In the investigations or the studies of the industry you will have heard, potentially, a number of different monikers. We talk about the rare earth elements. There are light rare earth elements, there are heavy rare earth elements, and as part of a study in the U.S., they have identified a different group that they call critical rare earths. I think Luisa will talk a little more about some of those as we go through.
In the slides that you will receive in the future there is a table that talks about the Canadian dominance for resources, particularly in those critical rare earth areas. But the reality is that the Canadian potential includes about 50% of the known rare earth elements in recognized deposits globally. So essentially, half of the rare earths that are available for exploitation outside of China are available in Canada. In particular as we look at advanced-stage projects, globally there are 28 that are in an advanced exploration and development stage. There are another 28 that are in resource identification and development. Together, out of those 56 projects, 19 of them are in Canada. By comparison, there are nine in Australia, five in the U.S., and 23 in the rest of the world.
One of the influences in our development of CREEN was the Critical Materials Institute that was formed recently in the United States. It was a Department of Defense initiative and includes, I believe, $125 million of government funding over five years to develop a research and development network that will help the U.S. industry to secure their share of rare earth elements for supply in the industry.
There were two significant concerns that were identified in their strategic study. One is the lack of primary heavy rare earth sources in North America. Projects exist, but we don't have operating producing properties. Finally, there is the lack of resource refineries to actually separate and produce final metal from the rare earth projects. We do have a reputation in Canada as miners, as resource stewards, and we do have experience and expertise in our metallurgical community to do this.
Really, the messages we're trying to share with you today is that Canada has the opportunity and the potential from a resource and a project perspective. We have the capability and capacity as engineers and scientists, and we need to support the industry as together we develop an infrastructure and a capability, a capacity to move forward.
With that, I'm going to pass it on to Luisa, and we'll try to keep things on time.