Industry Committee on March 22nd, 2022

[Greg Rickford]

I'm sorry, Mr. Lemire.

[The Chair, Liberal, Joël Lightbound]

I have the abject role of interrupting all the time to respect time.

[Greg Rickford]

It's a happy gavel.

[The Chair, Liberal, Joël Lightbound]

Yes.

We'll now move to Mr. Blaikie for two minutes, for our last questions.

[Daniel Blaikie, NDP, Elmwood—Transcona, MB]

Thank you. We talked earlier a little bit about the important role that a proper federal strategy could play in negotiating with our allies to protect Canada's security interests and resource development. We were just about to get around to the opportunities that might present to better integrate indigenous people into the planning of the industry. Hopefully, this would lead to more success in terms of projects that both respect the environment and create opportunities for local communities, but also don't end up trapped in some of the ways that we've seen resource development get trapped, when the concerns of indigenous people have been responded to with more of a “divide and conquer” mentality than a proactive collaboration from the outset of the project. As I say, this could even be sooner, if we include indigenous people in the strategic planning for the industry.

I just hope you'll take the rest of my time to speak to that question.

[Greg Rickford]

The triggering in the way you initially framed it, Daniel, got me all fired up. Of course, I think what you and I would be concerned about is provincial strategies evolving in the absence of the federal one, and forcing jurisdictions like the United States to come specifically to a given province. And, boy, wouldn't it be a shame if the federal government missed out on that important dialogue? But as it pertains, obviously, to indigenous communities, as I said, we aren't perfect. We continue to try to get better.

I think we have some early successes as a government on some major mining projects. Manitoba Hydro, I think, and the Government of Manitoba way back in the day would want to do their hydro-electricity build-out a lot differently. I was there as a nurse in charge in Cross Lake when we were getting turkeys and roast beefs basically as compensation for the flooding of those lands.

Manitoba Hydro has done a great job since, and the Manitoba governments, in various political forms, have worked hard to ensure that reconciliation is meaningful as it relates to Crown corporations, but also has an economic element to it. I think that's where the federal government has a rare opportunity to join with partners and ensure that beyond free, prior and informed consent, beyond the duty to consult, which a court can say has or hasn't been met, a meaningful opportunity is provided for indigenous communities to be equity partners in these projects.

Wyloo talked to me today about the extraordinary, fully integrated profile that indigenous communities and peoples have in their projects. Let's stop going to court and start going to the bank together on the opportunities that we have.

Oh, by the way, build road access and corridors that can bring other important things that governments ought to be providing to these indigenous communities, or supporting, like broadband and alternative forms of energy, in Ontario's case, with way too many communities on diesel-powered generation.

That will change in the next couple of years, Daniel, but those are the things that we think we should be working on immediately.

[The Chair, Liberal, Joël Lightbound]

On behalf of all the committee members, thank you very much, Mr. Rickford, for taking the time to be with us this afternoon. It is very helpful to us as we continue our work. We hope you enjoy the rest of your day.

Without further ado, we will move on to our second panel.

Mr. Plante, you have six minutes.

[Benoît Plante, Professor, Université du Québec en Abitibi-Témiscamingue, As an Individual]

Thank you very much for giving me the opportunity to appear before the committee.

I am Benoît Plante, professor at the Institut de recherche en mines et en environnement, or IRME, of the Université du Québec en Abitibi‑Témiscamingue, or UQAT.

I am a geochemist, specializing in the environmental geochemistry of mine waste, with a particular focus in recent years on critical and strategic mineral resource mining projects.

I am proud to hold the Institutional Chair in Environmental Geochemistry of Critical and Strategic Mineral Resources. Since 2014, I have been conducting several research projects in partnership with mining industry stakeholders developing these resources, particularly on rare earth elements, graphite and lithium.

The institute where I work has 16 world‑class professors and provides a first‑class teaching and research environment. There are more than 20 technical and professional specialists. More than 90 students and interns from all levels of graduate studies are currently studying there, in very close collaboration with colleagues from Polytechnique Montréal.

The institute is internationally recognized for its focus on developing innovative, economically and socially responsible environmental solutions throughout the life cycle of a mine, from resource exploration to mining remediation.

The institute carries out its research activities throughout Quebec, including in the Far North of Quebec, but also in Canada.

Thanks to our many partnerships with mining companies, Quebec government departments, other Quebec and Canadian universities and internationally, we can proudly present ourselves as a key player in the field.

Historically, research at the institute has been focusing primarily on the base and precious metals sectors. However, our team has already achieved many accomplishments, which demonstrate its willingness and ability to act as a major player in the responsible exploitation of not only base and precious metals, but also critical and strategic metals.

For the institute, it is of the utmost importance to be at the heart of the responsible development of these minerals, in the same way it is recognized on the world stage for the responsible development of base and precious metals.

To that end, concrete measures have already been taken by the institute and UQAT in terms of research and training in this area of activity. In particular, we have hired Professor Lucie Coudert, a specialist in the recovery of critical and strategic metals and now the Canada Research Chair in Tailings Reprocessing, to extract critical and strategic metals.

Professor Jean‑François Boulanger, a specialist in the processing of critical and strategic mineral resources, particularly rare earth elements, and Professor Marc Legault, a specialist in the geology of mineral and strategic resources, have also been hired in recent years to support our research and development efforts in this area.

Canada has deposits of many critical and strategic mineral resources and has the expertise to develop them responsibly, building on the expertise developed in the base and precious metals sector. However, several additional challenges remain, requiring further research and development efforts. These efforts are needed to further develop and transfer the expertise for responsible mining of these critical mineral resources, and ultimately to bring them to scale in Canada.

Among the challenges is the funding of research in partnership with deposit developers, critical and strategic mineral resources, which poses an additional challenge to the precious and base metals sector. Indeed, the financial precariousness of most critical and strategic metals players means that they do not have many material, human and financial resources, and access to the funding levers currently available is particularly difficult. Indeed, the current levers require significant financial and material resources that are often unrealistic for these developers.

So I think Canada does have the potential to become the leader in the responsible production and processing of critical and strategic metals. Canada should continue to innovate by offering more funding measures specific to critical and strategic metals, which will help intensify research efforts and position Canada as a world leader in responsible mining. In this way, Canada could become a model for other world powers.

This concludes my opening remarks.

[The Chair, Liberal, Joël Lightbound]

Thank you, Mr. Plante.

We now go to the Glencore Canada representative, Peter Xavier, vice-president.

Go ahead, Mr. Xavier.

[Peter Xavier, Vice-President, Sudbury INO, Glencore Canada]

Thank you.

It is a pleasure, obviously, to come after Minister Rickford. A lot of our interactions are at a provincial level, being strong champions of the industry here in Ontario.

Mr. Chair, committee members and fellow witnesses, my name is Peter Xavier. I'm vice-president of Glencore Sudbury operations. I appreciate the opportunity to speak to you today on behalf of Glencore, with a focus on Sudbury, my area of responsibility.

We welcome the standing committee's work and initiative reflecting on the importance of critical minerals. At Glencore, we are responsibly sourcing the commodities that advance everyday life. Our portfolio is made up of critical minerals that will enable the transition to a lower-carbon economy.

We are one of the largest producers of copper, nickel and cobalt in Canada and we have made a public commitment to prioritize investment into these commodities. They are essential not only for batteries but for many uses in the modern economy, from getting clean water and electricity to your home to the infrastructure and technology we all depend on. Our by-products include many of the 31 minerals considered critical as set out in the Canadian Minerals and Metals Plan.

In Canada, where Glencore is currently celebrating 100 years of operations, we operate eight industrial sites across our nickel, copper and zinc operations and directly employ close to 8,000 people, including contractors.

Glencore's Sudbury operations have a role in supplying critical minerals. We are currently developing our next generation of deep mines that will utilize electrical vehicles and enable us to continue supplying these critical minerals. Our Sudbury smelter processes concentrates from around the globe and is a world leader in recycling both nickel and cobalt from scrap, catalysts, batteries and electronics. Our smelter utilizes an electric furnace powered by a clean electrical supply and recently completed a project of over $300 million to reduce emissions.

We also operate in conjunction with and beside our indigenous partners, employing hundreds of indigenous workers and having several memoranda of understanding or participation agreements in place.

We are currently investing in the future with approximately $2 billion to develop new mines both in Sudbury, Ontario, and at our Raglan mine in Northern Quebec, which will provide a source of nickel, copper, PGMs and cobalt to at least 2035.

These new investments require a significant amount of capital, have longer payback periods and are inherently riskier as we need to go deeper or into more remote areas. Therefore, to promote additional investment, all levels of government regulating our industry must be able to offer a high degree of investment certainty.

Canada needs to support the search for base metals to enable discoveries that can lead to mining opportunities. Deposits require significant time and investment in exploration and mine development, and with the high cost of new capital, seeing returns on investment could take well over 10 years. It is important to remember that for the most part we do not set the price for which we sell our products and therefore cannot pass on most costs to our customers.

We recommend incentives to conduct exploration activities in and around existing and former operations in the hope of expanding ore bodies and utilizing existing infrastructure.

Once ore bodies are identified, generating the necessary investment to develop and operate a mine requires a well-defined business case and regulatory certainty in order to provide confidence over the long-time horizon. The key to attracting such major investments is predictability, whether in energy pricing, emissions standards, permitting, closure requirements or carbon strategies. Changing goalposts during investment risks deterring investment in Canada. Governments need to develop a coordinated approach across ministries as companies often are forced to deal with government in silos.

It is also clear that we need to innovate in order to develop mines that are getting deeper, occurring in more remote areas or declining in grade. Innovation can be accelerated by optimizing the relationship between academia, mining companies, SMEs and entities such as CMIC and CEMI.

When it comes to non-base metals and strategic minerals, we welcome incentives that determine whether there are critical elements worth recovering from our existing tailings or slag, while recognizing that there are additional regulatory hurdles to overcome.

Glencore is a unique operator in that custom feeds are part of our operational strategy. For more than 30 years, the Sudbury smelter has been recovering metals through the reprocessing of spent materials originally meant for landfill and is now one of the largest recyclers of nickel and cobalt in the world. As well, our Horne smelter in Quebec is one of the largest electronic scrap recyclers in the world. To promote additional recycling capabilities, consideration should be given to offsetting the costs of carbon associated with processing these materials while we continue to explore ways to reduce our emissions.

In summary, Glencore is a major supplier of the critical minerals that will supply growing demand from the transition to a low-carbon economy, and we're already investing in mines and facilities in order to be able to do that for years to come. We look forward to continuing dialogue with the Government of Canada on how we can further our shared goals of responsibly sourcing and supplying these important and critical commodities.

Thank you.

[The Chair, Liberal, Joël Lightbound]

Thank you very much, Mr. Xavier.

We'll now move to Madame Méthot,

president and chief executive officer of the Québec Mining Association.

Thank you for being here today, Ms. Méthot. You have six minutes. Please go ahead.

[Josée Méthot, President and Chief Executive Officer, Québec Mining Association]

Good afternoon.

Mr. Chair, members of the committee, thank you for inviting me to appear before you today.

Since I have a limited amount of time, I'm going to dive right in.

The Québec Mining Association's mission is to promote, support and proactively develop a responsible, committed and innovative mining industry in Quebec.

To that end, we took part in the consultation process that led to the development of the Canadian minerals and metals plan. We were also part of the consultations on the Canadian critical minerals list, recommending that it include Quebec's already established list of critical and strategic minerals, or CSMs.

We also participated in the consultations held by the Quebec government in late 2019 and early 2020; that process was similar to this approach. The consultations culminated in the release of the Québec Plan for the Development of Critical and Strategic Minerals 2020‑2025 in the fall of 2020, a plan the industry welcomed.

The Quebec government then adopted a strategy for developing a homegrown battery industry, thereby helping to stimulate demand for Quebec's critical metals. The province has introduced a number of measures to develop the sector. In last year's provincial budget, Quebec created a tax credit for CSM development, which is meant to help mine proponents move from the exploration stage to mine development and make the significant investments required.

In today's provincial budget, the government brought in additional measures to support CSM processing. Quebec is well positioned for the future.

I won't spend the limited amount of time I have telling you about all of the producing mines or mining projects under development in Quebec. I will point out, however, that some of the CSMs we produce are the result of by‑product production, namely cobalt, copper and platinum group elements. Others, such as nickel, graphite, niobium and titanium, are the result of primary production.

On the lithium and graphite fronts, we have some very advanced projects. Sayona is operating a lithium mine that had been placed on care and maintenance, meaning it was a previously producing mine. The company also has a lithium carbonate production plant and two other mining projects. In addition, the company is considering building a processing plant for the conversion of spodumene into lithium carbonate, but has not ruled out the possibility of producing lithium hydroxide.

For its part, Nemaska Lithium, is working on a project to process the transformed base material from its lithium mine into lithium hydroxide. We also have two other lithium mining projects going through the approvals process.

We have a graphite producing mine and two projects in the advanced development stage. One of those is being carried out by Nouveau Monde Graphite, which, in 2021, began construction on a high-purity graphite plant and an anode materials plant for lithium-ion batteries.

We have the minerals necessary for Canada to compete as a supplier of the mine feedstock the global energy transition needs. What's more, with our hydroelectricity, legislative framework, and environmental and social practices, we can position homegrown mineral resources as clean resources that adhere to responsible sourcing requirements and policies.

We see real potential to further diversify Canada's mining sector and take advantage of the tremendous socio‑economic impact of CSM development. Governments that move quickly to secure a competitive edge will be in an ideal position to benefit from the growing demand for critical minerals. Governments around the world recognize the importance of these emerging sectors and are investing billions to develop their own.

Canada must carve out its place. It has the resources and expertise. The industry needs clear policies to accelerate CSM exploration, reduce project approval times, streamline the process and introduce greater predictability, and reduce the risks to investors who choose to do business in Canada.

Adopting a Canadian critical minerals strategy would send a clear message that the Government of Canada views its mining sector as a real answer to climate change and a highly promising source of wealth for Canada. The spinoff generated by CSMs will add to the benefits Canada already draws from traditional sectors, building even more added value into mineral resource development. That will inevitably attract more investment and secure a strong mining sector in Canada.

The Québec Mining Association submits that a Canadian strategy should build on the complementary expertise the provinces and territories have gained so we can all go further together. We must act quickly because the world has already mobilized to secure CSM sources. The decisions on supply sources are being made now.

Thank you.

[The Chair, Liberal, Joël Lightbound]

Thank you, Ms. Méthot, of the Québec Mining Association. I've taken note of that.

Mr. Kunihiro, please go ahead.

[Robert Kunihiro, Director, Strategy, StromVolt Americas Inc.]

Thank you very much.

To the members, thank you for the opportunity to speak.

I'm here as the director of strategy for StromVolt, which is striving to be the first North American lithium cell manufacturer in Canada. Initially we will serve the commercial markets for buses, material handling equipment, agricultural vehicles and perhaps marine craft. We are also fully capable of supporting automotive and light-duty trucks.

Just by way of a quick background, I am an auto person by background. In the last 15 years, I have been the CFO of two large, tier one auto suppliers, one being the largest harness provider to battery electric vehicles in North America. I continue to work today with the APMA , Accelerate ZEV, Trillium and of course with StromVolt.

The proposition we have will create something in the range of 1,500 jobs by 2030. We're very excited about that and looking forward to the conversation today.

Maybe just at a high level before the conversation, I would like to draw out a few points here. Certainly time is very short. Europe is 10 years ahead of us. Asia is probably 20 years ahead. Right now, there are a lot of good signs of things happening, but I don't see an overall strategy or who is actually driving that to make sure things happen.

On the other major point I'd like to raise, there was some earlier discussion about the impact of Buy America and the threat that poses to Canada. I would put to you that Europe is acting as one. China is obviously a very formidable competitor, especially with the fast start they've had. I strongly urge you to take advantage of our relationship with the United States and perhaps North America, but at least with the United States. Act jointly with them because we have a lot of what they don't have. We have leverage to make sure that the value add happens.

To me, a “made in Canada”-only solution is folly. It's a dream. It can't happen. It's not possible. Again, I stress that we need to work with our U.S. friends—our U.S. brothers and sisters—to effectively compete with Europe and with communist Asia.

Thank you.

[The Chair, Liberal, Joël Lightbound]

Thank you, Mr. Kunihiro.

Amanda Hall, please go ahead. You have six minutes.

[Amanda Hall, Geophysicist, Summit Nanotech Corporation]

Good afternoon. Thank you for having me today. I really appreciate the opportunity to speak with you.

My name is Amanda Hall. I'm the CEO and founder of Summit Nanotech. I'm a professional geophysicist. I've been in the resource extraction space in western Canada for nearly 20 years. I used to work in the mining sector in Saskatchewan, and I did industrial processing in Ontario as well.

In 2018 I quit my job drilling oil wells and decided to start my own lithium company. I evaluated lithium resource technologies all around the world and decided none of them were good enough, so I invented my own. I recently won the NRCan prize for leading female innovator in the Women in Cleantech Challenge. As a company, we're at about 41 employees right now.

We recently received funding from BHP Temasek out of Singapore and Capricorn ventures out of the U.S.A. So we have a lot of international investors—not my choice. I would have preferred Canadian investors, but Canadian investors are a little bit more gun-shy than international investors.

Our technology is a sustainable way of extracting lithium from solutions. It has better greenhouse gas emissions and better waste creation metrics. We have higher yields, with all sorts of benefits to using our technology. We're deploying it in South America, however, so just to feed further into what Robert was just saying about joining forces with the U.S.A. to have a North American solution, I would even stretch that further south to say that we need to have a North American and South American solution to the battery supply chain problems that we're experiencing today.

In terms of U.S.A. resources, we have partners in the U.S.A. that we're working with. We have partners in Argentina and Chile. We do not have Canadian partners, and there are a lot of reasons why, so I don't think it's wise to turn a blind eye to the amount of resources the U.S. has in terms of lithium. I don't know about the other battery metals. That's not my expertise. Lithium is my expertise.

Our technology is at the pilot scale. We sent a 40-foot sea can down to South America just last month. We'll be developing the technology into larger-scale operations in South America as soon as we can.

I'll stop there. Thank you.

[The Chair, Liberal, Joël Lightbound]

Thank you very much.

From Vale Canada Limited, we have Mr. Merlini and Mr. Nichols.

The floor is yours for six minutes.

[A. J. Nichols, Director, Corporate Affairs, Vale Canada Limited]

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.

[Juan Merlini, Global Director, Sales and Marketing, Base Metals, Vale Canada Limited]

Thanks, A.J.

Members of the committee, good afternoon.

As we look to the future, Vale's base metal strategy is to shift 40% of our total class 1 production to the emerging EV industry to meet growing market demands for our products. Nickel, copper and cobalt are important components of the EV supply chain. To meet Canada's aspirations to be a North American and global leader in the EV battery and critical minerals market, we must address several issues.

First, while Canada is well positioned with its nickel reserves and producing mines, we must bring more supply to the markets to meet demand for EV vehicles. Meeting the demand will be a challenge, particularly for nickel and copper. Bringing new nickel, copper or cobalt deposits online is capital intensive and it takes a considerable amount of time. Even in the most stable and favourable mining investment jurisdictions like Canada, it takes at least 10 to 12 years from the discovery of a viable deposit to reach commercial production.

We also need to develop strategic, long-term partnerships with leading academics, institutions, customers and OEM producers that support long-term and significant investment. These innovation and supply chain ecosystems are essential and have already begun to formulate.

Coordination across government jurisdictions is also essential, as the supply chain will need federal, provincial and local coordination to respond to this generational opportunity. Provinces such as Ontario and Quebec are focusing significant attention on this, but we cannot stress the importance of multi-level government coordination that provides new investment, policy certainty and permitting support.

Finally, I would like to discuss the localization of supply chains. While the battery supply chain is still formative in Europe and North America, automakers prefer a localized supply that helps them lower their scope 1 and scope 2 emissions and provides security of supply. It is great to see the recent announcements surrounding investments of various supply chain actors in Ontario and the province of Quebec.

Moreover, COVID and recent events in eastern Europe, as well as supply chain disruptions in Canada, reinforce the need to reduce supply chain risk. We believe this pressure has had a lasting impact on emerging battery supply chains and we must ensure that we build in sufficient resiliency in order for Canada to be the strategic supplier of choice.

If we were to leave you with one key message, it would be to focus your attention and efforts on increasing the upstream production and tonnage needed to support battery electric vehicles. While hundreds of billions of dollars have been spent on developing the battery supply chain, Canada must make significant investments to expand the raw material supply of battery materials. Given the lead time needed to bring new mining capacity online, such action must start now and it must be supported by prices that stimulate private investment. Without the battery metals in the right form, creating battery hubs with domestic raw materials will be very challenging.

Thank you very much. We welcome your questions, and we are happy to provide any further information that the committee requires for this study.

[The Chair, Liberal, Joël Lightbound]

Thank you, Mr. Merlini and Mr. Nichols.

We have time for a round with six minutes for each party. That will take us to 5:45.

Go ahead, Mr. Deltell. You have six minutes.

[Gérard Deltell, Conservative, Louis-Saint-Laurent, QC]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

I want to say hello to my fellow members and everyone participating online. As I said to Mr. Généreux, the calibre of this afternoon's witnesses is so impressive that it's almost a shame we have so little time.

I also want to thank the honourable member for Abitibi‑Témiscamingue for the information he gave me earlier about the happenings in his beautiful part of the country.

Speaking of the country, I want to put my first question to Josée Méthot. Hello and welcome, by the way.

This isn't the first time we've had the pleasure of speaking, Ms. Méthot. We've had discussions in other circles. How nice to see you today. You said in your opening statement that, a year and a half ago, the Quebec government adopted the Québec Plan for the Development of Critical and Strategic Minerals 2020‑2025, positioning itself for the sector's future. You said that Canada should do the same.

Can you give us a specific example of how Quebec's experience should inspire Canada?

[Josée Méthot]

Good afternoon, Mr. Deltell. We have indeed had a chance to speak on several occasions in the past.

Quebec decided that it needed a strategy. It adopted not only the Québec Plan for the Development of Critical and Strategic Minerals 2020‑2025, but also a strategy to develop the battery sector. On top of that, the province introduced a sustainable mobility policy. As you can see, its strategy is part of a comprehensive integrated vision, fostering the conditions for Quebec's mining sector to diversify.

[Gérard Deltell, Conservative, Louis-Saint-Laurent, QC]

You brought up diversification, Ms. Méthot.

Are you referring to diversification in terms of secondary or tertiary processing? Is it fair to say that, as soon as the shovel goes into the ground, it's the beginning of the end for the mine and so operators have to start planning for reclamation?

Is that what you mean?

[Josée Méthot]

I would say two aspects come into play.

First, we have to diversify the resources we extract from the ground. Obviously, Quebec is known for gold and iron mining. The province excels in that area. It also mines nickel and other minerals. By developing critical and strategic minerals, the industry can diversify into other sectors.

Second, by establishing its plan for the development of critical and strategic minerals, its comprehensive vision and strategy for the development of the battery sector, its sustainable mobility policy and all its initiatives to address climate change, Quebec is making clear its desire for sector development.

Thanks to the battery sector, a mining project no longer means what it used to. Now, the government wants to stimulate demand to bring companies to Quebec for the development of battery components and cells. By stimulating demand for critical and strategic minerals, the province is in turn supporting the development of mining projects. That's what I meant. The idea is to undertake more and more processing, to benefit from the added value processing brings. That's not easy, however, because it's harder to obtain financing. Mining companies clearly have expertise in mineral extraction, and now they are being encouraged to undertake more integrated projects involving primary and secondary processing. Not only does the financing required increase, but so does the risk.

When Quebec decided to create its own battery sector and to adopt a development plan, it committed to bringing the value chain to the province, which is known for its mining expertise.

[Gérard Deltell, Conservative, Louis-Saint-Laurent, QC]

Thank you for that answer, Ms. Méthot.

Now I have a question for Professor Benoît Plante.

Good afternoon, Mr. Plante. Thank you for contributing to the committee's study and sharing your insight.

You said earlier that the current leveraging effect was not realistic when it came to processing and that governments should continue to provide funding. Ms. Méthot just told us that secondary and tertiary processing require massive investments and that mining companies don't necessarily have processing expertise.

What should be done to bridge the gap between mining companies and processing, Mr. Plante?

What should we do to make the current leveraging effect realistic and achievable?