Yes, certainly.
Before I start, I want to offer this to some of the comments we have heard about operating abroad. There's an inference that there are rampant human rights abuses or other types of actions. We would argue that this is just not the case.
There are certainly incidents that happen and there are assets and places in the world where we have seen it. As Lisa mentioned in her opening remarks, that's not something that we ignore as an association, but by and large, Canadian companies operating abroad do bring best practices to their operations.
We are seeing our colleagues at MAC bringing out the TSM protocol, the “towards sustainable mining” protocol. Now nine different nations have signed on to that, which requires reporting on things like human rights. It requires assessments and it is done through third party verification. We are seeing that grow within the Canadian marketplace more and more.
With regard to rare earths specifically, rare earths actually aren't that rare in terms of where they can be found. My background is in geology. The concentration of rare earths in a deposit to a point where it is an economic deposit is where the challenge mostly lies.
With respect to the timeline of what our demands look like in this day and age and what our capabilities are to service those demands in terms of Canadian production, it doesn't look like we would have the capacity to feed into the marketplace the amount of lithium, rare earths or graphites that are being projected forward. That's why the critical minerals strategy here at home—that's an evergreen document—is so important, and why the intergovernmental coordination of our efforts to protect 30% of Canada's lands and oceans and reach net zero by 2050 should be a step coordinated with our critical mineral strategy in understanding where we can take our exploration activities and where we can develop new assets. It's going to be inherently important.
I would argue we're behind the curve already. We need to do more to get in front of that curve, but it is only going to happen with coordination between the government and the people within Canada.