Natural Resources Committee on Feb. 19th, 2021

[Dane Lloyd, Conservative, Sturgeon River—Parkland, AB]

What do you attribute that decline to?

[Pierre Gratton]

I think there are multiple factors. One is that our competition, which is, notably, Australia, now has a METC of its own, which has boosted its attractiveness. I think the long time it takes to get a project through environmental assessments, impact assessments, and the fact that we require two levels of impact assessment in Canada, which is unique in the world—

[Dane Lloyd, Conservative, Sturgeon River—Parkland, AB]

That was something that I was sort of looking at—and I'm sorry to interrupt, but I have only a limited amount of time. I appreciate the back-and-forth.

I have a geologist in my riding, a very interesting fellow, and he does work around the world. He was telling me about the amount of time it takes to get a permit in Nevada, a matter of a few months. How long would you say it would take, on average, to get a mining permit in Canada?

[Pierre Gratton]

When you use the word “permit”, it depends.

[Dane Lloyd, Conservative, Sturgeon River—Parkland, AB]

I mean a federal permit.

[Pierre Gratton]

For the federal one, that involves an impact assessment, an environmental assessment, and that takes several years.

[Dane Lloyd, Conservative, Sturgeon River—Parkland, AB]

We've seen sales of electric vehicles booming across the world. We're seeing Tesla, GM, Ford, even Land Rover and Jaguar pledging to go electric, so we know there is a need now, and that need is going to explode. Would you say it's accurate to say that the need will explode and that it will be several years before Canada can even begin producing the raw materials needed to meet that need?

[Pierre Gratton]

The timelines that it takes to get mines through both federal and provincial processes present a real risk to our ability to take advantage of this opportunity. There's no question.

[Dane Lloyd, Conservative, Sturgeon River—Parkland, AB]

I'm the critic for rural economic development, and I know that mines are located predominantly, if not completely, in rural areas. What's going to be the impact on our rural regions if Canada doesn't have a seat at the table in prospecting and developing these great resources that we know are in Canada?

[Pierre Gratton]

I think it will be very hard on rural Canada. I think we're already seeing some of the impacts on parts of rural Canada. We're not building and developing mines at the pace that we used to. Part of it is that we're not finding them. We have explored southern Canada a lot and we have found some great deposits and we've mined them for decades.

Our future is increasingly in the north. There, the bigger challenge is not timelines but infrastructure. We have some world-class deposits that we know of that we could mine tomorrow if it were economical to do so, but it's not, because they have no access to power and road supports.

[Dane Lloyd, Conservative, Sturgeon River—Parkland, AB]

One thing that you alluded to, something that really concerns me, is the issue of carbon leakage. We have increased carbon taxes and put in clean fuel standards, but as we know, most of the mining done by Canadian companies is being done abroad. When we're talking about the input costs increasing with carbon prices and without any sort of offsets that they can use, are we really just seeing mining being outsourced to other countries and Canada not producing our world-class environmental deposits here?

[Pierre Gratton]

We're on the public record as being in support of carbon pricing and we have been for years, but we've also said that we have to be sensitive to Canada's north, large parts of which are off-grid and—

[Dane Lloyd, Conservative, Sturgeon River—Parkland, AB]

Do you think that the prospect of these higher—

[The Chair, Liberal, James Maloney]

Mr. Lloyd, that's all your time. Thanks very much.

[Pierre Gratton]

Am I done, too, then?

[The Chair, Liberal, James Maloney]

You are until the next person asks you a question, which I expect will happen.

Mr. Lefebvre, we move over to you for five minutes.

[Paul Lefebvre, Liberal, Sudbury, ON]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Hello, everyone. I know a lot of faces on the screen. Again, I apologize for the delay. This is a classy panel that we have here.

I'm joining you from Sudbury, where we have eight operating mines right now. I know Samantha is here as well in Sudbury. Actually, the irony is that this morning I was with a businessman who works in electric vehicle batteries. This is a person who is looking at making very important investments in this sector. Certainly we're talking about reusing existing batteries that are used in mining vehicles. We know that a lot of them were actually manufactured right here in Sudbury. There's a lot of amazing technology that is being produced, created, here in Sudbury.

Six minutes will not give me any time to really dive it into what I'd love to talk about for hours, because this is a very, very important file for my riding and, I certainly believe, for Canada.

Maybe I'll start with you, Ms. Espley. With your knowledge and your experience, maybe on the processing and manufacturing side, what opportunities do you see and what challenges do you see with regard to what more we can do here in Canada? I know that here in Sudbury we're lucky. We have two huge smelters, some of the largest in the world when it comes to nickel. Given your experience, how would you say we could increase our processing and manufacturing capacity for our minerals here in Canada?

[Samantha Espley]

That's a good question, Paul. I think that's a challenge for us. There's a lot of effort on the hydrometallurgy side to supplement the pyrometallurgy for the recovery of the metals. We're seeing a lot of agreements being made between mining companies and those processors. Whether you have a smelter or not, we're doing custom smelting for a multitude of mining companies, allowing us to make better utilization of the facilities.

I think it's an opportunity that we can explore in the mining industry as best we can. The opportunity really is to look for new technologies and support from the government in finding new and innovative ways of treating this or doing modular, if you like, or different types of technologies. We're always pushing the envelope from CIM and working with industry and folks in academics and the government and the like in order to try to come up with new solutions.

[Paul Lefebvre, Liberal, Sudbury, ON]

Yes. That's critical.

We're going to have PDAC next month, or in a few weeks, and we'll be doing so virtually. I know that Ms. McDonald is here. Certainly every time I go to PDAC, people from the world show up to Canada and really look at Canada to see what we're doing here and import our best practices of what's going on here. We certainly talked about it as we were looking at the critical minerals and the importance of exploration and investing in exploration and the challenges we have there.

Ms. McDonald, we talked about the geosciences and the importance of those investments to the exploration sector in Canada. I know we just renewed it, but maybe you can very briefly tell us from PDAC's perspective why it's so important to make those investments.

[Lisa McDonald]

I think as has been evidenced in most of the conversation today, it's clear that Canada has the minerals. We know they're here. We've found the easy stuff, and now what's left are the more challenging things to find. They're at depth. They're more remote.

Of course, with the critical minerals, we're talking about a suite of minerals and metals that have their challenges with how they are found. It's not necessarily using the same traditional methods that we've used and become so good at and become those world leaders for. Those kinds of investments in geoscience will help ensure that we remain a world leader in terms of expertise.

[Paul Lefebvre, Liberal, Sudbury, ON]

Agreed.

Pierre or Mr. London, just to go back to the battery supply chain, how can we secure more of that supply chain in Canada? I think that's what we're talking about here as we're looking at the electrification of our world and how that is so important. I know you addressed it in some of your comments, but I want to touch on that again. What gaps exist right now in Canada in the battery supply chain? What can we as a government do to further support that research and further support that development?

[The Chair, Liberal, James Maloney]

Mr. Lefebvre, I hate to do this, but I will have to stop you there. You started by saying that six minutes wasn't enough, but I have bad news for you: You only had five.

I'm sure that issue will get addressed in the next round.

[Paul Lefebvre, Liberal, Sudbury, ON]

Mr. Chair, I'm hoping we can send letters and ask our witnesses to answer our questions by writing.

[The Chair, Liberal, James Maloney]

Yes, of course, always.

[Paul Lefebvre, Liberal, Sudbury, ON]

Thank you.