Natural Resources Committee on Oct. 6th, 2025

[Richard Martel, Conservative, Chicoutimi—Le Fjord, QC]

Mr. Desaulniers, can mining projects remain viable without processing plants?

[Eric Desaulniers]

In our case, it would be viable, but on a smaller scale. It wouldn't be viable at 100,000 tonnes, but it would probably be viable at 30,000 tonnes. At 100,000 tonnes, it needs the market for lithium‑ion batteries, which require processing. Otherwise, the ore must be sold to China for processing there.

[The Chair, Liberal, Terry Duguid]

Thank you.

Completing our third round, we have Mr. McKinnon, for five minutes.

[Ron McKinnon, Liberal, Coquitlam—Port Coquitlam, BC]

Thank you, Chair.

My questions are for Professor Williams-Jones and Dr. Vasyukova.

Professor, you spoke of the need to be close to infrastructure. You mentioned Lackner Lake, which is close to infrastructure, and Ashram, which is also close.

What kind of infrastructure are we looking at, and what's the scale of it?

That's an easier question than the one I'm going to really ask you. You spoke of the importance of the concentration of these ores in terms of making them economically viable for extraction. Do these extractions happen at site, or is this part of the infrastructure you need to build? How are they powered? Do you need more electrical power, do you need more gas power, or whatever?

It's a huge question for you; please do your best.

[A.E. Williams-Jones]

Very quickly, first of all, obviously our first problem is transportation of the ore to somewhere where we can actually do a lot of refining. Then there's the energy. Clearly, we have to concentrate the elements of interest at site. We have to do as much as we can to reduce the mass of material that is shipped out. So those are the two initial problems: energy and transportation.

The next problem, then, is how to go about reducing the amount of material we need to ship out. I pointed to the metallurgical side. Part of that metallurgical work has to be done on site. We have to reduce that material. We have to really invest in research to develop the methods to extract successfully. The problem with these critical metals we're talking about is that we don't have the years of experience we've had with the base metals and precious metals and so on. We're in new territory. We do need to invest in this research.

I'm going to change the subject slightly. I really think the federal government has a huge responsibility to educate the populace on critical metals. The reason I say this is that it impacts immediately on investment. If the population doesn't know why we're hunting niobium, or why we're looking for rare earths, then why should they actually invest?

I'll give you a really good example. How many people know that niobium has the highest threshold of superconductivity of any element? Well, you can ask who cares, but the point I'm making is that perhaps we are interested in magnetic levitation trains, and for that you need niobium. How many people know this? Can you imagine a Canada where we have a supertrain that goes from Montreal to Vancouver in eight to 10 hours? This is not pie in the sky. The Chinese already have one operating at over 600 kilometres an hour just outside Shanghai. The Japanese are planning to have a maglev train that runs from Tokyo to Nagoya, a distance of 300 kilometres, in about 40 minutes. This is something that we could educate the populace about. That would drive investment in the critical metals area. I've given you one example, but there are many examples like that.

I know I changed the subject, but I really wanted to hammer this point through.

[Ron McKinnon, Liberal, Coquitlam—Port Coquitlam, BC]

I appreciate the information.

To go back to transportation, what is the scale of this? Is this something where we need a steady stream of semi-trailers? Do we need rail transport, or is it something like diamonds? I have no idea of the scale of the finished product. Diamonds you can fly out of the mine in a Twin Otter, right?

[A.E. Williams-Jones]

Exactly. It depends enormously on the critical metal you're talking about.

For example, if we're talking about lithium—we've talked a lot about lithium—what is the ore mineral? It happens to be the mineral spodumene. If you're going to extract lithium from the spodumene on site, there's a huge capital investment to do this. If, however, you make a spodumene concentrate, the mineral that's containing it, well, you'll have a lot of material that you have to transport out.

Basically, there is some sort of compromise somewhere between how much you extract on site and how expensive it is to do this in terms of capital expenditure as well as operating expenses. It's a difficult question to answer, because we need a lot more research in this area.

[The Chair, Liberal, Terry Duguid]

Thank you for that excellent question and excellent response.

Colleagues, we're down to our last round. To conclude our questioning of witnesses, we have Mr. Tochor for five minutes, Mr. Guay for five minutes and Mr. Simard for 2.5 minutes. Then I have a short request of the committee at the end of our meeting.

Mr. Tochor.

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

Thank you very much.

I would like to learn a little more about the finite business. I understand it's sold in pounds. What is the world price of graphite right now?

[Eric Desaulniers]

With regard to the world price for active anode material—it's transformed graphite—I would say that there are very few reliable indexes. One we followed in our offtake agreement is Benchmark Mineral Intelligence from the U.K. I would say that it's about $7,000 per tonne. That's $7 per kilogram of active anode material.

A good thing that we have in Canada is cheap hydro. It helps a lot, having the mine close to the transformation site. We can do this transformation for, give or take, $3.80 per kilo. On OpEx, we're very competitive.

We need to build those projects. Construction costs are important. We need to amortize those assets. We need to make a profit because the capital cost isn't zero here. That's the challenge to making a good project, but it's doable.

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

That's wild—$7,000 for a tonne. For some of those production costs, we're the lowest in the world. We should be leading the world.

How many thousands of pounds of graphite have we exported this year as a nation?

[Eric Desaulniers]

Active anode material is 100% coming from China.

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

So, it's from China. What about Africa?

[Eric Desaulniers]

It's not active anode material. The concentrate of graphite is flake graphite. You're right that in Canada we are a producer in flake graphite, about 2% of the market. It's not so big; we have one mine. It's depleted, and the cost of operation is quite high because they're scratching the bottom of the pit.

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

I understand that it takes 18 years now, under Liberal regulation, to get a new mine up and running. There's nothing in probably my working lifetime that's going to be running, unfortunately.

There are other countries that are finding capital. It sounds like you have a specific issue with raising capital here in Canada. The Chinese have figured it out. Other companies have figured it out. It must be some of the over-regulation that the Liberals have introduced in the last 10 years that has extended the mine's development time. Is that accurate?

[Eric Desaulniers]

We have this opportunity with our project to be this big mine of the G7. We've done all of the hard work on permitting already. We have the chance to be managed by the provincial ministry of the environment.

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

I do respect the Constitution. I do believe that Quebec is probably positioned properly to best regulate this.

I'm going to cede my time to my colleague Mr. Simard for the last two minutes and 16 seconds.

[Mario Simard, Bloc, Jonquière, QC]

Thank you, Mr. Tochor.

As you can see, even committees have some form of equalization. It's good.

Mr. Williams‑Jones, I really appreciated your remarks. I understand that the rare earths and critical minerals in question today require much more complex processes than the ones seen in the past. One challenge would be for companies to successfully mitigate the risks associated with these types of processes. Is that right?

[A.E. Williams-Jones]

Yes. Exactly.

[Mario Simard, Bloc, Jonquière, QC]

Okay.

Speaking of risk sharing, I spoke earlier about the rare earths consortium project. We met with representatives from that consortium. If you also had a critical minerals deposit in a selected location where you could carry out refining operations and create a type of hub for this sector, would things proceed more quickly?

[A.E. Williams-Jones]

I think that the answer should be yes. If we can mitigate the risks associated with mineral extraction and development, it will be good for the country. This will reduce the time needed from the exploration stage to the extraction and sale of minerals.

[Mario Simard, Bloc, Jonquière, QC]

Thank you. It's always good to ask a witness a question when you know the answer will be yes. It's great.

Mr. Laberge, as of today, does the Port of Saguenay have the infrastructure needed to meet a demand for the export of critical minerals?

[The Chair, Liberal, Terry Duguid]

Give a quick response, please.

[Carl Laberge]

It depends on the export volume. We're currently able to meet the demand. However, if the volume increases over time, we'll need to expand our capacity.

[Mario Simard, Bloc, Jonquière, QC]

We'll come back to this later.