Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
We're pleased to be here today and to be able to participate with you. I apologize that you don't have a translated presentation that we can show you as part of this. With the invitation timing and some of the other things that were going on, we haven't had a chance to do that. We do have a set of slides that will be translated and distributed following the meeting, so you will have an opportunity to review some of the information.
I will also apologize briefly up front for my inadequacies in representing what Mr. London was going to present. But I would like to share with you a little bit about the emerging or developing Canadian Rare Earth Elements Network. Then Luisa will take a chance to talk a little bit about the overall economics of the rare earth elements in the industry and the capital market perspective of those things. Then I'll come back to you and talk a little bit about processing and production challenges. Then Dr. Papangelakis will talk a little bit more about the science and engineering aspects, and I'll try to close up. I understand that generally you do this in several short presentations. We're going to try to pull it all together in one if that's all right with the committee. Then we'll take questions as a group if that's okay.
I know that you have had some introduction and background to rare earths and to their importance. There are tremendous applications in a number of industries that are important in Canada and obviously globally. Certainly considerable aspects relate to magnets and permanent magnets in particular, as they are used in defence applications or in high-tech radar systems and other strategic initiatives like that. But they are also a very important aspect in many of the emerging green technologies, hybrid motors, wind turbines, battery storage, and long-term storage applications.
Canada has a tremendous opportunity and tremendous potential to get out into the forefront of the global rare earth industry with some of the things that we'll talk about later...and the pullback from China. We have tremendous resources, we have valuable and valued expertise in our Canadian mining and processing industries, and we have a tremendous group of companies who are prospective producers developing projects and properties.
As part of that, earlier this year that group has come together to try to establish a rare earth elements network in Canada that we have called CREEN. The vision of CREEN is to establish a Canadian-based rare earth production within five years that is supported by technical and innovative solutions and championed by that collaborative network.
It's a little bit of a paradox or a dichotomy when you talk about potential competitors in an industrial market who come together to collaborate to build infrastructure and to build capacity to enable all of them to succeed. But that's really what the CREEN vision is. As an industry-led multistakeholder network, the intent is to provide collaborative solutions that advance our Canadian rare earth element sector, and our goal is to produce and secure a 20% global supply of the market share of those critical rare earths by 2018.
There are a number of supporting goals that will be driven by that. They include providing that industry-driven vision that can be supported by researchers, by universities, by government agencies, by consulting engineers, and by entrepreneurs to contribute to the industry. But it also will require the timely delivery of solutions for the technical and economic problems to support the industry. There are opportunities for us to facilitate partnerships with other organizations and potentially with other countries as we develop these strategies. One of the key outcomes of the CREEN network and of our progress will be the education and training of highly qualified persons in the industry to continue to support that industry.
We do have a map in the presentation. I think you've seen it before. It identifies more than 200 potential rare earth projects that were identified as part of a 2011 study. A number of the largest—