Thank you very much, Mr. Chair and members of the committee, and good afternoon.
My name is A. J. Nichols. I'm the director of corporate affairs for Vale's base metals. I'm joined by my colleague Mr. Juan Merlini, who is Vale's global sales and marketing director for base metals.
Vale would like to acknowledge the indigenous peoples on whose lands we operate in Manitoba, Ontario and Newfoundland and Labrador.
Our company is one of the world's largest integrated mining companies, with global headquarters in Rio de Janeiro, and a market cap of approximately $90 billion. Our global base metal business, headquartered in Toronto, has a rich 120-year history and operations across five continents. In Canada we operate in Newfoundland and Labrador as well as in Ontario and Manitoba. Our operations in Canada employ nearly 25,000 Canadians. Our direct and indirect GDP contributions to the Canadian economy over the past 12 years have totalled over $58.4 billion Canadian.
We produce metals that are critical to building a cleaner and greener future. We are one of the world's largest producers of high-quality and low-carbon nickel, and are the only fully integrated nickel operations in Canada. We are also an important producer of copper and responsibly sourced cobalt, all of which are key critical minerals that are essential for the decarbonization shift that we see is under way and also demanded by society.
Vale shares the Canadian government's determination to decarbonize and create a greener and healthier future for Canadians. For example, in our Ontario operations predominantly, we've introduced 47 battery-electric vehicles in our operations underground. We're very proud of this milestone. We're looking at more opportunities to electrify our fleets.
We have also set ambitious decarbonization goals across the company, targeting a 33% reduction in GHG emissions by 2030 and also trying to aim for carbon neutrality in 2050. However, our GHG agenda is only one part of Vale base metals' broader effort to advance our ESG performance throughout our company and also in our industry. We believe that the Canadian mining sector has a unique opportunity to be a benchmark and a global standard for sustainable mining and the supply of critical minerals.
I would like to turn things over to Juan. He can provide more comments and insights on the market dynamics and supply chains as they relate to critical minerals.
Juan, I'll turn it over to you.