsands,” or heralded as “the most significant mineral development in Canada in more than a century.”

That can be problematic when it sucks up scarce political attention and public resources. There are other, more prolific mineral basins in Canada that better suit the designation of “nation-building” or “critical” but seem to fall under the radar.

I couldn’t agree more. This article explains why we should reject the Ring of Fire, why other Canadian mining jurisdictions deserve taxpayer funding, and what would be a better approach to building critical minerals capacity in Canada.

The Ring of Fire

The Ring of Fire was discovered in 2007 by late Sudbury prospector Richard Nemis. As mining lore has it, Nemis came upon the first trove of chromite in the region and, being a fan of Johnny Cash, named the area after Cash’s hit song. The Sudbury Star points out that it was actually his financier friend Robert Cudney, however, who suggested the name while dining with Nemis and former mining exec John Harvey at a Toronto restaurant, according to the book ‘Ring of Fire: High-Stakes Mining in a Lowlands Wilderness’.

The name also alludes, however, to the shape and nature of the geological formation that contains the minerals — a crescent of ancient, volcanic rock.

Northern Ontario Business calls the Ring of Fire “the garden of agony” for mining companies ever since the discovery of nickel and chromite in the James Bay region in 2007-08:

Over the decades, the vast and open-ended mineral potential of the remote Ring of Fire has received its share of passionate lip service from Ottawa and Queen’s Park.

But these two orders of government have also contributed to the lack of Far North development through apathy and inaction, arduous assessment processes, and diverging policies over how — or even if — resource extraction should take place in the James Bay lowlands.

Its metallic resources have a wide variety of applications, everything from EV batteries to military equipment, wind turbines and semiconductors. Chromite, found in larger quantities in the ROF than anywhere else in North America, is turned into ferrochrome, a key alloy in the manufacture of stainless steel.

Extracting the Ring of Fire’s metals however is far from easy. Nothing can happen without a way to transport material in and out. That statement is easier to appreciate when one considers that this vast, isolated area still has no rail or road access — the nearest road apart from ice roads built during the winter is 300 km away. No railways nor rail spurs have been built. 

The area which consists largely of muskeg is also home to multiple First Nations, that by law must be consulted before any mining or mining infrastructure can take place on their territories.

Most are opposed to both.

According to the Canadian Mining Journal,

Three permanent roads are planned, connecting two of the communities and proposed mines…

Road construction is estimated to take from five to 10 years and will be carried out by the Marten Falls and Webequie First Nations. The roads are estimated to cost approximately two billion dollars.

Five to 10 years for a road? At $2 billion? Come on.

The two biggest players in the Ring of Fire are privately owned Wyloo Metals, whose parent company is Australian iron ore giant Fortsescue Metals; and unlisted Juno Corp, based in Toronto.

Wyloo acquired Noront Resources in 2022 and now owns the Eagle’s Nest nickel-copper mine.

Northern Ontario Business reports Eagle’s Nest contains more than 15.7 million tonnes of high-grade nickel with significant amounts of copper and platinum group metals.

Wyloo has already invested $630 million on the Noront deal plus $25-30 million spent annually on the project, the publication states.

According to its 2012 feasibility study, the mine will last about 11 years and cost approximately $609 million to build.

Poor ROI

The Ring of Fire clearly has development potential. The question is, should taxpayer money be spent on it? To my mind, the answer is a definite no.

The first thing to understand, is that while the Ring hosts numerous minerals, it is primarily a chromite deposit. The metal used mostly in steelmaking is not rare.

Heather Exner-Pirot from the Macdonald-Laurier Institute, and author of the Hub opinion piece, notes that chromite has none of the security of supply concerns of minerals such as rare earths, germanium and gallium, all of which China has a near monopoly on and has put export restrictions on. “In that sense, the Ring of Fire is not critical to national security,” she writes.

Here is where it gets interesting.

Exner-Pirot compares the Ring of Fire to the Sudbury Basin, a mature mining jurisdiction that has rich deposits of nickel, copper, gold, silver, and platinum group elements (PGEs). The basin “has spawned dozens of mines and produces high-purity, Class 1 nickel suitable for batteries. It is arguably Canada’s most important base metals mining jurisdiction.”

100% correct.

But in terms of metals valuation, the Sudbury Basin pales in comparison to the Abitibi Greenstone Belt, which straddles Quebec and Ontario and hosts some of Canada’s richest gold mines that are among the highest producing in the world.

As an aside, at its peak in 1965, Canada held over 1,000 tonnes of gold. The process of selling our gold reserves began in the mid-1960s and continued under various governments over the following decades. The last small amount of gold was sold in February 2016, leaving the official gold holdings at effectively zero. Canada no longer holds any official gold reserves, its gold was sold off because of a of a decades-long policy to diversify its foreign exchange reserves into more liquid, interest-bearing financial assets like foreign government bonds and the U.S. dollar. Ironic isn’t it, how’s that working out?

Half of the mines in Ontario — Canada’s largest gold producer — are gold, with the vast majority located within the Abitibi. The market value of Ontario’s mines in 2024 was $7 billion, with gold accounting for half of that, copper was $1.6B, nickel about $1B and PGEs just under $800 million. This year’s gold value is almost certainly going to be higher, with gold mining companies making huge profits @ $4,000 gold/oz.

The Ontario government estimates the Ring of Fire will generate $22 billion over 30 years, or an average $730 million/yr.

That’s less than the $800 million per year currently earned by platinum group elements in Ontario. The Detour Lake gold mine in the Abitibi is expected to bring in close to $4 billion this year alone! Goldfields

$4 billion versus $730 million. I think you see my point.

More deserving camps

Exner-Pirot says it’s essential that we understand where Canada’s mineral wealth comes from and prioritize accordingly.

Again, I couldn’t agree more. Let’s take a tour of the most prolific, some of them world-class, existing mining camps.

Sudbury Basin, ON

Created from an asteroid strike 1.8 billion years ago, the Sudbury Basin contains nickel, copper, gold, silver, platinum, palladium, rhodium, iridium and ruthenium. The diameter of the asteroid is estimated to have been 10-15 kilometers. Debris from the impact is thought to have been scattered as far as Minnesota.

The camp was discovered in 1856 in an area that later became the Creighton mine. The first mine was Vermillion. Wikipedia lists 41 mines that were collected from a 1917 map of the Sudbury Basin. The two most famous are the Vale Inco Sudbury mine, formerly owned by Inco before Vale acquired it in 2006; and Glencore’s Sudbury Integrated Nickel Operations (INO), which include the Fraser mine, the Strathcona mill and the Sudbury smelter. Sudbury INO was previously owned by Falconbridge, then sold to Xstrata in a blockbuster 2006 mining deal worth $18 billion. Xstrata was bought by Glencore in 2013. Both Vale’s and Glencore’s Sudbury mine complexes are still producing.

Abitibi Greenstone Belt, ON/QC

Straddling the provinces of Ontario and Quebec, the Abitibi Greenstone Belt is the largest mineral-rich formation of its kind at 450 km long and 150 km wide.

Formed 2.6 billion years ago, the Abitibi has evolved to become one of the most prospective regions in the world, boasting over 300 million ounces of gold in past production, reserves and resources.

Notable Abitibi gold deposits include Canadian Malartic, with 1.6 million ounces oz gold in proven and probable reserves; Macassa @ 1.Moz Au P&P reserves; Casa Berardi @ 2.5Moz Au P&P reserves; and Detour Lake @ 20.7Moz Au P&P reserves. (2023 figures)

The Abitibi region hosts several key players in the gold mining and exploration space, including Agnico Eagle, Gold Fields and Newmont, the world’s leading gold miner.

Agnico’s portfolio includes Canada’s largest gold operation at Detour Lake which has a mine life of ~20 years with expected average gold production of over 700,000 ounces per year.

In addition to Detour Lake, Agnico owns the Canadian Malartic mine in northwestern Quebec, which had been the largest open-pit gold operation in Canada prior to 2022. The company is also developing the Macassa and Goldex projects and the LaRonde complex within the Abitibi belt.

Golden Triangle, BC

The Golden Triangle of northwestern British Columbia is one of the most richly mineralized areas on the planet, hosting large deposits of copper, gold and silver. Of the triangle’s two operating mines and one to come, Brucejack has proven and probable reserves of 14.4 million tonnes @ 8.3 grams per tonne gold and 63.8 g/t silver, Red Chris contains 410Mt @ 0.45% Cu (2.02Mt) and 0.55 g/t Au (7.78Moz), while the Premier gold project has an indicated resource 1.066Moz Au and 4.669Moz of silver. (2024 figures)

Ascot Resources poured first gold at Premier April 2024. Several undeveloped deposits reinforce the enormous potential of the region.

Barrick Mining (formerly Barrick Gold) previously owned Eskay Creek, a volcanogenic massive sulfide (VMS) deposit with some of the highest gold and silver grades in the world.

Within its 14-year life, Eskay Creek produced 3.3 million ounces of gold at an average grade of 45 grams per tonne, and roughly 160Moz silver at around 2,220 g/t — making it the world’s highest-grade gold mine and fifth-largest silver mine by volume.

Major porphyry camps and porphyry-related gold deposits within the Golden Triangle include Schaft Creek, Galore Creek, the Red Chris-GJ-North Rok-Tatogga cluster and the KSM-Brucejack-Treaty camps.

Quesnel Trough, BC

The Quesnel Trough is a 1,500 km-long geological region in British Columbia running from the U.S. border to the Yukon border known for its rich copper-gold and copper-molybdenum deposits. It is part of the Quesnel Terrane and consists of Late Triassic to Early Jurassic island arc rocks.

The region is well-known for hosting a variety of mineral deposits, with a strong focus on alkalic intrusion-related porphyry copper-gold deposits and is one of the most prospective areas in Canada for gold and copper, containing large-tonnage deposits that are highly sought after by major mining companies.

Operating mines include Mount Milligan, Mount Polley, New Afton, Highland Valley and Copper Mountain. Highland Valley is the country’s largest open-pit copper mine.

Athabasca Basin (uranium), SK/AB

The Athabasca Basin, spanning close to 100,000 square kilometers of northern Saskatchewan and Alberta, is famous for its high uranium grades. Some deposits are over 100X the world average including Cigar Lake, the world’s largest uranium mine, which contains an average 14.6% U3O8. In comparison the Priargunsky underground uranium mine in Russia has grades of just 0.15%. Or Rio Tinto’s Rossing open-pit mine in Namibia, @ 0.03%, compared to over 19% in Denison Mines’ Phoenix deposit — a difference of 630X.

The Athabasca Basin produces about 20% of world uranium supply. Major mines include Cigar Lake, held jointly between Cameco, Orano and Tepco Resources; Cameco’s McArthur River, re-opened in 2022 after a four-year closure; and the Rabbit Lake mine, on care and maintenance since 2016.

The Athabasca Basin is a hot spot for uranium exploration, with a number of juniors making recent discoveries, prompting a staking rush by others looking to get in on the action. (Investing News Network)

Elk Point (potash), SK/AB

The Elk Point Potash District also straddles Saskatchewan and Alberta. It contains the world’s largest source of potash, a key ingredient in fertilizers. Major companies like Nutrien and BHP operate mines in the region.

According to a 2023 report by the US Geological Survey,

The total value of the ore produced through 2018 is on the order of $70 trillion (CAD). Potash is currently produced from eight conventional and three underground solution mines at depths ranging from 900m to nearly 1,800m. Estimates of the amount of potash in the Elk Point Basin vary considerably and the data and methods used in those estimations are not well documented. Known potash resources are approximately 99 billion metric tons (Bt) of ore containing 22Bt of K2O equivalent.

As a result of new mine openings and increased production capacity at existing mines, the total production capacity of mines in the Elk Point Basin has increased significantly (to about 32.8Mt of KCl or 22.8 Mt of K2O equivalent per year). Additional production capacity of about 31Mt of KCl (or 17Mt of K2O equivalent) per year could be realized over the next decade if several current (as of 2019) exploration and development projects reach production status.

Labrador Trough, NL/QC

The Labrador Trough extends south-southeast through Quebec and Labrador. It is a large iron ore belt developed on banded iron formations and has been mined since 1954. (Wikipedia)

According to the government of Newfoundland and Labrador,

This 1,100-km-long belt contains several major open pit deposits which together have produced in excess of 2 billion tonnes of iron ore. Existing reserves and resources suggest the region could see production for many decades to come. The Labrador Trough’s high-quality iron ore consistently commands premium prices. Its high iron concentration and low levels of impurities allow steel production with reduced carbon emissions and lower costs.

As of January 2025, current iron ore producers in Labrador include Rio Tinto IOC at Carol Lake, the DSO project by Tata Steel Minerals Canada, and Tacora Resources’ Scully mine.

In Quebec, the two producers are ArcelorMittal Mining Canada @ Mont Wright, and Champion Iron Limited’s Bloom Lake.

Importance of juniors

Now, some might say when it comes to targeting mineral districts for federal funds, producing mines don’t need any help — especially gold mining companies who are swimming in cash right now due to a high gold price. I don’t disagree.

The recipients imo should be junior resource companies — those breaking rocks in the middle of nowhere, getting drill permits, drilling holes and coming up with maiden resource estimates.

The juniors own the deposits that will become the world’s future mines, so they arguably deserve a little help from government. It takes many years to go from discovery to production, during which juniors have no revenue. Without investors or government funding, these companies will die.

For years junior miners were starved for cash, the institutional and retail investment sectors essentially lost interest. Thankfully that has changed and money is flowing back into the sector.

According to Bloomberg,

• Mining and metals companies across North America have raised $2.9 billion across 185 deals, marking the largest monthly volume for sales of new shares by public companies in the sector since November 2013.

• Gold and silver companies account for a third of the number of October’s stock sales, and investment bankers say appetite for more deals has been consistently strong, with almost everything being oversubscribed.

• Investors, bankers and analysts expect more deals to come, with a “plethora of junior miners” dominating the activity in the market, and institutions having a large appetite for the shares, which is seen as a welcome sign and a vote of confidence from investors.

Chicken and egg

The first part of a new Canadian critical minerals strategy is to build more mines, and for government to help juniors advance their projects.

Even when investors (and government) get on board, though, developing critical mineral mines is a formidable challenge. According to the Financial Post, that’s because investors recognize that China’s dominance over various commodities means it can single-handedly change global supply levels to crater or elevate prices.

“We can produce a lot of minerals cheaper than (China) can,” said Mark Selby, chief executive of Toronto-based Canada Nickel Co. “The problem is, and this applies across all critical minerals, today’s price environment doesn’t necessarily generate the financial return that investors want to provide the upfront capital.”

He described it is as a chicken and egg problem: To break China’s dominance of critical mineral supply chains, Canada needs to build more mines. But building new mines requires investment, and investors are wary of such projects as long as China controls enough of the supply chain that it can flood the market with product and depress prices.

Build more infrastructure

The Canadian government can help put the chicken before the egg, so to speak, by funding long-sought-after mining infrastructure. Three examples are ports, power and railways.

Ports

The Carney government has already identified the Port of Montreal expansion as a nation-building project. Building out the Port of Churchill, Manitoba, also features prominently in the federal budget, which is due to be passed by the end of November unless the motion is defeated in the House of Commons, triggering an election.

The Arctic Gateway Group this week welcomed the strong commitment to the Port of Churchill and Hudson Bay Railway in Budget 2025, which positions the Port of Churchill as a key part of Canada’s plan to diversify trade and build Canada’s future economy.

The federal government reconfirmed $180 million over the next five years to continue strengthening the Hudson Bay Railway and diversifying operations at the Port of Churchill. The Port of Churchill Plus project is highlighted multiple times in Budget 2025 as a nation-building initiative.

An earlier Globe and Mail article notes that for nearly a decade, Churchill, the only Arctic deepwater port in North America that is accessible by rail, sat dormant.

The announcement of its revival presents not just an outlet for Canadian key exports such as LNG and critical minerals, but a new or renewed lifeline for some of Canada’s most remote communities.

As far as mineral potential, Churchill resumed shipping zinc, a critical mineral, in August 2024 after a gap of almost two decades. The zinc is sourced through a partnership with Hudbay Minerals.

Port operator Arctic Gateway Group plans to double the capacity for critical mineral shipments, including zinc concentrate, in the near future.

The Port of Churchill is evaluating a partnership with Potash and Agri Development Corporation of Manitoba (PADCOM) to begin shipping potash as soon as 2026.

There are broader ambitions for the port to handle additional bulk materials and critical minerals from Canada.

According to the Canadian Energy Centre, “Churchill presents huge opportunities when it comes to mining, agriculture, and energy.”

Power

There is currently no power line connecting Ring of Fire mining projects to the Ontario electrical grid. While the Ontario government plans to bring electricity transmission infrastructure to the Ring of Fire and is pursuing development of two new hydroelectric power generating stations, progress depends on the agreement of local First Nations, which as stated, mostly oppose the ROF.

This is despite the fact that last year, 16 First Nations received power from the grid, and all the First Nations in the Ring of Fire are expected to have electricity by the end of this year, getting them off diesel power.

Clearly, the ROF First Nations see the benefit of being hooked up to modern electricity networks, yet they aren’t willing to share it with industrial users that could provide jobs and significantly enhance their quality of life.

The Ring of Fire isn’t the only Canadian mining camp with stranded assets due to a lack of power.

British Columbia’s Golden Triangle contains mainly copper and gold minerals with an estimated in-situ value worth trillions of dollars.

In 2014 the BC government took a decisive step towards recovery of those minerals through the construction of the Northwest Transmission Line.

The 344-kilometre line extended B.C. Hydro’s power grid north from Terrace into the Golden Triangle. The Red Chris mine was the first mine to use power from the line in the fall of 2014.

Now the provincial government is set to introduce legislation to fast-track construction of a multibillion-dollar power transmission line to the north coast. The line is expected to go live by the summer of 2026.

Canada has identified 34 critical minerals, with BC supplying more than a dozen. There are 17 proposed critical-mineral mines and five precious metal-mines in advanced development.

As the Globe and Mail reported in October:

It’s British Columbia’s big bet: The publicly funded infrastructure project is meant to secure new private-sector investments, including a string of critical-mineral mines, for the sparsely developed northwest corner of the province…

Michael Goehring, president and chief executive of the Mining Association of BC, said the NCTL project will tip the scales in favour of 15 critical-mineral and precious-metal projects that require certainty of electricity supply before they proceed.

“This is a nation-building project that will bring clean electricity to mining projects in northwest and central B.C.,” Mr. Goehring said in an interview Sunday. “It will strengthen Canada’s position as a leading global supplier of critical minerals and metals, and it will unlock more than $45-billion in near-term economic activity for British Columbians – and all Canadians.”

Railways

Getting the minerals out is also contingent on railways.

We’ve already mentioned the Hudson Bay Railway improvement project, which is a step in the right direction.

But railways and roads are also lacking in the Golden Triangle. In northern BC, the railway lines — primarily the former BC Rail network now leased by Canadian National (CN) — extends as far north as Fort Nelson.

A branch line was also built west from the mainline north of Prince George to Fort St. James, completed in 1968. Another branch line, the Tumbler Ridge Subdivision, was built to serve coal mines in the area northeast of Prince George.

Unfortunately, there are no plans for new freight railways to serve the Golden Triangle of northwestern BC.

Besides northern BC, other Canadian mining areas lacking rail access include parts of the Yukon territory, Nunavut, the Northwest Territories, and northern Ontario and Quebec.

In these areas, the primary transportation methods for supplies and products are often seasonal ice roads, air transport, and trucking, which significantly increases operating costs compared to mines with direct rail access. The development of new rail lines to link remote mines to existing networks is often too expensive for private companies alone and requires government investment to be economically viable. (AI Overview)

Build more smelters and refineries

For a mining nation, Canada has relatively few smelters and refineries. Smelting extracts the metal from its ore using intense heat and a chemical reducing agent, resulting in an impure molten metal.

Refining purifies this impure metal, increasing its grade and purity through further processing like chemical treatments, fire or electrolysis.

The table below shows Quebec is the nexus of Canadian smelting and refining, with 10 smelters, two refineries, one secondary smelter, and one refinery/secondary smelter.

The main refineries are Glencore’s CCR Refinery in Montreal East for copper and precious metals, and CEZinc in Salaberry-de-Valleyfield for zinc. The latter is the largest zinc refinery in eastern North America.

Rio Tinto has several operations in Quebec that involve metal production. The Alouette facility in Sept-Îles is one of the largest aluminum smelters in North America. Additionally, Rio Tinto is involved in the BlueSmelting™ project in Sorel-Tracy for titanium dioxide production. The ELYSIS™ project, a joint venture with Alcoa, is developing carbon-free aluminum technology at facilities in Saguenay and Alma.

Ontario has four refineries, two secondary smelters, one conversion facility, one smelter/refinery/plant, and one smelter/plant, while British Columbia has one smelter, one secondary smelter, and one smelter/refinery/plant.

The Port Colborne refinery on the shore of Lake Erie processes raw materials from Vale’s Sudbury operations.

The Copper Cliff smelter complex is the largest integrated mining, milling, smelting and refining operation in the Americas. Most of the nickel-copper ore mined in the Greater Sudbury region is processed here. The ore is ground to a powder, and the metal-bearing minerals are separated from the rest of the minerals. Sulfur reacts with oxygen in the roasting and smelting processes to form the gas sulfur dioxide, which is captured and converted to sulfur products for sale.

There is only one refinery in each of Alberta, Manitoba, and Newfoundland/Labrador.

In total there are 29 non-ferrous metal smelters, refineries and conversion facilities in six provinces.

In 2022, 100% of the refined graphite produced in Canada from mined graphite was processed domestically, and 100% of the refined lithium produced in Canada from mined lithium was processed domestically.

But Canadian production of these critical minerals is small. In 2024 we produced 4,300 tonnes of lithium, compared to 240,000 tonnes mined globally. Australia, Chile and China are the top three producers.

Canada mined 13,000 tonnes of crystalline flake graphite in 2022 compared to China’s 1,030,000 tonnes.

It’s a different story when it comes to copper. Canada’s only copper refinery is the Canadian Copper Refinery (CCR), located in Montreal East, Quebec. CCR is part of Glencore Canada’s copper division, which also includes the Horne smelter in Rouyn-Noranda, Quebec. The Horne smelter processes materials that are sent to the CCR.

Only about 50% of the copper mined in Canada is refined domestically.

The country exports the majority of its copper in the form of ores and concentrates. Canada’s exports of unrefined copper concentrate in 2023 were 334,079 tonnes, while refined copper exports totaled 151,445 tonnes. 

In the table below by GlobalData, via Mining Technology, we note that of 10 major operating copper mines in Canada, six are in BC.

All of the copper mined from British Columbian operations is shipped to Asia for processing.

For example, the copper concentrate produced at the Red Chris mine within the Golden Triangle is trucked to the Port of Stewart, British Columbia, and then shipped to overseas smelters and refineries for processing into copper cathodes. That’s the same Red Chris Mine that just received Canadian Federal Government largess to expand it’s mining operation and ship even more concentrate to China.

We see the dominance of China in the processing of Canadian minerals through this statistic: In 2024, 53% of Canada’s mineral exports to the United States were downstream stage 3 and 4 products (semi-fabricated and fabricated products), indicating substantial domestic processing beyond raw extraction. However, for exports to China, 94% were stage 1 (primary products).

Globally, a large percentage of copper refining capacity is concentrated in China.

I have previously argued for the need for a smelter that serves BC’s copper and copper-gold mines. A good location would be the Golden Triangle.

BC’s Golden Triangle is the West’s solution to its copper supply dilemma

While there has been talk of building a refinery in BC for decades, so far, the political will hasn’t been there. The refinery’s ore feed could be derived from current mines like Red Chris, Highland Valley, Gibraltar and Copper Mountain, and later, large, undeveloped deposits like Schaft Creek, Galore Creek, and Newmont’s Tatogga.

The Yukon also has a lot of copper, Carmacks and Casino for example.

The key to this plan is the smelter must have the ability to process copper and gold. It just so happens that Teck Resources, owner of Highland Valley and part owner of Galore Creek and Schaft Creek, has the technology to do it.

Cominco Engineering Services (CESL), a subsidiary of then-Teck Cominco Metals, began developing the CESL Process in 1992, as an alternative to conventional smelting and refining of copper concentrates for the production of LME Grade A copper cathode.

The CESL Process involves oxidation of sulfide concentrates at elevated pressure and temperature in the presence of catalytic chloride ions, within an autoclave. The oxidized copper forms basic copper sulfate (BCS). Copper from the BCS is subsequently leached under mildly acidic conditions at atmospheric pressure and temperature. Copper is recovered from solution by conventional solvent extraction and electrowinning.

Conclusion

Canada has a rich mining history, but it is not yet a critical minerals powerhouse like China.

While Ontario’s Ring of Fire has been touted as a way to get there, this article has established that there are better, existing mining camps worthy of taxpayer dollars and private investment.

We listed the Sudbury Basin, Abitibi Greenstone Belt, Golden Triangle, Quesnel Trough, Athabasca Basin, Elk Point, and the Labrador Trough (on Carney’s second list).

We could have also mentioned BC’s Elk Valley Coal District, the White Gold District, also in BC, the Keno Hill Silver District in the Yukon, the Flin Flon Greenstone Belt, or the Central Newfoundland Gold District.

Every one of these camps is going to drive Canada’s GDP and exports far more than the Ring of Fire ever will. Remember, just the platinum group elements in the Sudbury Basin are worth $800 million a year, compared to the whole Ring of Fire returning an estimated $780 million.

Revenue from the Detour Lake mine, in the Abitibi Greenstone Belt, this year is expected to reach nearly $4 billion. There is no comparison.

Rather than wasting time and money on the Ring of Fire, which isn’t going to be developed for 20 years, if ever, the Canadian government would be better off identifying advanced mineral projects and either funding their exploration directly or directly taking stakes in the companies like the United States government is doing.

Worthwhile districts are available in BC, the Yukon, Saskatchewan, Ontario, Quebec and Newfoundland/Labrador. Hundreds of juniors have staked claims and are wanting to develop them into mines, but most lack the finances, even to bring them up to the level of a preliminary economic assessment (PEA) or pre-feasibility study.

The federal and provincial governments could certainly help, with the right guidance so that the money goes into projects that are most likely to become mines, not failed science experiments.

We need to build more mines, not just critical mineral mines but more gold mines, potash mines, uranium mines, iron ore mines, etc.

But Canada is a large country. Most mines are in remote locations and only a few jurisdictions have the infrastructure in place. We can’t get the stranded metal out without it.

We need to figure out where the smelters should go. We need to figure out where the power should come into. And we need to figure out where the railways have to go.

We need to expand the Port of Churchill and make it a civilian/ military installation. Arctic sea ice is disappearing. It makes sense, economically and strategically, to build out Churchill so that ships can travel over the top of the world to Europe and Asia, and Canada’s Arctic sovereignty can be defended.

We need to put in a new pipeline to run Alberta’s gas and oil to the East Coast for refining. Another pipeline to tidewater from Alberta to the BC coast has been tried and failed; it will likely never happen due to unfavorable politics.

But a smelter in BC is a project worth getting behind. Right now, over half of Canada’s copper is produced in BC but all of it is exported to Asia for refining. That’s shameful. It’s the equivalent of shipping out raw logs rather than building mills to make higher valued lumber.

We have only one copper smelter/refinery in Quebec, and there are rumors that it’s closing.

The Canadian government is fast-tracking two copper mines, the Red Chris copper mine expansion in BC, and the McIlvenna Bay Foran copper mine project in Saskatchewan. Copper ore from McIlvenna Bay will be sent to the Horne smelter/ Canadian Copper Refinery in Quebec. Fine. Ore from Red Chris is trucked to Stewart and shipped to China. Why is the government supporting this?

We will not be a critical minerals superpower if everything that we dig up is sent to China for processing.

Like forestry, the value-add is downstream. The money is not made in selling raw ores, it’s made in refining them, and manufacturing them into end products — activities that, with a few exceptions, we generally don’t do. 

For example, a ton of 30% copper concentrate costs about USD$1,750. A ton of copper cathode now is worth between $8,500 and $9,500.

Perhaps we’d be better off following Indonesia’s model, of banning raw ore exports and making mining companies beneficiate them locally. Something worth considering.

(Beneficiation is the process of upgrading ore by concentrating the valuable mineral content and removing the waste rock, or gangue, through physical or chemical separation techniques. This increases the economic value of the ore by improving its grade and preparing it for further processing like smelting or refining.)

We have the resources, the knowledge, and the experience to get metals out of the ground.

But we’re running out of people. We need to talk about educating a new mining workforce.

Mining industry dogged by retirements and lack of new recruits — Richard Mills

A study put out by Deloitte in 2023 revealed that nearly 50% of mining engineers will reach retirement age within the next decade. The average age of a US mine worker is 46.

The Deloitte study found that mining employment has fallen 20.4% over the past decade in the United States. In Canada, approximately 80,000 to 120,000 workers will need to be hired by 2030.

The firm highlighted the danger of critical knowledge and skills being lost, when they are needed most, as demand for metals surges for the transition from fossil-fueled to renewable energy, and electrification.

As we are hit by this “grey tsunami”, is there a plan to replace the workers, the geologists, the engineers, and the next generation of mine managers? And for the people we do have there is intense competition from the oil and gas extraction industry to hire them.

Exploration for, and the development of mines is useless if we don’t have the people. Or the smelters, or the railways, or the ports, or the power.

Let’s at least try and keep something that’s so simple so basic in mind when trying to achieve our common Canadian goals – it’s impossible to build a metals and critical minerals powerhouse country if you have to ship cons to China for processing.

While we’re on the subject of HR, we have to ease interprovincial restrictions, not only on trade but on the movement of people. Highly trained shilled professionals should be able to work anywhere in Canada, not be restricted to the province in which he/she lives.

We could also learn from the Scandinavian countries, where permitting mining projects has been streamlined into months, not years like in Canada and the US. Or in some cases, decades.

And we need to have a better understanding with First Nations when it comes to mining. “Truth and Reconciliation” is all well and good but not when it prevents projects of national importance from going ahead.

First Nations need to understand that Canadian taxpayers spend billions on them, everything from water and wastewater infrastructure to housing, health and education. The federal government spent an estimated $30.5 billion on Indigenous priorities in 2023-24. We are not against making life better for our indigenous brothers and sisters, we want it to happen. Fresh safe drinking water, education, health care are priorities with us for everyone, a better life that we had for our children is for everyone to expect.

But all this comes at a price for taxpayers as it should for First Nations as well, and that is the freedom to mine.

There may well come a time when the burden is too much for taxpayers, so we need the relief of being able to mine and move minerals, which of course, provide extra revenue to governments through royalties.

If we pull all this together, then we really can become a critical minerals (and other minerals) powerhouse. But the way we’re going at it right now, we have zero chance of success.

Richard (Rick) Mills
aheadoftheherd.com

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