Getting back to Ms. Exner-Pirot's comments about supplying more of our critical minerals as raw resources to our allies, just take a look at the lithium we mine in Canada. One of the mines in Quebec sends only about a quarter of its lithium to the United States because that's all the capacity the United States has to refine lithium. The rest of it goes to China. Even among our allies, we don't have sovereign control, nor do our allies have sovereign control, over the further upgrading and processing of the critical minerals that are so important to our national security and sovereignty.
Mr. Balsillie, you talked about missed opportunities within the defence industrial strategy, as well as in the last budget. You mentioned that we should be setting up a secretariat within the Privy Council Office.
When we look back on the war in Afghanistan, the Conservative government of the day set up a secretariat of the key ministers and deputy ministers to make sure that the civil service was driving the agenda to get the job done of procuring what we needed and supporting our troops in theatre. Do we need the same type of mentality and leadership to ensure that we get the job done to leverage our critical minerals and the downstream value-added and IP?