Evidence of meeting #7 for Natural Resources in the 45th Parliament, 1st session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was project.
A recording is available from Parliament.
Conservative
Richard Martel Conservative Chicoutimi—Le Fjord, QC
What would encourage mining projects to set up in a particular location? Is it access to natural gas, or is it the existence of railways, for example?
Geologist, IOS Géosciences
No, it's the difference between the value of what we produce and production costs. Natural gas and railways, among other things, are included under production costs. The other aspect we can work on is the value of what is produced. If the value of the goods goes up, many funding problems related to production costs are eliminated. Incidentally, we may think that working in Canada costs more than it does elsewhere, but that's a myth: It costs just as much to work in Africa as it does here.
Conservative
Richard Martel Conservative Chicoutimi—Le Fjord, QC
There are so many questions I'd like to ask you, Mr. Girard.
Ms. Levis, what would encourage you to invest in the construction of a new railway in the context of a mining project?
Vice-President, Industrial Products, Canadian National Railway Company
We're studying the trade volumes that will be transported. We are wondering whether they will be sufficient to justify our investment in the development of the railroad.
Conservative
Vice-President, Industrial Products, Canadian National Railway Company
Absolutely.
Conservative
Richard Martel Conservative Chicoutimi—Le Fjord, QC
The project needs, then, to be measurable and quantifiable.
Liberal
October 20th, 2025 / 5:40 p.m.
Liberal
John-Paul Danko Liberal Hamilton West—Ancaster—Dundas, ON
I have a series of questions for Mr. Alessi.
The first one is leaning on your experience in post-secondary education and the kind of environment where top talent is avoiding the U.S., for obvious reasons.
Where do you see the federal role in developing research funding or pilot funding to help recruit and retain that top talent from across Canada and also globally?
Professor, University of Alberta
There are good programs at the federal level with tri-council funding through NSERC, for example. I think the NSERC alliance advantage program is an example of a world-class program that many countries don't have, where academics inclined to work with industry can leverage a bit of industry money and get quite a bit from the federal government to support development. This is something, for example, that does not exist in the U.S. funding environment, so it's quite advantageous.
What I would say is that the commitment there is pretty small. Some of my colleagues might argue with me, as I'm more on the applied geosciences and engineering side of things.
There's a major advantage for companies working with academics on technically difficult problems. We were talking about start-up or mid-sized mining companies, where they do not have a research and development team in-house. They have a sticky problem, so then it's time to get some post-docs on a project to solve this problem. They're highly trained and less expensive, quite frankly. It's also a great advantage to then have these doctoral students and these post-docs here in Canada, being trained and using federal money, so they can go back into the ecosystem.
By the way, at the same time, they're presenting to the companies, so they have a link to the company, which then says, “We really like Marcel” or “We really like Mary; let's hire her.”
These links are not terribly expensive, from my perspective, on the funding side of things. I've sent many students off into companies in Vancouver and Burnaby. Unfortunately, some have left the country because there is a business salary disparity in some cases. Some have left for Europe and the United States. I would start there.
I'll stop, but I just want to say one other thing. I'm not sure how to solve this.
There is still a perception.... I'll let my colleagues correct me if they think I'm wrong. Earth sciences enrolments, for example, have collapsed and they're just starting to come back a little bit. I mean, they've gone to a third of what they used to be when I started at the University of Alberta. A lot of that is around the idea that oil and gas are bad and mining for metals is bad. We need to think about changing that perception if we're going to have home-grown talent working in Canadian companies.
Liberal
John-Paul Danko Liberal Hamilton West—Ancaster—Dundas, ON
Thank you.
I have a follow-up question on technically difficult problems.
You had mentioned in your opening statement about the need for downstream processing development. I believe you have a specialty in the extraction of lithium from oil field brines and non-standard recovery methods for critical minerals.
In your experience or opinion, where would you see this as a growth sector for Canada in extraction with non-traditional methods versus more investment in mining and so on?
Professor, University of Alberta
Let me be very frank.
The lithium-in-brine resources in Canada, while vast, are definitely not the best ones in the world. If you look in Alberta, you have brines that maybe have—I'll speak in concentration numbers—75 parts per million or 100 parts per million. You can double or maybe triple that in Saskatchewan, which is quite good. There are fluids in the United States, in other basins and in South America that are much richer. I think there is a game to be played there in developing technologies to extract lithium, for example, and other critical minerals from brines.
I've been a huge advocate in Alberta for thinking of this not just as a mining project. Why not have a company somewhere in Canada—it could be placed anywhere—that's developing patentable technologies? You would then have a group of highly educated engineers, scientists and people running the business who can then license that technology not only to other Canadian companies, but also outside the country.
We lack a technology-oriented industry in that regard, certainly in the oil and gas sector historically, but now in critical minerals. I would be reticent to see us go down the road where we get an ore out, process it to some sort of rough grade and then ship that—in this case it would be a concentrated fluid that contains lithium—overseas where they have electrolysis plants that can produce the battery salts and make all the money-making lithium-ion batteries or other products. I think that's a risk for sure.
Liberal
Bloc
Mario Simard Bloc Jonquière, QC
Thank you very much, Mr. Chair.
Mr. Ouellet, we spoke earlier about social licence, and I believe there's currently a certain amount of enthusiasm in Saguenay—Lac-Saint-Jean for the idea of a corridor project that would turn the Saguenay port into a critical minerals storage facility. At the very least, it would be a place where transshipment and even processing could take place. I think there's a fairly strong consensus on this.
Witnesses told us that, when it comes to developing mining projects in the north, infrastructure is the biggest challenge. You've come a long way and presented the findings of a study you conducted with all your fellow prefects.
When it comes to infrastructure, what could the federal government do to make your lives easier?
President, Union des Préfets-Saguenay-Lac-Saint-Jean
It could do a lot of things to make my life easier. If our idea is promising and seems important for our country, we'll need to go further to verify its feasibility. We'll need a project office so that potential clients can come and support our initiative, which will reassure Ms. Levis.
I know the Canadian government has invested significant amounts of money in a potential route that would go as far as Baie-Comeau. There's no railway line to get there. According to our project, there would be one in certain places. We have plans to rebuild what already exists. We're saying that we obviously need support to see the project through to completion. The five prefects from Saguenay—Lac-Saint-Jean can't do the work. We have to ensure there will be users and that the project is feasible. Furthermore, the communities have to agree on the project. Then we'll be able to present the government with a turnkey project and tell them that this is the best project they could have. It won't happen overnight, but we need to have a vision of what we want for our country. If, for our country, we need to diversify our markets and get our resources out of our region without going through the south, then I think our project is very attractive. However, we need support.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Terry Duguid
That's a good place to end, Mr. Ouellet. Thank you so much.
I'd like to thank all our witnesses for their very thoughtful and lively testimony. We also had good questions from colleagues around the table.
Colleagues, we'll now suspend while we move in camera to discuss the travel budget for the upcoming trip.
[Proceedings continue in camera]