Industry committee  I would like the province to have priority. This is important, because the traceability of minerals is done mostly at the provincial level. I think the federal government can be there and work with the provinces. So I would give priority to provincial standards.

Industry committee  To make the battery cells, you have to go through the process of making the anode and cathode from the processed minerals. This all makes sense. You should create an ecosystem to avoid transporting the minerals, which would reduce CO2 emissions. The cells can be made in Quebec. Ontario can make the modules and battery packs.

Industry committee  In my opinion, we should not be afraid. Personally, I am very optimistic. Universities in Ontario and Quebec are working hard to develop an initiative on a common research and development platform. I will give an example. Nickel is found in Quebec and Ontario. There is an opportunity for collaboration.

Industry committee  Yes, if we focus on active materials—coming from water, you make active cathode materials and active anode materials—it means we will become very competitive. We need a lot of energy, and we have low-cost energy and green energy. It's not very difficult and not very intensive on the finances.

Industry committee  Yes, because to heat cathode materials we need 900 degrees Celsius, and for a heat treatment of artificial graphite we need 3,000 degrees Celsius, so it's really intensive energy. Also, CO2 emissions need to have active cathode materials with almost no CO2 emissions, and you have good traceability for raw materials.

Industry committee  Quebec is an excellent example of the circular economy, from the mine to the cell to the recycling of the urban mine. There is complementarity. We should work together and develop this complementarity between Quebec, Ontario, and the federal government. Today, for example, Mr. Breton talked about the specificity of Quebec in terms of trucks and snowmobiles, in particular.

Industry committee  From what I know, it's more than five years.

Industry committee  I believe, if we can make the mine in less than four years, that would make sense. The transformation is about two years for existing materials. I can give one example. If we mine graphite, it could take less than four years. If we have the raw material—the graphite—it would take one and a half to two years to bring graphite to the market, with the transformation, purification and so on.

Industry committee  I believe that there is a project right now called Nemaska Lithium, and there was Canada Lithium. Today, they're at the stage of finalizing the process in order to produce it, which may be in one or two years. As I mentioned, right now I cannot understand why it's taking a long time.

Industry committee  These engineering industrialization centres, as I call them, could manufacture graphite. For the furnaces, the processing with the machines is done in Japan or China. For graphite solidification, the machine is made in Korea, Japan or China. For the purification of all these materials and all the industrialization, we let our industries go.

Industry committee  I'll be very quick. Canada has the necessary technology to develop the mine, to do the first transformation of the active materials, from the battery cell to the battery module and then to the battery pack. Since the 1970s, Hydro-Québec, the company Moli Energy and the Jeff Dahn laboratory have been developing this technology.

Industry committee  Good afternoon, Mr. Chair, ladies and gentlemen. My experience with critical minerals and with processing them into active materials for batteries spans more than 36 years. My team and I are responsible for many publications, book chapters and patents in this field, a number of which have had commercial success.

International Trade committee  First of all, we need to know our market, by which I mean the market that includes all the provinces. Canada, like China, has a market. Once we know what that market is, we look at the gigawatt hours. If our market is really slow in terms of transitioning to the electrification of transportation and energy storage, then we need to begin implementing an independence strategy.

International Trade committee  Personally, I am well aware of what's happening. In Europe, there are local European companies: Mercedes Benz, Volkswagen, Renault, Peugeot, and so on. What Canada has to do is require Ford, GM and Toyota, which are not Canadian companies, to produce a quota of electric vehicles here in Canada.

International Trade committee  For example, in Quebec, there would be a task force with the ministers of innovation, finance, environment and energy together to accelerate and reduce the time of the permit and so on. We don't take 10 or 20 years to develop the mine. It's right now. We saw it recently with Nemaska Lithium.