National Defence Committee on March 23rd, 2026

[Jeff Kibble, Conservative, Cowichan—Malahat—Langford, BC]

Okay. Thank you. My understanding is that it's zero, but thank you for sharing zero with the committee. We look forward to that.

Do we have deposits of antimony in Canada? Just say yes or no: Do we have deposits here?

[Isabella Chan]

Yes, we do.

[Jeff Kibble, Conservative, Cowichan—Malahat—Langford, BC]

We do. Terrific. Thank you.

Do we have a mine for antimony in Canada?

[Isabella Chan]

We have the potential for mining projects that could be developed. More importantly, antimony is a by-product of zinc processing, so it can be produced that way.

[Jeff Kibble, Conservative, Cowichan—Malahat—Langford, BC]

We do have a mine, in fact, at Beaver Brook in Newfoundland. Is that correct?

[Isabella Chan]

It is not currently in production.

[Jeff Kibble, Conservative, Cowichan—Malahat—Langford, BC]

That was my next question. It was producing antimony. It's no longer producing. It's been shuttered.

Can you tell me who owns the mine?

[Isabella Chan]

I'd be happy to submit that to the committee.

[Jeff Kibble, Conservative, Cowichan—Malahat—Langford, BC]

I'll share with you that it's China Minmetals, which is a Chinese state-owned company. They've decided to shutter it. Now we don't produce this.

How do we protect Canadian resources that are being controlled and leveraged against us? We're saying, hey, we want to leverage these critical minerals. We have this critical mineral, but we don't produce any. We've let a foreign state company shutter our operations. The government hasn't taken any steps so far, which is a bit embarrassing.

Going forward, what steps are we going to take to protect this? I'm using this as one example of a critical mineral. It sounds like a complete failure to me. What are we going to do? How are we going to fix it?

[Isabella Chan]

I would say that the government takes action in a number of ways. Number one is under the Investment Canada Act, which is under the Minister of Industry. Number two, we are also working with our provincial and territorial colleagues. One of the initiatives under way is to look at the various jurisdictions in terms of their mineral acts to modernize and to update, for instance, the mineral claims regime to ensure that the domestic interests or sovereign interests are protected.

[Jeff Kibble, Conservative, Cowichan—Malahat—Langford, BC]

Again, it sounds as though—

[The Chair, Liberal, Charles Sousa]

Mr. Kibble, your 25 minutes are up.

[Voices]

Oh, oh!

[Jeff Kibble, Conservative, Cowichan—Malahat—Langford, BC]

Oh, 25; I'm sorry, Mr. Chair. I appreciate your generosity. Thank you.

[The Chair, Liberal, Charles Sousa]

Ms. Lapointe, you have five minutes.

[Viviane LaPointe, Liberal, Sudbury, ON]

Thank you.

Ms. Chan, we've heard throughout this study that critical minerals are no longer just economic commodities but are to be considered a strategic asset. In the current context, with Iran war-driven energy, volatility and continued supply chain pressures, how does NRCan assess the link between critical minerals security, energy security and national security?

[Isabella Chan]

NRCan continues to look at the various intersections when it comes to national security and economic security from the perspective of looking at, first, the vulnerability within the supply chain. We think about which critical minerals are over 90% coming from one country. We look at what some of the near-term projects are that we can bring online faster and what some of the brownfields are that we can think about developing. We go through this exercise pretty regularly. We also use our various tools to support them. I mentioned earlier the use of the critical minerals infrastructure fund.

I would like to note that there's also the global partnership initiative, which is a program whereby we work with our allies to coinvest in projects or leverage some of the technologies that are available in other countries. I would bring to mind the Focus Graphite project, which is a Ukrainian technology that we're adopting for graphite purification.

Those are some of the tools we look at. We also continue to ensure that we accelerate where we can and that we become the trusted supplier where we have projects coming online.

[Viviane LaPointe, Liberal, Sudbury, ON]

NATO now has a list of 12 critical raw materials for defence. I'm looking at the list. Where does Canada already have real production or credible project potential? Where are the strongest opportunities for Canada to deepen its contribution to allied supply chains?

[Isabella Chan]

For the record, the 12 minerals are aluminum, beryllium, cobalt, gallium, germanium, graphite, lithium, manganese, platinum, rare earth elements, titanium and tungsten.

I would note that aluminum, germanium, cobalt, graphite, platinum, lithium and titanium are all critical minerals that we already produce. We definitely have a capability to scale up our gallium production. We also have a capability to scale up our cobalt and germanium production in the near term. With the ones for which we do not have current production, we have the potential to produce them.

[Viviane LaPointe, Liberal, Sudbury, ON]

Ms. Hadwen, for sectors such as aerospace, stable systems and munitions, where do you see the clearest case for treating minerals and metals as part of Canada's defence infrastructure rather than simply industrial inputs or outputs?

[Wendy Hadwen]

In every one of the areas of sovereign capability there is an opportunity to inject and integrate some of the Canadian supply chain. This will have different impacts on costs, but the whole point of a sovereign capability is that we think about the whole supply chain.

In aerospace, it is often a story of making materials lighter, having a better ability to manage extreme heat and extreme cold. If you think about the landing gear of airplanes, there's a lot of material science in respect to the rubber for wheels, but also the lightness. Especially now with the changing environment of oil prices, the pressure will be on to reduce the weight in all things. This gives Canada's researchers in materials science an advantage. All of these minerals and metals could have a hand in some kind of alloy development in aerospace, but in other sectors as well.

The opportunity for us is to be clear about what our priorities are and how we hope to establish an operational advantage for Canada and then translate that all the way into the supply chain.

[Viviane LaPointe, Liberal, Sudbury, ON]

I'll go back to you, Ms. Chan. You've emphasized that the whole value chain matters, not just the mines. For defence-relevant minerals, where does Canada most need additional processing or refining capacity if we want more of the strategic value to stay here at home?

[Isabella Chan]

Some of the members of the committee already alluded to the most important part, which is to look at what our downstream input needs are. If we were to build out the supply chain for gallium, let's say, would we go into quantum, get into the chips? Mapping out the whole value chain is one of the exercises that NRCan is undertaking right now. For instance, we now have the scandium project that we're supporting, which we have an uptick with. How do we build out the whole value chain for ourselves and look at the drone applications, let's say? How do we provide it onshore, domestically?

[The Chair, Liberal, Charles Sousa]

Thank you.

Monsieur Savard-Tremblay, we'll go over to you for two and a half minutes.

[Simon-Pierre Savard-Tremblay, Bloc, Saint-Hyacinthe—Bagot—Acton, QC]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

I would like an update on the creation of critical mineral strategic reserves under the Defence Production Act. Also, what would the next steps be? I don't know who could best answer, but don't hesitate if you want to add something.