This article was written by Joe Friesen and was published in the Globe & Mail on January 12, 2026.
A blue glow emanates from the core of the McMaster Nuclear Reactor, which provides neutrons for research and medical isotope production at McMaster University’s campus in Hamilton.
Funding and new minor studies program attract students keen to work in industry
A mesmerizing deep blue glow emanates from the nuclear reactor nestled in the heart of the campus at McMaster University in Hamilton.
Sunk 10 metres beneath the surface of a pool of water, encased in an air-locked, 15-sided, concrete building, the uranium fuel generates enough power to heat hundreds of homes.
But its significance to the university is far more about its research potential than its three megawatts of power.
At a time when nuclear power is in the midst of a renaissance, McMaster is wrapping itself in the label of Canada’s nuclear university.
The school launched a minor in nuclear studies in the fall and plans for a bachelor’s degree in nuclear engineering are in the works. Last term, 148 students signed up for a new interdisciplinary course on nuclear technology applications. Meanwhile, the university’s reactor produces about 60 per cent of the world’s supply of iodine-125, a medical isotope used for cancer treatment. And its new president, Susan Tighe, is bullish about nuclear’s role in driving the university’s ambitions.
“I think nuclear has great potential from a research perspective, as well as commercialization,” Dr. Tighe said. “And it’s great training for our students.”
Dr. Tighe, who became president of McMaster in July, is the first engineer to hold the top job at the university.
Having previously been provost at McMaster for five years she’s conscious of the financial clouds hanging over the university sector and says she’s determined to keep McMaster operating within its means. She’s proud to note that the school ran a surplus in 2025 and is among the handful of Ontario universities operating in the black.
“What I like to say is we’re a public sector organization that operates with private-sector principles,” she said. “We’re trying to be responsible with what we get.”
In September, the Ontario government announced $18-million in funding to allow McMaster to operate the nuclear reactor around the clock, seven days a week, up from five days. The extended hours will also allow it to boost production of medical isotopes that are crucial to cancer care and to expand research and training opportunities for students.
“We do have this unique research facility, and given that we’ve had support from the provincial government to operate 24 hours a day, it’s enabling more access to the reactor,” Dr. Tighe said.
The McMaster nuclear reactor was built in 1959, when the university had begun to grow beyond its Baptist roots. The project was spearheaded by Harry Thode, a Canadian nuclear pioneer who worked on the Canadian branch of the Manhattan project in the Second World War. He later served as president of the university from 1961 to 1972.
“For Canada to put a research reactor on a campus at that time was really visionary,” said David Novog, a physics professor, who has been leading tours of the reactor since the 1990s.
Prof. Novog said he first came to McMaster as a grad student because he was drawn by the chance to work on the most powerful research reactor on a Canadian campus. He explains that the blue light that surrounds the low-enriched uranium fuel cells in the water of the reactor pool is actually Cherenkov radiation, named for a Nobel-winning Soviet scientist.
Today Prof. Novog supervises grad students such as Jessica Lo, who is looking into neutron imaging of fuel bundles.
She decided to go into the nuclear field after finishing an undergraduate degree in physics. “There’s no other school that compares to McMaster. You have a reactor right on campus,” Ms. Lo said.
The reactor has a few dozen students working at various times in the week, often using its rays for imaging, particularly for close examination of turbine blades.
They also study health physics, looking at the impact of radiation on humans. And there are research applications for mining, too.
For Arianna Santos, a fourthyear engineering student, the chance to attend a university with a nuclear reactor was also too good to pass up.
Ever since watching science shows on television when she was young she has been captivated by nuclear’s potential to serve the world’s energy needs with a minimum of greenhouse gas emissions.
“I’ve been told that all the energy a person needs for their life on Earth could be contained in a single soda can of uranium,” she said.
Many of today’s students would be too young to remember some of the disasters that have led to public skepticism about nuclear technology: notably, the reactor meltdown in Fukushima, Japan, following a 2011 earthquake and the explosion in Chernobyl, Ukraine of the Soviet-built reactor in 1986.
Ms. Santos recognizes there’s public anxiety about the technology. But she feels reassured by the extensive safety protocols in nuclear facilities.
“These buildings are really, really safe,” she said.
Ms. Santos is one of about 150 students who’ve signed up for McMaster’s new minor in nuclear studies. She’s also a member of McMaster’s nuclear club, where students network and explore job opportunities.
Last summer she conducted research in nuclear science, working with a hot cell where she used mechanical arms to manipulate radioactive material. Her dream after graduation is to pursue a career in the nuclear field.
“This small atom, you just split it and it releases so much energy and heat that we barely have to use any uranium. It’s amazing, it’s crazy, it’s fascinating.”
This article was written by Marco Chown Oved and was published in the Toronto Star on January 11, 2026.
Electricity prices in Ontario have long proven to be politically toxic.
Rapid increases between 2009 and 2016 contributed to the downfall of the Liberal governments of Dalton McGuinty and Kathleen Wynne.
Doug Ford and his Progressive Conservatives were elected on a pledge to bring hydro bills down, and the rapid increases have since ended — though it’s not because power is cheaper. The true costs are now invisible to the consumer.
For 15 years, Ontarians saw the cost of nuclear power on their hydro bills each month. Between 2002 and 2017, there was a line item called the “debt retirement charge” that enlisted every ratepayer to chip away at more than $20 billion in debt left over from the splitup of Ontario Hydro — debt largely run up by construction overruns at the Darlington nuclear plant, which was completed in 1993. The nuclear debt was removed from bills in 2018 — but it didn’t disappear. Instead, it was added onto the provincial books, where it is now considered part of the general public debt. As of last year, more than 30 years after Darlington went online, there was still $11.9 billion in debt remaining.
The province also brought in the Ontario Electricity Rebate, which subsidizes power bills with taxpayer dollars. While the rebate was introduced under McGuinty, Ford recently nearly doubled it — with an estimated price tag of $8.5 billion annually — to absorb an almost 30 per cent hike to the price of electricity.
The Ford government has blamed rate increases on the previous Liberal government’s Green Energy Act, which paid a premium for renewable energy in an effort to kickstart a domestic wind and solar industry. The domestic renewables manufacturing sector failed to take off in the face of competition from China, but more than 33,000 renewable projects remain on the grid at inflated prices on 20year contracts. Today, these legacy contracts have pushed the cost of solar power up to the point that it’s the highest among all types of generation in Ontario, when measured by kilowatt hour (kWh) of electricity produced. Wind isn’t far behind.
But what the per kWh figures hide is that renewables make up such a small proportion of the energy production mix that they cannot be responsible for overall rate increases, according to a Star analysis of Ontario Energy Board and Independent Electricity System Operator data. Even though solar costs threeandahalf times more than nuclear per kWh, it only accounted for two per cent of the total cost of electricity in 2024 — too little to drive overall cost increases. Nuclear, by contrast, accounted for 56 per cent of Ontario’s total cost of electricity last year. And while the costs of legacy renewables are inflated, they’re fixed or even going down as their contracts expire and have been renewed at 30 per cent less than they were paid previously.
In contrast, nuclear costs keep going up. The refurbishment of the Pickering plant will cost three times more per kWh than the refurbishments of Darlington and four times more than Bruce. The costs of these refurbishments will start to be added to hydro bills when they return to service.
Because nuclear makes up such a large part of the electricity mix, even a little increase to the cost of nuclear will affect the price Ontarians pay for electricity — either via monthly bills or taxpayer funds.
Ontario is investing billions into reactors — even as the rest of the world turns to solar and wind. Is this the wrong bet?
This article was written by Marco Chown Oved and was published in the Toronto Star on January 11, 2026.
In the race to prepare for an electrified future of AI, data centres, EVs and heat pumps, Ontario has placed a big bet on nuclear.
With more than $73 billion committed to building new and refurbishing old reactors — and two more plants in the pipeline that could add tens of billions more — Ontario taxpayers are counting on nuclear energy to pay off for decades to come.
Widely hailed for its ability to provide massive amounts of stable, emissions free power that the province will need to electrify the economy, nuclear has emerged as a solution advocates say is crucial to avoid the worst effects of climate change — all while supporting a well established local industry. A single nuclear plant can provide the same amount of power as tens of thousands of solar panels and wind turbines — even when the wind isn’t blowing, and the sun isn’t shining.
Prime Minister Mark Carney and Premier Doug Ford announce expansion plans at the Darlington energy plant last fall.
“Nuclear brings a set of attributes and characteristics that you really can’t find with any other generating source,” said Brendan Frank, Director of Policy and Strategy at Clean Prosperity, a climate policy think tank. It’s large scale, clean and reliable with a small land footprint, he says. “There’s a lot to like about nuclear.”
But the promise of nuclear power is tempered by the potential for peril.
Critics say nuclear proponents have never been able to address existing reactors’ significant shortcomings, including decade long construction timelines, consistently large cost overruns, and the tiny but nonzero risk of catastrophic accidents. The cost considerations alone risk undermining the fight against climate change by making clean power more expensive than burning fossil fuels.
“Baked right into the nuclear option is centralization, a reliance on technical elites, the need for long term stewardship and paramilitary security, a low tolerance for failure, and the acceptance of uninsurable risks,” said Ralph Torrie, the head of research with Corporate Knights and a veteran energy analyst.
And unlike nuclear opponents of the 1980s, today’s critics have a ready alternative in renewable energy, which is being built at an unprecedented speed and scale all over the world. Last year, more than 90 per cent of new power brought online globally has been wind and solar. Meanwhile, the nuclear industry has been mired in a 25 year decline with more reactors decommissioned than built, according to the International Atomic Energy Agency.
Nuclear power is yesterday’s technology, the critics say.
“Every dollar we spend on new nuclear plants or reconditioning 20thcentury nuclear steam generators drives up the cost of building a sustainable energy system in Ontario and puts us further behind in the energy transition that is a defining feature of successful 21st century economies,” Torrie said.
In the search for climate solutions, the debate over nuclear power is particularly acute. For proponents, global warming cannot be addressed without a nuclear renaissance. For opponents, nuclear is a trap that diverts resources from better solutions while committing us for decades to a technology that has never lived up to its promises.
And Ontario has already picked its side.
“We’re doubling down on nuclear,” Energy Minister Stephen Lecce told the Star in an interview.
“If you care about jobs for Canadians, if you care about an ethical supply chain using a clean grid, not a coalfired grid, if you care about human rights, the rule of law, fundamental Canadian values, and the economic advantages for the workers, for the women and men who work in this province, then you will unapologetically defend and promote Ontario’s nuclear advantage, which is now an envy of the world.”
Why nuclear is considered a `very expensive’ option
This June, the province laid out a 25 year road map for the electricity system that relies overwhelmingly on nuclear. It projects a massive 75 per cent increase in demand for power, the equivalent of adding four and a half Toronto’s to the grid. While there have been some investments in battery storage and hydro, most of this energy will come from refurbishing the existing fleet of reactors and building new ones, including one in Wesleyville — on the shore of Lake Ontario to the east of the existing Pickering and Darlington plants — that would be the world’s biggest nuclear plant. In doing so, the province would triple its nuclear generation, exceeding the entire electricity system’s output today.
“Ontario is putting a lot of eggs in a very expensive basket,” said David Pickup, an energy analyst at the Pembina Institute and the author of a report highlighting the risks of the province’s nuclear build out.
“The government recognizes that having low rates is really critical,” he said. “So it is kind of baffling to us that there’s such a strong focus on new nuclear projects.”
The price tag for this nuclear pivot hasn’t been fully calculated. The four new Small Nuclear Reactors (SMRs) at Darlington have a budget of $21 billion. The Pickering refurbishment is expected to cost $26.8 billion. The refurbishment of Bruce Power’s nuclear plant has a $13 billion budget. Darlington’s refurbishment is currently projected to be completed on budget at $12.8 billion. No price tag has been announced for new nuclear plants at Wesleyville and Bruce, which could add tens of billions more to the total.
That could bring the nuclear construction budgets north of $100 billion, a similar scale of investment as the $116 billion announced for all 11 nationbuilding projects announced by Prime Minister Mark Carney’s Major Projects Office this fall (which included support for Ontario’s SMRs). Even that colossal amount of money could prove to be a bestcase scenario, because nuclear projects worldwide have often suffered from severe cost overruns that, on average, lead to a doubling of their original budgets.
The only new nuclear reactors built in the E.U. or North America this century characterize this trend. The Vogtle plant in Georgia cost more than twice as much as budgeted; in Finland, the Olkiluoto plant came in at four times the original budget; and in France, the Flamanville reactor’s final cost was seven times greater than expected.
Using realworld costs of recently completed nuclear projects, York University Professor Mark Winfield calculated that Ontario’s full nuclear build out could cost as much as $400 billion, all of which would have to be paid for through increases to hydro rates — something that’s been politically toxic in Ontario.
For his part, Lecce says Ontario can and will do better — and has proven it during the last decade of refurbishments.
“I’m aware of the global reality. But here at home, we’re doing something right,” he said. “We’ve been doing large scale refurbishments of some of the largest nuclear reactors on the continent ahead of schedule and on budget, unit by unit. From Bruce Power to Darlington, we have demonstrated project discipline.”
Ontario Power Generation (OPG), which owns and operates all the province’s nuclear reactors except for those at Bruce, declined to comment for this story.
Lecce says that the risk is worth it, not only to provide the power needed to expand Ontario’s mining, refining and manufacturing sectors, but also to sustain a nuclear industry whose expertise can be exported.
The nuclear industry currently contributes $22 billion annually to Canada’s GDP and employs more than 89,000 people, the majority in Ontario, according to the Canadian Nuclear Association. The Ontario build out promises to add tens of thousands of temporary construction and permanent operation jobs and billions in economic benefits to that total.
“Ninety per cent of the spend is staying in the province,” said Lecce. “This is the obvious path forward.”
Why the nuclear option has competition in wind and solar
While Ontario has for decades been Canada’s leader in nuclear, the province was also, briefly, the nation’s leader in the construction of wind and solar.
But when Doug Ford was elected premier, he cancelled every renewable project in the pipeline — some of which were partially built — at a cost of $231 million. In the seven and a half years since, as renewables have come to dominate new global power projects, not a single new renewable energy project has been commissioned in Ontario.
Meanwhile, thanks to aggressive Chinese industrial policy, the cost of building new renewable power has dropped by 70-90 per cent over the last decade, to the point that wind and solar are now the cheapest ways to generate electricity in most countries in the world, according to the International Energy Agency.
Not only that, but renewables are far faster to build than nuclear plants and can be deployed quickly as demand grows, instead of waiting for lengthy nuclear builds — and burning more natural gas in the meantime.
This is why renewables are winning out worldwide, said physicist and energy analyst Amory Lovins in a recent article.
“Each year, nuclear adds as much net global capacity as renewables add every two days,” wrote Lovins, who cofounded the Rocky Mountain Institute.
Only five years into a global renewable building spree, wind and solar have already far surpassed total nuclear generation, which took 65 years to build. “Soaring renewables generate three times more global electricity than stagnant nuclear power,” Lovins wrote. “In 2023-24, China added 197 times more solar and wind than nuclear capacity, at half the cost.”
Despite being elected on a platform hostile to renewables, even Ford has come around, issuing a round of procurement that could end up including wind and solar.
But the idea that the debate is settled and that renewables are cheaper and better is something the nuclear industry in general, and the provincial government in particular, pushes back on.
Renewables are “controlled by the Chinese, manufactured there, by an unethical regime using coal fired power to drive their production. In what world is that product from that nation with that human rights record adding any value to Canada?” Lecce said, adding: “This narrative that the alternative of wind and solar is cheaper is demonstrably false.”
The important ways nuclear is different than wind and solar
Cost comparisons between nuclear and renewables get muddy because they’re not apples to apples.
Nuclear provides inexpensive and stable baseload power, but is difficult to ramp up and down to meet demand.
Renewables can provide cheaper power, but only intermittently — when the wind blows, and the sun shines. They become “dispatchable” when they’re paired with batteries that are charged when the power isn’t needed and discharged back into the grid when it is.
A study prepared by the IESO last summer found that renewables paired with batteries can provide dispatchable power for less than half the cost of nuclear. This scenario becomes even more beneficial if natural gas is kept as a backup and excess generation is exported for profit.
The same study found, however, that nuclear SMRs will produce baseload power for about two thirds the cost of renewables and batteries.
But price isn’t the only consideration that Lecce says favours nuclear.
Unlike wind turbines and solar panels, which typically have a commercial lifespan of 20-25 years, nuclear reactors can last “80 to 90 years,” Lecce said.
And if Ontario were to build renewables instead of new nuclear plants, it would require significant “overbuild” to make up for the intermittency of wind and solar — five to seven times more generation, according to the IESO.
To accommodate that overbuild, the energy ministry estimates it would need to set aside approximately 100 times more land for solar and 500 times more land for wind to generate the same amount of power as a potential 10,000 MW nuclear station at Wesleyville.
Corporate Knights’ Torrie said these arguments rely on fanciful assumptions that “tilt the scales” in favour of nuclear.
A 90 year lifespan is unrealistic, he said, considering no nuclear plant in the world has ever operated for even 60 years. None of Ontario’s fleet of Candu reactors has reached 45 years of operation, he said.
“Candus typically have to be rebuilt when they are 20-25 years old, and so far the longest any Candu has operated after being rebuilt is 23 years. We are not even close to being able to say with confidence a Candu will last for 60 years, even with a complete rebuild along the way,” he said.
Solar panels, by contrast, may be guaranteed by the manufacturer to last 25 years, but have a track record of functioning far longer than that.
“Solar panels slowly lose efficiency over time,” said Torrie.
“But they can be operated for decades after they have paid for themselves.”
A recent study found a 30 year old solar installation in Switzerland was still producing at 80 per cent of its original output. In New Hampshire, a single rooftop panel was still producing power after more than 40 years. The first modern solar cell, produced by Bell Labs in 1954, still generates electricity, more than 70 years after it was manufactured.
Unlike nuclear plants, solar panels don’t require any fuel, so even with a lower output, the electricity they produce is close to free.
As for the issue of land use, Torrie invites anyone to visit a wind farm and look at how much space is between the turbines — space that’s used to graze livestock or grow food.
“For solar, the panels are often installed on rooftops, where they have zero land impacts. Solar farms are now being built on agricultural land without taking it out of production, and these `agrosolar’ projects are generating new income streams for farmers.”
By contrast, while the footprint of a nuclear facility may be small, it’s off limits to any other use and the longterm storage of highly radioactive spent nuclear fuel requires setting aside land for tens of thousands of years.
`Energy security is national security’
Even among nuclear proponents, Ontario’s choice of an American reactor design for the SMRs has raised economic and security concerns. Unlike the existing fleet of Canadian Candu reactors that use natural uranium from mines in Saskatchewan, the BWRX300 reactors chosen for the SMRs rely on enriched uranium, which must be imported from the United States, requiring much more robust security to avoid action movie scenarios where radioactive materials are hijacked by terrorists.
And, of course, the debate over nuclear power can’t avoid the elephant in the room.
The most recent nuclear meltdown, which occurred in Fukushima, Japan in 2011, prompted the long term evacuation of a zone that extends up to 30 km from the accident site and remains contaminated with high levels of radiation. That accident happened following the fourth most powerful earthquake ever recorded. The world’s only other nuclear catastrophe to max out the rating scale — the 1986 Chernobyl disaster, which left behind a vastly larger exclusion zone — was caused by the confluence of flawed Soviet reactor design and operator error.
No one, not even the fiercest critics, says Ontario’s nuclear plants are vulnerable to the specific events that caused these accidents. But it’s undeniable that nuclear comes with nonzero risk.
If the Pickering nuclear plant were to experience an accident on the scale of Fukushima, a 30km evacuation zone would extend all the way to Yonge Street, forcing millions of people to abandon their homes and businesses with untold human and economic cost.
While a major nuclear accident or a Hollywood hijack scenario are both extremely unlikely to happen in Ontario, that doesn’t mean the public is going to forget the risk.
Former Prime Minister Jean Chrétien and former Premier Mike Harris recently coauthored an oped arguing that in order to reap the full economic benefits of a new generation of nuclear reactors, the Canadian designed Candus must be used.
“In an increasingly uncertain world, energy security is national security,” they wrote. “If Canada does not choose Candu and instead goes with an American technology, that will mean the transfer of tens of thousands (and potentially hundreds of thousands) of jobs to the U.S. and abroad. The painful changes we are currently experiencing in our automobile industry in Ontario are a reminder of what happens when we tie our fortunes to foreign technologies and foreign companies.”
Asked about the choice of design for the SMRs, Lecce said Ontario is getting “first mover advantage,” by taking on the risk of building the first reactor of its kind. The province will develop SMR expertise that will be highly sought after by other countries looking to build small scale nuclear and has established 80 per cent of the supply chain locally.
“The Canadian supply chain is at the heart of the gain of this project. We’re selling SMRs abroad. Ontario owns part of the intellectual property of the reactor design. Every time we sell, we make money,” he said.
Even though the first SMR hasn’t yet been built, Lecce has already announced deals to provide nuclear expertise to New York, Nova Scotia, New Brunswick, Belgium and Bulgaria.
“Ontario is solidifying Canada’s global leadership in clean, emissions free nuclear power, and the world is watching,” Lecce said at the announcement in Sofia, last month.
Meanwhile, the first SMR is already behind schedule. In 2023, the province announced that it would be built by 2028. After a protracted licensing process carried out by the Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission, OPG now says construction will be complete “by the end of the decade” and “connect to the grid by the end of 2030.”
The aggressive timeline for these small nukes is part of the promise that they will buck the technology’s reputation for being expensive and slow to build.
“We’re not talking 20 years out. We’re talking a matter of another four odd years,” Lecce said.
By then, it will be a little clearer whether Ontario’s nuclear ambition represents foresight or folly.
This article was written by Michelle Chapman and was published in the Toronto Star on January 10, 2026.
General Motors will be hit with charges of about $6 billion (U.S.) as sales of electric vehicles sputter after the U.S. cut tax incentives to buy them and also eased auto emissions standards.
Shares slid about two per cent before the opening bell Friday.
The charges that will be recorded in the fourth quarter follow an announcement in October the Detroit automaker would take a $1.6billion charge for the same reason in the previous quarter, with automakers forced to reconsider ambitious plans to convert their fleets to electric power.
The EV tax credit ended in September. The clean vehicle tax credit was worth $7,500 for new EVs and up to $4,000 for used ones.
GM, which had been the most ambitious among all U.S. automakers with plans to replace internal combustion engines, said in its filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission late Thursday the $6 billion in charges includes noncash impairments and other noncash charges of about $1.8 billion as well as supplier commercial settlements, contract cancellation fees, and other charges of approximately $4.2 billion.
EVs have been considered to be the future of the U.S. automotive industry. GM announced in 2020 it was going to invest $27 billion in electric and autonomous vehicles over the next five years, a 35 per cent increase over plans made before the pandemic.
GM expected more than half of its factories in North America and China would be capable of making electric vehicles by 2030. It also pledged at the time to increase its investment in EV charging networks by nearly $750 million through 2025. Its goal was to make the vast majority of the vehicles electric by 2035 and the entire company carbon neutral five years after that. Those plans have be shaken due to the drastic differences in economic and environmental policies between the Biden and Trump administrations.
China has become a global leader in electric vehicle technology in recent years, with factories there churning out millions of cars and laying the groundwork for a massive charging network for vehicles.
Earlier this month, Tesla was dethroned as the world’s largest EV automaker, replaced by China’s BYD, which produced 2.26 million electric vehicles last year.
The EV tax credit ended in September in the U.S. The clean vehicle tax credit was worth $7,500 for new EVs and up to $4,000 for used ones
This article was written by Geoffrey York and was published in the Globe & Mail on January 10, 2026.
The train pulls into the station with an ear-splitting shriek of metal. Then it sits empty for hours as its workers search for fuel. Its windows are grimy and broken, propped open with plastic bottles. The vast waiting hall nearby is stained brown from water leaks.
The Chinese-built TAZARA railway, running 1,860 kilometres from Zambia’s copper belt to Tanzania’s main seaport, was once just a relic of the Cold War. The railway is a half-century old and decaying badly, with its trains often suspended or painfully slow.
But as the world scrambles for access to the critical minerals of Zambia and Congo, the shabby old railway has suddenly become vital to Beijing’s economic strategy – and could be a future boon for Canadian miners.
In November, China launched a US$1.4-billion project to modernize the TAZARA railway, aiming to bring copper faster to the Indian Ocean port of Dar es Salaam and onward to China’s insatiable factories.
It is just one of several rival schemes in the region: railways, roads and ports to serve the fast-growing mines owned by Canadian, Asian, Middle Eastern and U.S. investors.
Soaring copper demand and record prices have turned Zambia and its neighbour, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, into prime territory for global competition.
The battle to secure copper and other critical minerals has swiftly become an important focus for U.S. President Donald Trump, Chinese President Xi Jinping and others, including the G7 and G20 leaders who listed critical minerals as a top priority at their most-recent summits.
Soaring demand has turned Zambia and its neighbour into prime territory for global competition
The urgency has only increased in recent weeks. From Venezuela to Greenland, the Trump administration is making it clear that access to resources is driving its push to reorder the world. In Africa, this is playing out against a complex map of geopolitical partners and rivals.
Even as China and Zambia were breaking ground on the ambitious TAZARA upgrade, the United States and the European Union were backing a competing scheme: the multibillion-dollar Lobito Corridor railway, stretching westward from southern Congo to the Angolan port of Lobito on the Atlantic Ocean, to bring copper to Western markets. A branch line to reach the Zambian copper mines is also planned.
“Nobody wants to be locked out of these critical minerals,” says Kakenenwa Muyangwa, chief executive officer of ZCCM Investment Holdings PLC, the state-controlled company that holds minority stakes in many of Zambia’s biggest mines.
“They’re jostling to have a seat at the table. But we’re happy to work with all these people. It’s all great news for Zambia.”
Two big Canadian miners in the northwest of the country, First Quantum Minerals Ltd. (FQM) and Barrick Mining Corp., are well-positioned to benefit from the Chinese railway and the Lobito Corridor in the long term. But FQM is hedging its bets with a short-term option: an upgraded 371-kilometre road to the Namibian port of Walvis Bay on the Atlantic Ocean. The project will drastically cut transit times for its copper exports and operating supplies when it is completed within the next two years.
FQM and Barrick have both recently launched major expansion projects in Zambia, with FQM completing a US$1.25-billion expansion this year. A recent visit by The Globe and Mail to the huge Kansanshi copper mine showed that FQM is moving fast to extend its operations – helping it replace the lost production from its giant Cobre Panama mine in Panama, which remains shuttered in the aftermath of local protests over its environmental impact.
Barrick, meanwhile, is spending US$2-billion to double the output of its Lumwana copper mine, just 100 kilometres west of Kansanshi in the same underdeveloped region of northwestern Zambia.
As the tussle for Zambian copper gains momentum, the Canadian companies are just two of the global players flocking into the country. Zambia has become a favourite target for critical-minerals investors whose headquarters range from California and Abu Dhabi to Mumbai and Beijing.
The Zambian government, revelling in the global spotlight, is aiming to boost the country’s copper production to three million tonnes annually by 2031 – a target that would triple its 2025 output. Add an expected six million tonnes of copper a year from Congo, and the roads and railways will become crucial.
Miners in both countries face daunting obstacles just to get their products to market. “All of it has only one way out,” Mr. Muyangwa says, referring to the roads running south from the Congolese and Zambian copper belt to the national capital, Lusaka, and onward to South Africa and Namibia.
Zambia’s national railways are theoretically an option, but they are so slow that a train can take up to three days to travel the 800-kilometre distance between the southern border and the copper belt town of Kitwe. And with the Lobito and TAZARA railways currently taking only a tiny fraction of mining cargo, Zambia’s badly potholed roads are still the main option.
Chinese and Zambian trucks, filled with copper products and mining supplies, clog the dusty roads all day and into the night, creating huge traffic jams and queues on the routes to the borders. Zambians still recall what happened when the Congo border was briefly closed a couple of years ago: Trucks were parked along the road for an astonishing 250 kilometres as they awaited the reopening.
It gets worse. The traditional export route from Zambia to the South African port of Durban is increasingly dangerous because of ruthless hijacking gangs that steal the copper – even when the trucks are guarded by armed escorts. “They are more armed than you’ll ever be,” sighs Anthony Mukutuma, FQM’s country director in Zambia.
Satellite monitoring of the truck convoys in South Africa has failed to protect them from the hijackers, and some miners are pulling back from the route. “We had a high tolerance, but it got out of hand, so we had to retreat,” said Godwin Beene, the Zambia country manager for FQM.
Mining investors are hoping that the TAZARA and Lobito upgrades will someday solve the chokepoints. “We need as many routes as possible,” Mr. Muyangwa told The Globe in his Lusaka office.
“The rate of expansion has probably overwhelmed the roads in Zambia,” he said. “We’ve suffered heavy road traffic for so many years, and the roads get damaged so often. We need to open up more corridors, so that we have connectivity with our neighbours.”
Zambia’s leaders try to spin it all positively: They argue that the country is “land-linked” rather than landlocked. And despite all the export headaches, global investors are increasingly descending on Zambia.
California-based KoBold Metals, backed by U.S. billionaires Jeff Bezos and Bill Gates, is promoting its US$3-billion Mingomba copper project in Zambia near the Congo border. The company has promised to send 300,000 tonnes of copper annually on the Lobito railway if the branch line to Zambia is built.
Barely 90 kilometres to the south, a state-connected United Arab Emirates investment company paid US$1.1-billion for a majority stake in the Mopani copper mine last year. Not far away, Indian billionaire Anil Agarwal is sinking money into an expansion of his Konkola copper mine. And Chinese investors are everywhere in the country’s Copperbelt province – and in the board rooms of FQM, where Jiangxi Copper Co. Ltd. now owns almost 19 per cent of the company’s shares.
In southern Congo, just across the border from Barrick and FQM, the massive Kamoa-Kakula copper mine has been developed by another Canadianbased company, Ivanhoe Mines Ltd., with Chinese and Congolese partners. The project, which says it’s the world’s fastest-growing and highest-grade major copper mine, is already using the Lobito Corridor railway to ship some of its production to the Atlantic Ocean for export.
Ivanhoe is also moving into Zambia. It announced in 2024 that it had won exploration licences to seek copper in 7,757 square kilometres in northwestern Zambia, not far from the Barrick and FQM mines.
Almost every week, top players arrive in Zambia. Chinese Premier Li Qiang made a two-day visit in November to inaugurate the Chinese railway project. Donald Trump Jr., the son of the U.S. President, arrived in the same month and held a meeting with Zambian President Hakainde Hichilema. It was described as a private vacation, but Mr. Trump Jr. is known to have business interests related to the critical minerals sector.
In December, newly appointed U.S. assistant secretary of state, Caleb Orr, visited Zambia to discuss a proposed US$2-billion package of support for Zambian health programs. He made it clear that the money was contingent on mineral deals. The U.S. funding would be “provided in exchange for collaboration in the mining sector and clear business sector reforms,” the State Department said.
Mr. Orr, complaining about a “slow, unpredictable, and opaque” business environment in Zambia, said the timing of the U.S. grants would be “based on clear progress in the coming months.”
Later in his trip, Mr. Orr visited FQM’s Kansanshi mine for a site tour, while the U.S. embassy explained that FQM could bolster the U.S. criticalminerals supply chain.
Separately, the Trump administration has been demanding that U.S. investors get preferential access to critical minerals in Congo, in exchange for Washington’s role in trying to broker a peace deal to settle a Rwanda-backed insurgency in eastern Congo. The administration announced in November that it had added copper to its list of critical minerals, giving added importance to Zambia and Congo.
A few weeks before Mr. Orr’s visit, meanwhile, an EU delegation had travelled across the copper belt, studying Zambia’s colonial-era railway to see if it could be upgraded to work with the Lobito Corridor. A giant EU billboard, on a busy street in the mining town of Kabwe, promotes the Lobito Corridor as a pillar of Europe’s “Global Gateway” strategy to build green infrastructure worldwide.
The EU announced in November that it would provide about US$58-million to help rehabilitate the Zambian railway and prepare it for integration into the Lobito Corridor. It also plans to mobilize US$2.3-billion to support the entire Lobito project.
The U.S., for its part, has been supporting Lobito for years with an estimated US$6-billion in public and private financing. Then president Joe Biden visited the Angolan port in 2024 to push for faster action on the corridor, and the Trump administration
has extended that support. The U.S. International Development Finance Corp. announced in December that it will provide a loan of US$553-million to help upgrade 1,300 kilometres of the Lobito Corridor in Angola.
Zambia is eager for any help it can get. “There’s just not enough road and rail infrastructure to move the critical minerals that are going to come out of this part of the world, to the West and to the East,” says Mr. Mukutuma of FQM.
“For the mines in Zambia and Congo, probably 90 per cent of their inputs are coming through Lusaka, the heart of Zambia, and that’s a major risk,” he told The Globe.
“You can’t have nine million tonnes of copper coming out of this part of the world – and all the inputs, from fuel and reagents to explosives – on these roads. The solution is to get a lot of material onto rail. Once those corridors are in place, they will spur economic activity and bring more mines and industry.”
In late 2023, Ivanhoe’s Kamoa-Kakula mine became the first Congolese producer to send copper concentrate along the Lobito Corridor railway to the Atlantic Ocean. The rail route took only eight days, compared to 25 days for the road route to Durban, the company said.
Several weeks later, the Ivanhoe mine signed an agreement allowing it to send up to 240,000 tonnes of copper products annually on the Lobito Corridor.
It expected to export about 50,000 tonnes on the Lobito route in 2025, with transport times drastically shorter than conventional truck routes, according to Alex Pickard, executive vice-president of corporate development at Ivanhoe.
“For the mining sector, this project has huge importance,” he told an online discussion in September.
While the Lobito Corridor is already benefiting some miners in Congo, its potential spur into Zambia is less certain. The lead developer, Africa Finance Corp., has asked for proposals from contractors, but no timing has been announced, and its exact route is unclear, although it would terminate somewhere in the copper belt. The 800-kilometre spur would cost an estimated US$4.5-billion, of which less than one-fifth has been raised so far.
Mining investors are watching impatiently. “If you asked me, they should have started it yesterday,” said Mr. Beene, the FQM country manager. “It’s a virgin railway, and it’s still a long way off.”
In the meantime, the focus is switching to the TAZARA railway. Unlike the Lobito spur to Zambia, the Chinese project would not require construction of new tracks in virgin territory, but merely the modernization of an existing line – albeit one of the longest railways in Africa.
After decades of decay, the TAZARA trains chug along slowly at a stately 50 kilometres per hour, carrying just 100,000 tonnes of freight annually. Companies such as FQM are legally required to ship some of their product by rail, so they use TAZARA – but they complain that it is sluggish and unreliable.
“You never know if it will break down halfway,” said Axel Koettgen, assistant general manager of the Kansanshi mine.
When The Globe bought a second-class ticket on one of TAZARA’s weekly passenger runs in December, the railway’s antiquated operations were conspicuous. Tickets were written laboriously by hand. Porters loaded old furniture and sacks of cassava into a freight car. The train’s departure from the Kapiri Mposhi terminus – a lengthy process that involved sirens, alarm bells and whistles – was three hours behind schedule.
“We don’t know what is happening,” said Geoffrey Siame, a 73-year-old former TAZARA worker who was using his pensioner pass to ride the rail line. “The tracks, the equipment, the locomotives – none of them are up to date.”
Mr. Siame, who worked for TAZARA for 30 years, still remembers the excitement in 1976 when the railway was completed and service began. It was a monumental achievement, involving the labour of 50,000 Chinese workers and 60,000 Africans over six years. More than 160 workers died in construction accidents, often in remote wilderness. Lions, hyenas and bee stings were a constant threat.
The modernization project will seek to revive TAZARA’s old glories. China plans to rehabilitate stations, repair bridges and tunnels, replace the rail sleepers along the entire line, add new locomotives and build 390 kilometres of new track.
The project is expected to cut transit times by two-thirds and boost the railway’s freight volume to 2.4 million tonnes annually.
While it is often seen as a rival to the Westernbacked Lobito option, TAZARA could also be a partner to it. If Zambia upgrades its domestic railway with the EU’s promised help, cargo could someday be transferred between the TAZARA and Lobito lines, creating a cross-continental land bridge between the Atlantic and Indian oceans.
Unlocking the export obstacles would be a crucial boost to Zambia’s future. But the copper boom is already fuelling rapid growth. The International Monetary Fund forecasts that Zambia’s economy will grow by 6.4 per cent in 2026, making it one of the 10 fastest-rising countries on the continent.
FQM is playing a major role in Zambia’s growth. It is the biggest single private investor and taxpayer in the country, and it produces almost half of Zambia’s annual copper output, the company says.
At FQM’s Kansanshi mine, the long-planned expansion was completed in August, sharply boosting the capacity of its processing plant and its smelter. The mine is expected to produce an average of about 250,000 tonnes of copper annually over the next 18 years, its projected lifespan, compared to 171,000 tonnes in 2024.
In August, after strengthening its balance sheet by striking a US$1-billion deal to sell some of its gold production to U.S.-based Royal Gold Inc., the company announced that it had shelved a plan to sell minority stakes in its Zambian mines.
After the shutdown of its Panama mine, the Zambian mines now generate more than 90 per cent of FQM’s production. The company hopes that Panama’s government will authorize the mine’s reopening within the next few months. To bolster its case, it flew a group of Panamanian television and print reporters to Zambia in late November, aiming to showcase the social and community benefits of its mines.
“We invited them, they came and we’re very grateful,” said James Devas, FQM’s corporate affairs manager. “Our reputation in Panama is not where it should be. We didn’t communicate broadly enough to the Panamanian people.”
The growth of the FQM and Barrick mines in Zambia are part of a larger shift from the old copper belt to a newly emerging sector in North-Western province. For decades, the province has been underdeveloped. Its sense of marginalization fuelled grievances that sparked a local rebellion from 1976 to 1990, which in turn led to military clashes that further damaged its economy and its social development.
Much of the province remains heavily forested today. Its infrastructure is poor, and its literacy rates are among the lowest in the country. But mining exploration is accelerating, and the government is building new border posts to link it more closely to Congo’s mining belt. The province could become one of Africa’s key mining crossroads: connecting north to Congo, west to Angola and Namibia, and west to Tanzania.
For decades, miners were deterred from NorthWestern province – not only because of its isolation, but also because its copper grades were far lower than in the copper belt. Improved technology has allowed FQM to make these lower grades profitable, but it also requires much bigger volumes of waste rock. “The only way to make sense of it is large-scale and massive volumes per day,” Mr. Muyangwa said.
As the copper grades at some of its Zambian deposits fall below 0.5 per cent and continue to decline, FQM has introduced new technology to make the mines more cost-efficient.
It runs one of the world’s biggest fleets of 220tonne diesel-electric dump trucks, which can switch to overhead power lines – almost like a Toronto streetcar – to double their speed on the ramps leading up from the pit. The system, known as trolley assist, cuts their diesel consumption by 90 per cent and allows big cost savings.
At Kansanshi, the company has already installed 14 kilometres of power lines for its 80 trolley-assisted trucks, and it plans to expand to 20 kilometres this year.
The company is also testing the world’s first ultralarge battery-powered mining truck, built by Hitachi Construction Machinery, which uses the overhead electricity cables to recharge its giant battery. The Japanese company chose Kansanshi for the trial because of its extensive electricity lines, and because of its smooth roads, which ensure that the truck won’t be jostled loose from the power lines.
“You need to be innovative, to get your costs down and make your operations profitable – otherwise you won’t be able to operate at those low copper grades,” Mr. Mukutuma says. “That’s really driven a lot of the work we’ve done.”
In another innovation, FQM has built one of the world’s first rail-run conveyor belts, using small carts on wheels, instead of conventional fixed rollers. It has reduced energy consumption by up to 80 per cent, Mr. Mukutuma says.
While those technical fixes have boosted efficiency, they don’t alter a fundamental reality: FQM needs electricity, and Zambia’s supply is badly constrained. The country depends on hydro power, primarily from the Kariba Dam on the Zambezi River, but frequent droughts have slashed the dam’s power production, leaving the mines scrambling to respond.
A decade ago, during a severe drought, Zambia’s electricity monopoly ordered the miners to cut their energy use by 20 per cent. It led to layoffs and cuts in copper production.
Drought returned again in 2024, but this time the mining companies were allowed to buy power from private power-trading suppliers, including South African and Mozambican companies. By November, FQM was buying 90 per cent of its electricity from foreign suppliers.
Longer-term, those private deals might not always be available – and they don’t provide much help to the millions of ordinary Zambians who endure power rationing for up to 20 hours a day. So the Zambian government is hastily trying to develop new energy sources. By 2030, it wants the country to get at least 30 per cent of its energy from non-hydro renewable sources, especially solar.
Canada is already helping in the quest for renewables. In 2024, Zambia signed a deal with Torontobased SkyPower Global to supply the country with 1,000 megawatts of solar energy – enough to provide electricity to four million Zambian homes.
Chinese and Turkish companies have also spent heavily in solar projects in Zambia – much of it intended for mining companies such as FQM.
China has invested a total of about US$6-billion in Zambia’s economy over the past two decades, and it boasts that the TAZARA upgrade will create a “Prosperity Belt” for the country. It recently entrenched its economic influence in Zambia by winning agreement for its mining companies to pay their royalties and taxes in yuan, the Chinese currency.
The Trump administration is fighting back. On the same day the Chinese premier was in Zambia to inaugurate the TAZARA project, U.S. diplomats posted a mischievous message on their social media accounts, recalling that Washington had provided US$45-million to help procure locomotives for the Chinese-built railway in the 1980s. The American aid had rescued a railway that was degraded by “poor quality and cutting of corners in project delivery,” the diplomats said.
For the Canadian miners in Zambia, the competition between the superpowers simply reinforces the impression that the world is beating a path to their door.
“When people are fighting over you,” Mr. Koettgen says, “it makes this an interesting place.”
This opinion was written by Marcus Gee and was published in the Globe & Mail on January 10, 2026.
The roots lie in a byzantine new system, not privatization
Another month in Toronto, another fiasco. Last month, it was the opening of a new, suburban transit service. The long-awaited $3.7billion Finch West light-rail line turned out to be so slow that one guy put on his jogging shoes and managed to outrun it.
This month it is a new recycling pick-up service.
A group of private companies has just taken over pick-up duties from the city. In most neighbourhoods, the same garbage trucks still pick up recycling on the same days from the same bins, but oversight now lies with a not-for-profit organization called Circular Materials, which acts on behalf of companies like Loblaws and PepsiCo.
Many residents who left their blue bins out for a special postholiday collection found that the garbage trucks failed to arrive. Their bins sat outside in the snow. Those who called in to find out what was happening often could not get an answer. It seemed incredible that after months, even years, of preparation for the new service, the powers that be could foul up so badly.
Some city councillors blamed privatization. They said the mess happened because the Ontario government took responsibility for recycling collection away from the city and handed it to private interests.
But that misinterprets the province’s intention. The Progressive Conservative government of Premier Doug Ford didn’t make the change as a gift to the private sector. Its main aim was to shift the cost of collecting recyclables away from taxpayers and load it onto the companies that make the products in the first place.
The principle is called extended producer responsibility. Proponents of EPR argue that if companies have to pay for picking up all those cardboard boxes, plastic bottles and so on, they will find ways to make fewer of them. In theory, this will lead to a so-called circular economy, in which materials are reused and recycled over and over.
The Progressive Conservative government of Premier Doug Ford didn’t make the change as a gift to the private sector. Its main aim was to shift the cost of collecting recyclables away from taxpayers and load it onto the companies that make the products in the first place.
Environmentalists love it. They say it makes producers pay for their wastefulness. Governments from Germany to South Korea to British Columbia have embraced it. They often boast about all the money they are saving people.
In practice, EPR is not the neat and elegant solution it seems. To begin with, the savings to the taxpayer are meagre. Toronto’s government will spend about $10-million less every year, a drop in the bucket in a budget of around $19-billion. It will use the money to limit the annual increases in the rate people pay to have their waste collected.
But residents will end up paying in other ways. Companies that take on the expense of recycling are bound to pass that cost on to consumers in the form of higher prices. What households save on their waste-collection bill they will lose at the store counter.
EPR is often tough to implement and administer. The provincial government introduced it for batteries and tires a few years ago. Battery manufacturers fell short of their recycling targets and, last year, the government gave them a break by pushing the target back. It gave tire producers a similar break after they had similar problems. As a result, ugly mountains of used tires waiting to be processed are piling up in various parts of the province.
On top of all that, a recent report from the provincial Auditor General said that the organization that oversees the recycling of batteries, tires and electronics is falling down on the job, failing to make small producers obey the rules.
In the case of household recycling, Ontario spent years in talks with producers, industry groups and collection companies to come up with a way to make the handover to the private sector.
After complaints from the producers over the burden that was being placed on them, the government ended up softening some recycling goals and other requirements. With all the setting of targets, monitoring of compliance and accompanying paperwork, the result is a spider’s web of regulation and bureaucracy. Simple or efficient it is not.
The collection hiccups that happened this month will probably pass. But whether the changeover made sense to begin with is another question. In most cases, cities were doing a fine job of picking up the trash, using either private contractors or city workers.
My Climate Change Website 