Thank you, Mr. Chair.
Thank you to all the participants for joining us.
We have another amazing panel of witnesses today. This is super-exciting.
I'm coming to you from Sudbury, the mining innovation capital of the world, as we say. We also call it the nickel capital of the world. Right in my backyard we have nine operating mines and 350 small and medium-sized enterprises in the mining sector alone.
This has been a very exciting study that we have embarked upon. Certainly, as was mentioned, one of the main questions is how we protect or create the supply chain in Canada when it comes to critical minerals from prospecting, exploration, extraction, processing and manufacturing to commercialization that we can do: the magnets, the motors, the anodes and the cathodes. How do we create the supply chain here and make sure that those jobs stay here?
We've heard from many witnesses over the last meetings that we certainly have a large role to play, but we can't play it alone. We need to have partners and allies.
Before I embark upon that, Dr. Kucharski, with regard to your opening remarks on the lay of the land right now when it comes to rare earths, critical minerals and the role that one other country is playing and how it's dangerous for one country to have the monopoly in that, what effect will it it have if we continue on that path and if countries like Canada do not take a stake in protecting those critical minerals? As we know, we just tightened the rules yesterday on foreign takeovers in Canada to protect critical minerals. That was something we did with those rules as a federal government. I just want to hear from you very quickly on the importance of protecting those supply chains because of our market-driven economy versus a state-owned economy.