Natural Resources Committee on Oct. 2nd, 2025

[The Chair, Liberal, Terry Duguid]

Thank you to all of our witnesses for those excellent presentations.

We have a lot of time with you this morning. We're going to have about an hour and a half or so.

We'll now turn it over to members for questions.

The first round is six minutes each, and we're going to start with Mr. Tochor.

[Corey Tochor, Conservative, Saskatoon—University, SK]

Thank you, Chair, and thank you to our witnesses.

I have a series of questions for Mr. Ulansky.

What specific regulations keep your project stuck in red tape instead of shovels in the ground?

[Chad Ulansky]

At our stage of exploration, we face a number of delays. It's largely related to permits for our joint operations, establishing remote infrastructure, so airstrips and such. At the moment, those tend to take years in order to work through the YESAB system in Yukon. It can take us a couple of years to get through a permit to drill or build an airstrip and such. It's very time consuming as compared to other jurisdictions.

[Corey Tochor, Conservative, Saskatoon—University, SK]

With your history spanning decades, has it gotten worse in the last 10 years?

[Chad Ulansky]

Yes, absolutely.

I was involved with the discovery of Ekati, the diamond mine in the NWT, quite a long time ago. I'll give you a quick timeline on Ekati. Our first drill hole into kimberlite was in late 1991. We started permitting in 1994, and our last permits were available in 1996. We went into production in 1998. That was a tier one world-class mine.

I can't permit drill holes fast enough to permit that entire mine in the NWT. Granted it's a different time, but that's a demonstration of how long our permitting is presently taking in Canada.

[Corey Tochor, Conservative, Saskatoon—University, SK]

We know about all the regulations the Liberals have brought in and that the red tape its layered on your sector, especially in the north where it's so important to have those private sector jobs. Another witness has referenced that it has dual purposes, but we should also keep in mind the military and defence reasons. Having that infrastructure in the north is beneficial. Not having it and not having those jobs makes Canada less safe and less productive.

Given Canada's vast critical mineral deposits, do you believe Liberal laws, such as Bill C-69, delay projects, cost jobs and block investments in Canada?

[Chad Ulansky]

I believe the intent was there to try and streamline the permitting process and speed things up, but I—

[Corey Tochor, Conservative, Saskatoon—University, SK]

The example you just gave would prove the opposite, right?

[Chad Ulansky]

There was a but. The fact that federally the government is starting to overreach into provincial and territorial approvals and expanding the requirements for approvals for those permits has demonstrated, unfortunately, that the time frame is expanding rather than being reduced at the moment.

I wish that every project that had commercial viability across the country was fast tracked rather than the select few.

[Corey Tochor, Conservative, Saskatoon—University, SK]

That's what we heard from the Supreme Court. It's unconstitutional, and it infringes on provincial responsibilities.

Ultimately, would repealing the anti-development law, Bill C-69, increase projects and increase the speed at which projects would get off the ground?

[Chad Ulansky]

Yes, it would. I'd like to see further changes along the same line to reduce the complexity of the permitting system. I'm not looking to try to reduce the oversight on environmental impact at all, but I think it can be streamlined. Get rid of that duplication both federally and provincially, but also within the different ministries provincially and territorially. When we permit, we get the same questions from various ministries over and over again. It would be nice to have a single-window approach to our permitting to try to speed things up.

[Corey Tochor, Conservative, Saskatoon—University, SK]

That's what the courts have ruled, but we're still waiting for the Liberal government to fix the problems with that bill.

Interestingly, your company operates in both Canada and the States, and it takes 38% longer to build a mine in Canada, while U.S. approvals can happen as early as within 28 days if the mine's on federal land. What other differences do you see between the approval process in the States versus in Canada?

[Chad Ulansky]

As you mentioned, on federal lands, there's a 28-day period, which the present government there has deemed is the turnaround time for permits. It would be wonderful if we had something similar in Canada, but we don't. On the whole, they are several years faster in permitting in the States than we are in Canada.

For the multinational companies around the world that are looking to invest, when you have two projects that have fairly similar attributes, the time it takes to get to production makes a significant difference and those dollars will flow to other countries before they come to Canada. That is, unfortunately, the situation at the moment. We are losing global investment as a result of how long it takes to put our resources into production.

[Corey Tochor, Conservative, Saskatoon—University, SK]

Have you also seen Canadian investment not investing in Canada? We have pension funds and other private industries that don't do this.

Is it tightening up so that even Canadians have given up on investing in Canada?

[Chad Ulansky]

One thing that strikes me is that our Canadian pension funds, like the Maple Eight, which are the eight largest pension funds in Canada, cumulatively invest around $2.4 trillion. Prior to 1990, there was legislation in place that said they had to invest about 90% of their funds domestically in Canada. That was reduced through to 2005, when all requirements were lifted. They've gone from having 90% invested within Canada down to about 25%, so about $1.8 trillion is invested elsewhere around the world. They invest more in China than they do in Canada.

I'm not saying we should go back to 90%. I'm also not saying they should be investing in junior exploration companies that are pretty small, but for the mid-tier and large-tier Canadian-based companies, it would be wonderful to have that money come back into the mining sector and the broader Canadian economy. That investment would filter down to many jobs within Canada, and it would strengthen our mining industry in particular, which has been hollowed out since then. We've lost Inco and Falconbridge—

[The Chair, Liberal, Terry Duguid]

Thanks, Mr. Ulansky.

Thank you, Mr. Tochor.

We'll go to Mr. Danko.

[John-Paul Danko, Liberal, Hamilton West—Ancaster—Dundas, ON]

Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

As a representative from Hamilton, I'm primarily interested in Mr. Cataford and iron ore. My questions are going to be primarily for him. I'm asking non-partisan questions because I'm interested in your expert opinions as witnesses.

You spoke about the economic potential of the Labrador Trough and fully developing that resource. You gave the comparison to Australia having invested $20 billion in their iron ore mining industry.

To start with the big picture, what potential is there if that resource is fully developed?

[David Cataford]

If we look at today, Canada has roughly 80 billion tonnes of known resources. We produce roughly 50 millions tonnes per year. We have an opportunity to be able to develop infrastructure in a very creative way that would allow us to double the current production in a short time frame. We could go from 50 million tonnes to about 100 million tonnes. That would allow us to double the revenues we currently produce in the region with very limited investment compared to typical infrastructure investments.

[John-Paul Danko, Liberal, Hamilton West—Ancaster—Dundas, ON]

Thank you.

I'm interested in digging into where your customer base is, noting that Nippon Steel from Japan is one of your potential investors and part of your customer base. I believe Australia sells mostly to China, and Japan is a similar region.

If this resource has to be further developed, where would that ore be shipped and where primarily would the customers be buying?

[David Cataford]

When we look at the current situation in terms of exports from Canada into the rest of the world, Asia is the worst potential market for us geographically, because it's the furthest away. It's the one that costs the most. When we started our project, we had about half of our tonnes delivered to the Asian market and half of our tonnes closer to home in Canada and to Europe and the Middle East.

We're currently investing $500 million of our own money to develop a new plant to upgrade our resource, which will allow our clients not only to reduce their carbon footprint when they produce steel, but also to move most of our tonnes that are currently going to Asia to markets that are closer to home. That's more into Canada, more potentially into Ontario, into your region, and also more into Europe and the Middle East.

[John-Paul Danko, Liberal, Hamilton West—Ancaster—Dundas, ON]

You've mentioned carbon emissions and the decarbonization of the steel industry a few times as a priority for the industry and a key economic value added that I think we bring in Canada. I was hoping that you could expand a bit further on the relationship between the quality of ore that we produce in Canada and the decarbonization of the steel industry.

[David Cataford]

High level, if we look at the transformation of iron ore into steel, you essentially have to melt it. If you're melting more contaminants, you're creating more CO2 emissions. Having an extra-pure material like we have here in the ground in Canada allows our customers to reduce a significant amount of CO2 emissions.

As an example, if you use the blast furnace technology, which is the main technology that's used to produce steel, by using our material you can reduce CO2 emissions between 10% and 20%. When you go towards the electric arc furnace, then you can reduce CO2 emissions by 50% using our material.

It gets critical once you get towards electric arc furnaces, because once you've delivered that type of technology, you cannot buy lower-grade iron ore. You need to buy high-purity iron ore. That's where we have a unique opportunity here in Canada, because we produce exclusively high-grade iron ore.

[John-Paul Danko, Liberal, Hamilton West—Ancaster—Dundas, ON]

I want to touch on infrastructure.

A number of our witnesses—I think all of you, actually—have mentioned infrastructure as a barrier to development. Specifically for the Labrador Trough, you mentioned transmission, the Sept-Îles port and rail connections.

I have an open question for anyone who wants to answer.

I'm trying to better understand the relationship among federal investment infrastructure, provincial investment and the responsibility of the private sector. What incentive is there for taxpayers to be investing in infrastructure in order to make some of these projects economically viable?

[David Cataford]

If you don't mind, I'll lead and then let my colleagues respond.

If you take Champion Iron as an example and we go back to when we started the project, the federal government invested about $55 million in the port infrastructure to allow Sept-Îles to become the second-largest port in Canada. The Quebec government also invested in the port infrastructure and allocated energy to our project. Combined, roughly $400 million has been invested in infrastructure. In just a few years, not only did the Quebec government make a significant return on equity on the mining side, but they generated close to a billion dollars in taxes and revenue.

You can see that the investments that were made on the infrastructure side allowed us to invest over $2 billion in the Labrador Trough, but also allowed a whole lot of taxes and royalties to be collected by the government.

We have a project today which, on paper, has 15 years of life of mine, but we have decades more of resources in our portfolio. The revenues will keep on coming for the next decades and that investment is now behind the various government bodies.

[John-Paul Danko, Liberal, Hamilton West—Ancaster—Dundas, ON]

If there is still time, if any other witnesses would like to—