As I said earlier, I think most western countries did not see the speed at which the transition to renewable energy and electrification of transportation would occur, nor the scale of the need for critical minerals.
For geostrategic and military reasons, we need critical minerals and rare earths for these products. A few years ago, the Pentagon pointed this out and it is important to say so.
In my opinion, Canada has not acted quickly enough, and neither has the United States. In the last few years, some countries have let China buy up mines around the world. We closed down mines that were exploiting these critical minerals, because we said that the market was not there and we were looking at things from a too short-term perspective. Now we are starting to see the long-term implications.
China is really ahead of the rest of the world. Everyone is waking up right now and it's a rude awakening, but we need to wake up because it's urgent.