Thank you very much, Mr. Chair and members of the committee, for this opportunity to speak to you.
My name is Sarah Houde, and I am the president and CEO of Propulsion Québec, Quebec's electric and smart transportation cluster. On behalf of our 250 members, I would like to thank you for this invitation to present our vision of Canada's position as a responsible source of critical and strategic minerals, or CSMs, as I will call them to save time, and of the Canadian electric vehicle battery industry.
As the previous speakers noted, Canada occupies a unique global position as a result of its vast CSM resources, particularly those in high demand as we enter the energy transition, deploy green technologies and build a sustainable post-COVID-19 economic recovery. It also has recognized expertise, a point that I believe was clearly made by Prof. Dahn, who is a worthy representative of that expertise. Canada has excellent and acknowledged expertise in responsible industrial development. It also has an energy mix dominated, in certain parts of the country, by types of renewable energy that have a low carbon footprint and are available at low cost; one of the strictest environmental regulatory frameworks in the world; a skilled labour force; and, especially, a stable and predictable geopolitical situation. All this gives Canada a competitive advantage, as the previous speakers mentioned.
These strengths have solidified Canada's position as a supplier of CSMs and batteries that are safe, stable and responsible, three terms that must be central characteristics of any long-term Canadian strategy to develop the CSM and battery sectors.
If Canada wants to develop these sectors successfully, it will have to add a hitherto missing fourth dimension to those key characteristics: a truly national approach to this strategy. As the other major international players active in these same sectors have previously shown—Canada is well organized and we do have an advantage—no other regional entity alone is capable of combining natural mineral resources, the technical and technological capability to exploit those resources and the essential financial capacity to develop these sectors solely within its borders without interstate synergies.
That is why it's extremely important that the Canadian government take on the role of coordinating the actions of all provinces and territories by establishing a broad Canadian alliance dedicated to developing the CSM and battery sectors relying on the strengths and assets of each of the provinces.
This should be achieved within the framework of the Canadian industrial policy for the entire electric and smart transportation industry. That industrial policy must cover all aspects of the industry's development, from the supply chain, furthering research and development and financing the manufacturing industry to developing an extensive world-class talent pool to support the exponential growth that awaits those businesses here in Canada.
Canada must also take advantage of its historical position as an ally of the United States to work toward establishing a Canada-U.S. coalition to enable the Canadian CSM and battery industrial ecosystem to position itself as a safe, stable and responsible supplier of value-added materials and components, not merely unprocessed raw materials—once again as other speakers before me have stated—for these fast-growing markets, including those for electric vehicles and the energy transition.
We are genuinely seeing a regionalization of Asian, European and North American supply chains, and, thanks to our continental North American position, we can definitely be a strategic partner and consolidate a strategic advantage.
Canada today has an immeasurable economic opportunity, possibly the greatest in its history. It is an economic opportunity that we very much need as we begin the economic transition that will culminate in carbon neutrality in 2050. We will have to transit from a hydrocarbon-based economy to other economic models and should absolutely seize the economic opportunity lying here at our door. This is truly a unique opportunity to rebuild our economy on a new foundation, a much more promising one for the future, and once again to play an absolutely key role on a continental North American scale.
Thank you.