Mr. Chair and committee members, thank you very much for the invitation to speak with you here today.
My name is Jeff Gaulin. I'm with Vale Base Metals.
I want to start with a simple proposition: You cannot defend your country without critical minerals—not your borders, not your environment and not your economy. National security begins with supply chains: which countries control them and whether they can stand up under pressure.
Critical minerals are certainly an economic advantage for Canada. They attract investment, create jobs and spur regional development, but they also accelerate the energy transition and enable trade optionality. Today, critical minerals are a national strategic asset.
I'll make three points today. The first is that Canadian critical minerals are indispensable to the Canadian Armed Forces, NORAD and NATO. The second is that nickel, copper and cobalt are mission-critical to Arctic sovereignty. The third is that Canada must move with greater urgency to extract more minerals out of the ground from existing brownfield mines. With an expanded tax credit today, we could be producing and processing more minerals tomorrow.
At Vale Base Metals, our mission is to provide mineral security to a world in transition. We've done that from Canada for more than a century. Today, we employ more than 7,000 people in North America's only mine-to-refinery ecosystem. Our teams explore, mine, process and refine copper, nickel and cobalt from eight mines and three refineries, from Labrador to northern Manitoba.
Last year alone, in Canada, we produced 89,000 tonnes of copper, 80,000 tonnes of nickel and more than 3,000 tonnes of cobalt. These three minerals are designated as national security priorities under Canada's Defence Production Act, and for good reason. They are foundational to economic strength, industrial resilience and national defence. That's my first point.
Canadian critical minerals are indispensable to the Canadian Armed Forces, NORAD and NATO. No advanced military capability exists without secure access to critical minerals. These materials are not interchangeable. They are embedded in platforms that can last up to 40 years, and they are required for NATO interoperability.
Canada produces or refines 10 of the 12 minerals NATO considers defence-critical. Canada is the leading supplier of class 1, military-grade nickel to the United States. In practical terms, Canada is the only country that can reliably supply both the CAF and NATO with both nickel and cobalt, from mining to refining, inside a trusted, geopolitically aligned jurisdiction.
My second point is that nickel, copper and cobalt are mission-critical to Canada's Arctic sovereignty. Icebreakers, drones and AI systems in the north—items pushed to their limits under extreme cold, corrosion and remoteness—depend on critical minerals. Copper enables AI to exist in the Arctic, nickel allows it to survive and cobalt allows it to persist. These minerals are Arctic mission enablers. Without them, Canada's ability to defend itself in the Arctic, as well as meeting NORAD and NATO commitments, is weakened.
Furthermore, northern mining operations offer the potential for dual-use infrastructure for roads, ports, airstrips, remote energy systems and people. Our Voisey’s Bay mine in northern Labrador has a deepwater port that could be expanded to support naval operations. A new, longer airstrip could both improve the productivity of that mine and serve as a forward asset for the Canadian Armed Forces. As Canada strengthens its defence infrastructure, such partnerships could open up new exploration while leveraging existing mines. Northern mining infrastructure is security infrastructure.
My final point is that Canada must move with greater urgency to get critical minerals out of the ground. Having minerals in the ground does not secure our future; only producing them does. Everything else flows from that: refining, manufacturing, trade and security.
I have three long-term policy considerations for Canada and for the committee to consider, but let me leave you with this. Despite Canada's extraordinary polymetallic endowment, we are not extracting enough minerals today to keep our refineries competitive. Vale Base Metals mined 80,000 tonnes of nickel last year, yet we still had to import 16,000 tonnes to make our refineries operate efficiently.
Think on that: We had to import nickel to Sudbury, home to the second-largest nickel sulfide deposit in the world. We have been mining in Sudbury for more than 100 years, and we have 100 years to go. We're going to run out of miners before we run out of minerals. With innovative new processing, we can extract more minerals from our waste rock as well as our tailings. Simply put, there is more value and more security to extract from today's mines.
Expanding the investment tax credits to include mine development expenses for brownfield mines would be the fastest and most capital-efficient way to increase mineral output from existing mines, leveraging workers, infrastructure and equipment already in place.
This is not about subsidies. It is about speed, and in the current global security environment, speed matters, because we are already a generation behind and we do not have a generation to wait.
Thank you.