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Industry committee Thank you so much. This is my pet project. I've worked in mining everywhere around the world. As an example, we're operating and building a bigger mine now in Morocco. The time from presenting the study to getting a full permit is six to nine months. We're following IFC standar
April 29th, 2021Committee meeting
Benoit La Salle
Industry committee Look, I'm the miner; I'm not the one taking care of the infrastructure. I'm telling you, though, there is room. You could ask the automobile makers. Look at Tesla's profits last quarter, and it's just starting. There's room to have a tax, if there is a need for it, to subsidize
April 29th, 2021Committee meeting
Benoit La Salle
Industry committee We absolutely must have a system. I'm an entrepreneur and we've always done business in a free market, but as someone said earlier, we're in a unique time that no one could ever have imagined. It's a time of profound transformation and we need the government to step in. It's as
April 29th, 2021Committee meeting
Benoit La Salle
Industry committee I am a certified public accountant by training. In 1995, I created a company, which is called SEMAFO, when I was on a humanitarian trip to help children in Africa. It has grown into a huge company with thousands of employees. As I said, we also have a foundation, the SEMAFO Foun
April 29th, 2021Committee meeting
Benoit La Salle
Industry committee I think we should have both. We should start alone by requesting transformation in Canada to start, but clearly we won't be able to do it alone. They have 20 plants in construction. We have none right now for battery manufacturing. We're so far behind. Somebody mentioned that For
April 29th, 2021Committee meeting
Benoit La Salle
Industry committee That is a very good question. Your question has two parts. The first is the lack of respect for the environment in China. I will only talk about cars, I will not talk about the batteries that are used to store energy. European companies have set traceability criteria. That is w
April 29th, 2021Committee meeting
Benoit La Salle
Industry committee Several studies on this topic show, among other things, that it depends on mileage. Previously, what put the electric car at a disadvantage was battery recycling. When you had to recycle the battery after 10 or 20 years, the environmental cost of an electric car became roughly eq
April 29th, 2021Committee meeting
Benoit La Salle
Industry committee That description is very accurate.
April 29th, 2021Committee meeting
Benoit La Salle
Industry committee Thank you. That's a very good question. We saw this in the 1990s. The government wanted to set up an industrial strategy for aeronautics. We were not yet a major player in that sector, but the government had decided to set up such a strategy so that we would become one. There a
April 29th, 2021Committee meeting
Benoit La Salle
Industry committee You're absolutely right. They have stated that publicly, that they're now looking to Canada to supply the critical materials. They are opening up all these battery plants. There will be about 20 of them. There are currently 20 battery plants in construction in the United States a
April 29th, 2021Committee meeting
Benoit La Salle
Industry committee You are absolutely right. The difficulty is that the company that will mine this will be able to find ten buyers for their product. We, for example, have one of the largest graphite mines in the world, which is in Africa. Six customers buy all the production from us, and they ar
April 29th, 2021Committee meeting
Benoit La Salle
Industry committee We have them, and that is important in itself. We have a lot of them. Quebec has a lot of lithium and graphite. Ontario and Newfoundland have nickel. We have critical minerals. The demand is going to explode. Over the next 10 years, the demand for lithium will increase eleven-fo
April 29th, 2021Committee meeting
Benoit La Salle
Industry committee No, it belongs to Chinese owners who have decided to leave because operating the mine no longer meets their strategic and political objectives. They came in, they invested, and they decided to shut it down two years ago. All the employees were put out of work. They have been look
April 29th, 2021Committee meeting
Benoit La Salle
Industry committee Critical minerals include rare earths and many other things. I refer you to a Natural Resources Canada document that lists critical minerals.
April 29th, 2021Committee meeting
Benoit La Salle
Industry committee That is still the way it works.
April 29th, 2021Committee meeting
Benoit La Salle