I want to thank you for giving me the opportunity to speak to this important standing committee. Industry and technology folks would know that Canada is well-positioned—and for the purposes of today's discussion the province of Ontario as well—to seize, especially in the context of ensuing global strife, a position unlike any other in the history of certainly our province, Canada and the world over in the critical mineral space.
Why? Well, there are probably a couple of reasons.
First of all, countries like Russia and China have a stranglehold on the access and processing capacity of many of the critical minerals that are used today in various technologies, especially the ones that are most exciting to all of us for environmental purposes: electric vehicle and electric battery capacity and, of course, storage potential as well.
All of these things can and will happen, and are happening, in Ontario, and for the benefit of this country. The residual question for us all, colleagues, is about bringing critical minerals home to Canada, and for my purposes, Ontario. It is about being involved in the single biggest environmental policy ever advanced by a jurisdiction the world over. It will bring world-class standards in labour and the environment, while working with our indigenous communities, which is always a work in progress as part of our value proposition. We think there's a role for the federal government, and that's why I am thrilled to be here today.
This started out for me, in the context of my provincial career, at PDAC a couple of years ago, when Joseph Semsar, the former U.S. acting under secretary for international trade, approached Ontario, and myself directly, to discuss the need to build out a secure and stable supply of critical minerals, and to meet the growing demand across northern Ontario.
Move the clock ahead a couple of years to just the past week or two, and we've seen some interesting things. President Biden laid claim to a domestic supply chain, and the need thereof of critical minerals; it's pretty interesting for a president who doesn't have any. His reference to a domestic supply chain necessarily includes Canada at least for the extraction, likely for the processing, and, if we have our way, a significant part of the integrated supply chain, especially in vehicle and battery storage technologies.
Then, just yesterday, Premier Ford, and my friend and colleague Minister Fedeli, got back from Washington. They had a robust agenda to talk about with our U.S. counterparts, and very quickly in every single meeting, it was dominated by discussions around critical minerals.
So, friends and colleagues, this is very real to us. If I've put a value proposition out there for the province of Ontario, it necessarily includes every single province in Canada. We're all busy with critical mineral strategies. We're likely ahead of the curve in some of our jurisdictions, but there's no question our friends in Quebec and especially British Columbia have created aggressive environments for investment in critical minerals, most notably lithium, in the case of Quebec, and various others in British Columbia.
But the demand has been met with opportunity. Our rollout last week of Ontario's first-ever critical minerals strategy, with a solid financial footing with which to advance it, moves it out of the class of strategies, for which governments are renowned for producing, and lesser known for acting on.
This is targeted. It focuses on exploration and innovation in the sector.
We have launched Ontario’s first-ever critical minerals strategy and invested $29 million in programs that will advance exploration and innovation in the sector.
Our strategy includes an injection into Ontario's biggest challenge and now opportunity. That's on the exploration side.
Through the Ontario junior exploration program, which includes a new critical minerals stream, we also have a component for a critical mineral investment fund to kick-start innovation for mining and processing capabilities. We don't want to just be miners, friends and colleagues; we want to be involved in the process.
We're well on our way. Cobalt, Ontario, is going to have the first cobalt processing facility and capacity in North America in the not-too-distant future. We see a bright horizon for lithium as well, working with our counterparts around the world to develop the capacity to process.
In fact, in all the excitement of this discussion, I forgot to mention the European Union, which we met with. The European Union wants to set up a strategic alliance with the Province of Ontario. It sees partnerships in Norway and in Germany around processing capacity, something we can learn from those jurisdictions. It knows where it needs to go. It's tired, of course, and fearful of long-term relationships with countries like China and Russia. Ontario, and I believe Canada, is at the precipice of greatness in the critical mineral space.
Our strategy includes the extraordinary opportunities that we see in the Ring of Fire, a multigenerational potential to produce some of the highest-grade nickel—nickel sulphide—chromite and other critical minerals, including titanium, palladium and the like, coming to a theatre near you. In fact, some of them are being produced and co-operatively developed and processed in some of our more peaceful partners, as I mentioned, in the European Union. That's why it wants to be partners with us.
We believe that responsible mineral development in this region would unlock unprecedented economic prosperity for vast municipalities and indigenous communities across the far north, at least in Ontario, and certainly, from my own experience in the federal chapter of my career, for the benefit of communities in the far north, most notably indigenous and Inuit communities.
As Prime Minister Harper and I discussed at some point in a previous career, we can no longer stand by and see these incredible mining opportunities developed in close proximity to indigenous communities and see, even with resources going to them from the activity itself, a level of poverty that is well known to all of us.
This is an exciting opportunity. That's why we committed close to $1 billion to support legacy infrastructure projects, particularly for the Ring of Fire. Frankly, the greenstone belt that runs just to the south of it has some of the most exciting open-pit and subsurface mining operations that have come on board in the past three years like has never happened before.
These include cost-sharing agreements to secure an opportunity of national significance for future generations. Notably, our successes in moving a number of key mining projects across critical milestones have evolved with full co-operation and partnerships with indigenous communities and their businesses. They have put into effect substantial and substantive elements of the business, environmental and labour contours to these successful developments. We want to keep that going.
We've also included investments into electric battery materials. We're exploring the expansion of a business model to include building an industrial battery park in Cobalt, Ontario in that region of northeastern Ontario.
Also, as I alluded to earlier, there are some exciting innovations with companies like Frontier Lithium.
We know there are many other advanced lithium projects coming close to production, so we must explore partnerships for lithium hydroxide processing capabilities in strategic locations such as Thunder Bay.
I have countless other examples of a long and integrated supply chain. Ontario knows that we can bring to Canada's storefront offerings for some of the most exciting technological developments, not just in the automotive sector, not just in the technology sector, but also for opportunities like national defence. Also, of course, it's not only a robust supply chain here in Ontario, from extraction to deploying these technologies, but as well in global supply chains.
We need the federal government, colleagues. We need you there up in Ottawa to support us. I know there are other great things going on in other provinces that members on this committee represent, and I'm happy to have those discussions.
I'll stand down now and take your questions and comments.
