Good morning. Around the world, countries are taking steps to protect their economic security – even as the U.S President backs down from some of his most aggressive trade threats. In Mankota, Sask., a helium facility is turning out a gas deemed critical for its role in aerospace, medicine, and semiconductors. But before it can be sold – even to Canadian buyers – it must be trucked to the United States for liquefaction. My report from the site, and what that dependence means, below.
In the news
Bay Street: BlackRock Inc.’s Canadian operations, the country’s largest exchange-traded fund provider, has announced the departure of Helen Hayes as head of its ETF division.
Retail: Hudson’s Bay will begin clearance sales at six stores that the retailer previously left out of the liquidation, according to new court documents. Clothing retailer Frank and Oak, meanwhile, is closing all 14 of its shops.
Sustainability: Canada’s securities regulators have halted work on mandatory climate and diversity disclosures, marking a major setback for the ESG movement amid mounting economic pressures and political backlash.
In the know
Rogers has a sports empire. Now it wants a payout.
- The big picture: Rogers owns the Toronto Blue Jays, is set to take 75 per cent control of MLSE — owner of the Maple Leafs and Raptors — and just signed an $11-billion NHL deal.
- These are crown jewels of Canadian sports. With its stock under pressure, Rogers is looking to cash in.
- Looking back: The telecom bet big on live sports content a decade ago to fend off cord-cutting. Sports revenue is rising, but its media division still posted a $67-million quarterly loss.
- What’s happening now: Executives say they’re in “earnest” talks with investors as they aim to tap into the value of their sports holdings to help lift the stock and tackle its debt load.
Clayten Wenaas, Kurt Silbernagal and Ty Eklund in North American Helium’s processing plant in Mankota, Sask.Chris Wilson-Smith/The Globe and Mail
In focus
We see thee rise
The gravel lot is quiet, the building squat and windowless – about the size of a small hockey rink. There’s a machine humming from somewhere inside, but not enough to drown out the lowing of cattle just over the fence.
Then a door opens with a hollow report. It’s from a smaller building near the road – one of a few scattered across a wide, empty patch of prairie. A man steps out and waves from the top of a short metal staircase. That must be Clayten Wenaas, a field engineer and operations superintendent with North American Helium Inc.
This small structure is the control room – quiet, cool and filled with the smell of the most awful, perfect kind of coffee. Two other men sit in high-backed office chairs, shifting seamlessly between small talk and technical diagnostics. After a while, one of them leans forward: “Wanna go check it out?” Wenaas grabs a helmet off the shelf and offers it up.
Over a short walk to the larger building, he and the two operations managers – Ty Eklund and Kurt Silbernagal – describe what awaits: a maze of compression skids, heat-exchange chillers and pressure-swing adsorption towers, each component fine-tuned to remove trace gases and deliver high-purity helium.
“It’s all automated, but we’re always watching,” Wenaas says. “Any pressure change or temperature shift – we’re on it.”
He opens the door. The sound is intense enough to make you reach for the earmuffs clinging to the top of your helmet – if only one of the others would do the same – and the scale of the operation comes fully into view: tall steel columns, thick interlacing pipes, and high-spec equipment spaced just wide enough to move between.
North American Helium has invested more than half a billion dollars in facilities like this across Saskatchewan’s southwest since the Calgary-based company’s inception in 2013. In less than five years of operation, it now produces about 85 per cent of Canada’s helium, which is created deep beneath the earth’s surface through the radioactive decay of uranium and thorium.
Its site in Mankota, a village of 200 that was founded more than a century ago, serves as one of the company’s key purification centres. Pipelines running from five well sites, each drilling thousands of metres into underground reservoirs, send helium here to be run through its state-of-the-art systems under the careful eye of the operations crew.
Wenaas and Silbernagal.Chris Wilson-Smith/The Globe and Mail
Walking the length of the plant, the trio unpacks the process that unfolds in a surprisingly elegant system of vessels, valves and pipes. “This is one of our more advanced operations,” Wenaas says. From here, the purified product will be piped into specially fitted transport trucks and carried to the U.S. for final processing – Canada does not have a helium liquefaction facility – and deeper into the supply chain to countries around the world rushing to secure key resources.
Helium is a noble gas, but it’s officially classified as a critical mineral in Canada. The term applies to materials essential to economic and national security, especially those vulnerable to supply disruptions. That includes a broad spectrum of substances, from gases like helium to metals like lithium, which is both a key industrial input and a cornerstone of battery technology. If Canada wants to compete in a high-tech economy, it can’t do it without helium.
“What we don’t have is the liquefaction infrastructure to turn our gas into liquid helium – and that’s the critical missing piece in Canada,” said Clayton Paradis, a company spokesperson. “If we had a liquefier here, we’d eliminate tens of millions of miles of trucking each year just to get our gas processed.
“We could have an ecosystem that includes processing, transport and policy support all right here in Canada.”
That last piece is still catching up. While Saskatchewan, Alberta and Manitoba have introduced supportive policies and critical mineral strategies, Ottawa has yet to meaningfully follow suit – a gap that, according to industry leaders such as Chris Bakker, is hampering investment and slowing the sector’s ability to scale.
Bakker, co-chair of the Helium Developers Association of Canada, is pushing the federal government to match the provincial momentum. The group is urging the government to change tax rules so investors in helium projects can claim the same tax deductions they can with other critical mineral developments. Doing so, he argues, would unlock early-stage investment while also drawing in more foreign investment.
“Canada’s a small country with a limited investment pool,” said Bakker, who is also the chief executive officer of Avanti Helium Corp., a Calgary-based company with helium plays on both sides of the border. “When I’m competing for those dollars on an uneven playing field, it hurts.”
On the outskirts of Mankota, a village of about 200.Chris Wilson-Smith/The Globe and Mail
Canada faces a tricky trade-off. As it looks to reduce reliance on the U.S. for a crucial step in bringing helium to the market, it faces undesirable tradeoffs — dealing with nations that Western allies are increasingly distancing themselves from. “If you’re trying to eliminate one geopolitical dependency,” Bakker said, “why ignore another?”
Investments from emergent industrial companies such as North American Helium are also helping to put Prairie communities that missed the oil boom on the map, adding stable jobs and a steady stream of contracting opportunities in a region where going to work often means leaving home for long stretches.
“You get to be around more,” said Eklund, who has family around Mankota – a portmanteau of Manitoba and Dakota. “And it’s about being part of something local,” he said. “Feels different.”
Paradis and Bakker say what’s happening on the ground in Mankota and across Saskatchewan is proof of concept, a sign that small towns can play a big role in the next industrial wave. For Silbernagal, whose wife is the principal at the local school, it wasn’t just about the job. It was about being part of a new kind of pioneering taking root in a familiar place.
“This brought me home.”
Charted
Immigration system on the ballot
The federal Liberals have been widely criticized for a population boom that intersected with a housing crisis, and for easing access to low-wage foreign labour. Now, all parties have released their platforms on new policy they want to implement. Immigration is among our economics team’s 10 themes to watch heading into the final days of the election.
Bookmarked
On our reading list
In the sky: Quebec judge orders Air Canada to pay passengers $10-million in damages after class action.
In the club: Bars and restaurants are cashing in with five Canadian NHL teams in playoffs: ‘Absolutely bonkers.’
In our snacks: Lucky Charms, Gatorade and Cheetos are among the foods that will get hit by Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s food-dye ban.
Calling young Canadians
Are you a Millennial or Gen Z with money on your mind? The Globe’s Paycheque Project series is looking for participants in this anonymous feature, where we discuss how much money people have – and how much they need – to meet their life goals, frankly and without judgment.
Whether you’re cruising financially or not so much, we’d love to hear from you. E-mail reporter Saira Peesker at saira@peesker.ca for more information.
Morning update
Global markets drifted as investors tried to sift through the noise from the Trump administration and its erratic stance on tariffs and the Federal Reserve’s leadership. Wall Street futures were in the red after the brief relief rally, while TSX futures followed sentiment lower.
Overseas, the pan-European STOXX 600 was flat in morning trading. Britain’s FTSE 100 was little changed, Germany’s DAX declined 0.25 per cent and France’s CAC 40 gave back 0.23 per cent.
In Asia, Japan’s Nikkei closed0.49 per cent higher, while Hong Kong’s Hang Seng slid 0.74 per cent.
The Canadian dollar traded at 72.18 U.S. cents.