Teck Resources' Highland Valley Copper Mine near Logan Lake, B.C., in September, 2025. Modern defence systems heavily rely on access to critical minerals such as copper, industry experts say.DARRYL DYCK/The Canadian Press
Mining industry experts and executives called in a parliamentary committee hearing on Monday for Canada to immediately address its fragility in critical minerals refining capacity to bolster this country’s defence capabilities.
Modern defence systems, including advanced communication networks, aerospace sensors, autonomous systems and electrified military infrastructure all heavily rely on access to critical minerals such as nickel, copper, cobalt and rare earth elements, Nadia Mykytczuk, executive director of the Goodman School of Mines at Laurentian University in Sudbury, said in her testimony to the standing committee on national defence.
“The real strategic vulnerability today is not our geology,” she said. “It is our processing capacity and supply chain dependence. In many cases, Canadian minerals are exported for refining and upgrading abroad before returning its inputs into advanced technologies.”
Reliance on foreign refining for defence minerals exposes Canada to supply disruption, export controls and geopolitical pressure, she added.
Critical minerals alliance with Australia an example of middle power strength, Carney says
China last year imposed temporary export restrictions on several rare earths used in the defence sector, including samarium, dysprosium and terbium. The restrictions, which have since eased, were targeted predominantly at the United States in response to tariffs it imposed on China.
China controls the refining for much of the world’s critical minerals and rare earths. Most of the copper mined in British Columbia goes to China for processing, as well as much of the lithium mined in Quebec and Manitoba.
Decades ago, Canada had a much stronger refining industry in defence minerals, such as nickel and copper, but those capabilities have shrunk significantly in large part because of the difficulties of competing with China.
Switzerland-based Glencore PLC said last month it would suspend a $1-billon investment to modernize a roughly 100-year-old Quebec copper smelter and refinery, owing to the economics of meeting stricter environmental regulations in Quebec not making sense.
Vale Base Metals, the base metals arm of Brazil’s Vale SA, which acquired Canada’s Inco Ltd. in 2006, refines and smelts nickel from its mining operations in Sudbury, but it also needs to import extra nickel from abroad to keep its processing operations running at an optimal rate.
Jim Balsillie, founder of the Centre for International Governance Innovation and former chairman and co-chief executive officer of Research In Motion, now BlackBerry Ltd., told the committee that Canada’s approach when it comes to the entire value chain is similar to what it was 50 years ago. If this country doesn’t start to control reasonable amounts of the processing supply chain for critical minerals, he said that Canada risks evolving into an extraction-focused economy similar to Russia or the Democratic Republic of the Congo, rather than a sophisticated Scandinavian country.
“We must reorient,” he said. “And it’s because our thinking is rooted in the 1970s, that production was sufficient, and it’s not. The ability to turn these [minerals] into products and have leverage so you’re not easily weaponized against is where the action is.”
Ms. Mykytczuk said that Canada can potentially help fill the void in the processing of metals such as cobalt and copper by perfecting the processing of mine waste, which is ubiquitous. Biomining, which uses naturally occurring bacteria to separate minerals from tailings potentially offers a quicker permitting path and lower capital cost than building a refinery from scratch.
“Across the country, more than 10,000 historic mine waste and tailings deposits contain recoverable concentrations of nickel, copper, cobalt, rare earth elements and others,” she said.
“These deposits represent significant elemental reserves. In Sudbury alone, for example, legacy tailings are estimated to contain $8-billion to $10-billion worth of nickel; similarly for copper and cobalt.”
However she also conceded that the technology, while tested on a small scale, isn’t viable yet at commercial scale and more investment is needed.
Sean Boyd, chairman of Agnico Eagle Mines Ltd., Canada’s biggest gold mining company, said in his testimony that Canada used to have a much stronger presence in refining, when it had homegrown champions such as Falconbridge Ltd., Inco, Noranda Inc. and Alcan Inc. All have since been acquired by foreign buyers. Canada now needs to devote more of its efforts toward research and development, and skilled work-force training, he said.
Ottawa has invested billions in the Canadian critical-minerals sector since launching its critical-minerals strategy in 2022, and in the past few months, it has accelerated the amount and pace of those investments, incorporating companies working on refining critical minerals, including B.C.-based Mangrove Lithium, which processes lithium, and Ontario rare earths recycler Cyclic Materials Inc.