It's a very important question. There is no energy transition without a significant scale-up in the exploration, extraction, processing, advanced manufacturing and then the recycling of critical minerals.
To this end, we have undertaken a whole range of measures in budget 2023, including the $1.5 billion critical minerals infrastructure fund to accelerate critical minerals production, $1.5 billion through the strategic innovation fund to support advanced manufacturing, processing and recycling, and of course the investment tax credit that was in the budget for clean technology manufacturing, which will be applicable to the extraction, processing or recycling of critical minerals. That is an extremely important thing that was very well received by the Mining Association of Canada and others.
It's also about putting some funding into research, development and demonstration. We announced just a month or so ago $14 million to support six projects under the critical minerals research, development and demonstration program, which will advance the commercial readiness of emerging process technologies to support the development of value chains for zero-emission vehicles.
Certainly there will be more coming. Finally, I would say the critical minerals centre of excellence will also support research for processing and battery precursors. It will help proponents engage the federal and provincial processes with respect to moving these projects forward expeditiously.