Natural Resources committee  Thank you to the committee for this opportunity. I will start by going straight to the point that these elements are critical. I just would like to emphasize that there are light rare earth elements as well as heavy rare earth elements that are critical. For instance, for magn

Natural Resources committee  By rate, do you mean speed?

Natural Resources committee  For instance, in Brazil they have actually put out a white paper. I believe the government has approached at one point, Vale, which is one of the largest mining companies, to investigate potentially the production to develop separation technology. Another company in Brazil, which

Natural Resources committee  What does that do? I'll start with the second part of your question. Canada will continue to be dependent, basically buying these elements for automotive manufacturing as well as green technology, as it emerges. But what is happening most importantly and what I tried to indicat

Natural Resources committee  I think as you go down the supply chain, and you start actually producing magnets and parts that go into automotives and so forth, there is an increase in the number of jobs. I believe REITA, which is a rare earth association, is currently doing a study. We actually had a slide

Natural Resources committee  If we actually are able to attract, again, the infrastructure that needs to be built to be able to separate these elements to produce metals, to produce the parts and so forth.... It's basically to do what China did in the last few years, which is they made it harder and harder t

Natural Resources committee  From the technical perspective, I think it's very important, because like I said, many companies are working as individual, isolated islands, and spending millions of dollars trying to develop technologies. Some of them are very similar. When you talk about separation, or the r

Natural Resources committee  I'm embarrassed to say that I don't know. Can you help?

Natural Resources committee  I think the professor indicated that it is important for the government to make this public, even if they didn't necessarily support them. If the Minister of Natural Resources or the Prime Minister were to acknowledge that rare earths are important and critical as well as strateg

Natural Resources committee  Doctor.

Natural Resources committee  I think the capital markets have realized that it is complex to extract some of these elements. Over the years some of these companies have delayed their feasibility studies, and the results have perhaps not been as expected, particularly as some capital costs have been higher th

Natural Resources committee  Part of what we do is look at the economics of the project to reach a stock price, and obviously, the price of rare earths is an important input in the evaluation, as well as capital costs and operating costs and so forth. From the mining perspective, assuming that these companie

Natural Resources committee  In terms of consumption, I don't know exact numbers. We know most rare earth products are produced in Asia—China and Japan. Canada is buying finished products. There is a need to study and understand how much rare earths is included in some of the products we consume. I think i

Natural Resources committee  One way of estimating investments is that we could look at the feasibility studies of various companies—

Natural Resources committee  —at least of those that are more advanced. Two companies—and please correct me if I'm wrong—have completed a feasibility study and that would be Avalon Rare Metals and Matamec Explorations in Quebec. I'd better get these right. I believe Avalon's capex, which includes infrastruct