Tag: mining

Role reversal

Major Projects Office less about red tape than coax­ing cap­ital

Terrace Mayor Sean Bujtas, left, Prime Minister Mark Carney, Major Projects Office CEO Dawn Farrell and Housing Minister Gregor Robertson in Terrace, B.C.

This article was written by Ryan Tumilty and was published in the Toronto Star on November 30, 2025.

Nat­ural Resources Min­is­ter Tim Hodg­son is clear about one thing: in the midst of a trade war and an uncer­tain eco­nomic future, Canada can’t suc­ceed without lever­age.

He points to a moment he can’t for­get. Dur­ing an Oval Office meet­ing in March, U.S. Pres­id­ent Don­ald Trump badgered Ukrain­ian Pres­id­ent Volodymyr Zelenskyy, telling him he “had no cards” to play. Hodg­son said that exchange rein­forced his belief that Canada needs to bet­ter pos­i­tion itself for the world ahead.

“None of us enjoyed watch­ing the lec­ture that the pres­id­ent gave Pres­id­ent Zelenskyy about how he had no cards,” Hodg­son said in an inter­view with the Star. “I have no interest in ever being in that kind of con­ver­sa­tion.”

But want­ing lever­age and hav­ing it are two dif­fer­ent things. That dis­tinc­tion is at the core of Canada’s push with the Major Projects Office (MPO) and the Lib­er­als’ recent aggress­ive spend­ing strategy: while reg­u­lat­ory approvals are largely in place for many projects, secur­ing fin­an­cing is still a key chal­lenge.

Many of the projects Prime Min­is­ter Mark Car­ney referred to the MPO were already near­ing the end of their reg­u­lat­ory reviews. Some pro­ponents have even said they don’t want the “national interest” des­ig­na­tion that would guar­an­tee a decision within two years. What these projects really need, they argue, isn’t faster approvals — it’s cap­ital to start build­ing.

The budget gave the Canada Infra­struc­ture Bank another $10 bil­lion in bor­row­ing author­ity and allowed it to invest in any project referred to the MPO. Other Crown cor­por­a­tions — includ­ing the Canada Growth Fund and the Indi­gen­ous Loan Guar­an­tee Cor­por­a­tion — were also gran­ted new room to invest. Ott­awa cre­ated a $2­bil­lion Crit­ical Min­er­als Sov­er­eign Fund as well.

Car­ney has so far referred 11 projects to the MPO and high­lighted another six for fur­ther study. When the legis­la­tion estab­lish­ing the office was fast­tracked earlier this year, Car­ney stressed its poten­tial to accel­er­ate reg­u­lat­ory decisions.

“It’s time to build big, build bold and build now,” he said when the bill passed in June.

MPO CEO Dawn Far­rell told MPs this week that only “one or two” of the projects on Car­ney’s refer­ral list are likely can­did­ates for the national­interest des­ig­na­tion. The rest need cap­ital.

“What we’re doing is ensur­ing that projects can be stream­lined and can get to the fin­ish line and can get built and get their fin­an­cing,” Far­rell said.

In prac­tice, the MPO has been less a reg­u­lat­ory accel­er­ator and more a facil­it­ator, ensur­ing approved projects can actu­ally be fin­anced and built.

Nowhere is that need more urgent than in crit­ical min­er­als, where Hodg­son says Canada’s hand is weak­est. China cur­rently dom­in­ates sup­ply chains for many of the min­er­als needed for elec­tric vehicle bat­ter­ies, advanced man­u­fac­tur­ing and defence tech­no­lo­gies. Accord­ing to Hodg­son’s depart­ment, China con­trols 77 per cent of global graph­ite pro­duc­tion.

While the min­is­ter didn’t cite China by name, he said “non­mar­ket act­ors” are mak­ing it dif­fi­cult for Cana­dian projects to advance.

“There are crit­ical sup­ply chains for advanced man­u­fac­tur­ing, some of the tech­no­lo­gies that decar­bon­ize our eco­nom­ies, defence indus­tries, where non­mar­ket act­ors have fun­da­ment­ally cornered those sup­ply chains and they’re using their abil­ity to corner those sup­ply chains for polit­ical and geo­pol­it­ical means,” he said.

In late Octo­ber, the gov­ern­ment announced 27 deals com­bin­ing fed­eral fin­an­cing tools with invest­ments from G7 coun­tries and major com­pan­ies to secure crit­ical min­eral sup­plies. Canada is one of only a few coun­tries out­side China with sig­ni­fic­ant reserves — and the only one in the G7.

“We have the oppor­tun­ity to be a great ally, and secure sup­ply chains for our allies. In the new world we live in where mul­ti­lat­er­al­ism is being replaced by mer­cant­il­ism, in a world where might makes right, one needs cards,” Hodg­son said. “We need to develop our cards. We have an incred­ible set of cards if we develop them.”

One of the first projects Ott­awa is back­ing is the Nou­veau Monde Graph­ite mine north of Montreal. Car­ney referred the mine to the MPO last week, but the com­pany says it has already com­pleted per­mit­ting and is nearly ready to build.

“At Christ­mas, we will have 50 per cent of all the con­tracts ready to give to con­tract­ors and start con­struc­tion,” said Eric Desaul­niers, the mine’s CEO and pres­id­ent. “But we need the project fin­an­cing to be closed and that kind of seems easy, but it’s a lot of co­ordin­a­tion to close like an $800­mil­lion Cana­dian project fin­an­cing.”

Desaul­niers said his project has had dis­cus­sions with the Canada Growth Fund, Export Devel­op­ment Canada and the Canada Infra­struc­ture Bank about fin­an­cing and the MPO is now able to help co­ordin­ate all those con­ver­sa­tions and get the deals signed and delivered.

The fed­eral gov­ern­ment has also signed an off­take agree­ment to pur­chase 15,000 tonnes per year from the mine, along­side sim­ilar agree­ments from allied coun­tries. Ott­awa can stock­pile the graph­ite or sell it, split­ting profits with Nou­veau Monde.

“It’s a very good instru­ment to make the project attract­ive for cap­ital mar­kets to give cer­tainty on the sales price, so we can fin­ance it, but also at the same time a good instru­ment for the tax­payer,” Desaul­niers said.

North Amer­ica’s only cur­rent graph­ite mine, also in Que­bec, is expec­ted to close within a dec­ade. Desaul­niers said bring­ing his mine online soon will keep cus­tom­ers anchored in Canada for future sup­ply needs.

Mark Selby, CEO of Canada Nickel, had his Craw­ford Nickel Project referred to the MPO last week. The pro­posed mine near Tim­mins,

Ont., is still in the reg­u­lat­ory pro­cess; Selby said he doesn’t expect the MPO to sig­ni­fic­antly speed that up. But he said simply being referred provides cred­ib­il­ity with investors.

“Most of the investors here are pretty focused on gold, sil­ver and cop­per,” he said. “And so the rest of the peri­odic table doesn’t get atten­tion — and that’s where most of these crit­ical min­er­als are.”

Canada Nickel has received a small amount of gov­ern­ment fund­ing to help get elec­tri­city to the site, but the gov­ern­ment is so far not a major investor in the mine itself. Selby said being referred to the MPO is an endorse­ment from that gives them cred­ib­il­ity with private sec­tor investors, as they look for the fund­ing to get the project under­way and he also hopes it will open up some gov­ern­ment fund­ing for the mine.

“Hav­ing this des­ig­na­tion should put us in the express lane in terms of being able to be able to get this fund­ing from what’s avail­able,” he said.

Selby said to develop crit­ical min­er­als and counter China’s cur­rent dom­in­ance, gov­ern­ments may have to offer sup­port.

“I think over the next 12 months, you’re going to see Canada and other G7 coun­tries and the United States provide more deals like that.”

Hodg­son said the goal is to use pub­lic money to lure in private funds and to show “non­mar­ket act­ors” that they can’t corner the sup­ply.

“If we make clear other com­pet­it­ors are com­ing — whether they lose money to do that or not — then maybe the non­mar­ket act­ors stop behav­ing in non­eco­nomic ways.”

He said the gov­ern­ment has to be in it for the long­term, because coun­ter­ing China is a long­term game.

“China has moved from being a pretty undeveloped, coun­try with lim­ited ambi­tions out­side of China to a world power that wants to chal­lenge U.S dom­in­ance of the world,” he said.

“If you tell me what that stops in and I’ll tell you when maybe we don’t have to focus on that any­more.”

Nat­ural Resources Min­is­ter Tim Hodg­son says the MPO's moves can strengthen Canada's hand and change the unhelp­ful beha­viour of for­eign “non­mar­ket act­ors.”
Nou­veau Monde Graph­ite CEO Eric Desaul­niers says the MPO can now help co­ordin­ate con­ver­sa­tions about sup­port from other arms of the gov­ern­ment.

Nor­dic warn­ing for Canada’s min­ing plans

As Car­ney aims to fast­track projects to unlock crit­ical min­er­als, Nor­way’s struggles offer les­sons

Kornelia Kristensen, a member of the Norwegian environmental group Nature and Youth, during a protest at the Nussir copper mine in Hammerfest, Norway, last summer. “We can't sacrifice our nature to stop the climate crisis,” Kristensen says.

This article was written by Allan Woods and was published in the Toronto Star on November 9, 2025.

Few Cana­dians are likely ever to visit the Nor­we­gian com­munity of Ham­mer­fest, billed as one of the world’s north­ern­most towns.

But one way to see it, at least fig­ur­at­ively, is as the con­tro­ver­sial canary in the crit­ical­min­eral mine — the Nussir cop­per mine, in this case.

Nor­way, Europe and the world need cop­per to build elec­tric vehicle bat­ter­ies and other green tech­no­lo­gies, as well as for the hi­tech space and defence indus­tries. North­ern Nor­way also needs the lure of jobs to reverse rural depop­u­la­tion trends.

But with plans to dump the Nussir mine’s waste in the sea, and poten­tially huge dis­rup­tions to reindeer herds and the live­li­hoods of tra­di­tional her­ders, many sci­ent­ists, envir­on­ment­al­ists and Indi­gen­ous groups see the over­all costs of the project as pro­hib­it­ive.

“We have decided on the issue on sev­eral occa­sions, and we have con­cluded that this is not a feas­ible project,” Silje Karine Muotka, pres­id­ent of the Sami Par­lia­ment, said in an inter­view. The par­lia­ment is an elec­ted body that advises the Nor­we­gian legis­lature on the interests of the coun­try’s Indi­gen­ous Sami people.

The under­ground mine in Ham­mer­fest, a remote town of about 8,000 people that lies on the shores of the Bar­ents Sea, has drawn the atten­tion across Nor­way, Europe and the world.

And in Canada, too.

In addi­tion to Nussir being owned by Toronto­based Blue Moon Metals Inc., the issues that have made this cop­per deposit both so enti­cing and so con­tro­ver­sial are ones that Cana­dians, too, could soon be facing.

In last week’s fed­eral budget, Prime Min­is­ter Mark Car­ney prom­ised an eco­nomy “tur­bocharged by major nation­build­ing projects.”

Among other meas­ures, the budget has pro­posed tax breaks, loans and invest­ments through a $2­bil­lion Crit­ical Min­er­als Sov­er­eign Fund, part of an over­all strategy “to help more crit­ical min­er­als projects get to final invest­ment decisions within a two­year win­dow.”

That bullish stance is something like what Nor­way has in mind with the Nussir mine, which began in the 1970s as an open­pit oper­a­tion before mar­ket prices for cop­per plunged, mak­ing con­tin­ued oper­a­tions unprof­it­able until recently.

“It’s been con­sidered as one of the import­ant projects, and the gov­ern­ment has given a go­ahead des­pite there being little social licence for min­ing,” said Erdem Lamapazhov, a research fel­low at Nor­way’s Fridtjof Nansen Insti­tute.

The Nussir mine also has the back­ing of local politi­cians, who are sold on the prom­ise of job cre­ation, eco­nomic devel­op­ment and the pos­sib­il­ity of attract­ing people to the region rather than bid­ding them farewell.

In response to writ­ten ques­tions, Blue Moon Metals chief exec­ut­ive Chris­tian Kargl­Simard said the mine would cre­ate about 250 high­pay­ing jobs, and that the com­pany would pri­or­it­ize local hires as well as those will­ing to move per­man­ently to the area.

But there is some mar­ket­ing involved, too.

The Nussir project is being billed as the world’s first fully elec­tric, zero­emis­sions mine. This may have helped secure a deal in June that named Nussir as among 13 projects loc­ated out­side of the European Union that would provide the con­tin­ent with access to “stra­tegic raw mater­i­als.”

And in Septem­ber, Blue Moon Metals announced it had nego­ti­ated fin­an­cing of up to $140 mil­lion (U.S.) from Oak­tree Cap­ital Man­age­ment and Hartree. The two global invest­ment firms are sub­si­di­ar­ies of Brook­field Asset Man­age­ment, the com­pany chaired by Car­ney until last Janu­ary, when he launched his cam­paign for the Lib­eral party’s lead­er­ship.

These deep­pock­eted firms are step­ping in where oth­ers have pre­vi­ously feared to tread.

In 2021, with the Nussir mine under dif­fer­ent own­er­ship, the Ger­man com­pany Aur­u­bis can­celled a deal to buy cop­per con­cen­trate, say­ing that it could not in good con­science do busi­ness with the mine des­pite its prom­ise of low emis­sions.

“For us, all sus­tain­ab­il­ity cri­teria have to be ful­filled,” an Aur­u­bis senior vice­pres­id­ent said at the time. “We can only be suc­cess­ful in the future if we con­tinue spread­ing an under­stand­ing in all areas and activ­it­ies of the com­pany.”

It was clear what was troub­ling the Ger­mans, even if the com­pany made no spe­cific men­tion of sal­mon and reindeer.

For more than a dec­ade, the poten­tial impact on the fish and the herds nat­ive to this part of north­ern Nor­way have fuelled oppos­i­tion to the cop­per mine.

This sum­mer, the Nor­we­gian envir­on­mental group Nature and Youth set up a per­man­ent camp about two kilo­metres from the mine site to protest the project. Kor­ne­lia Kristensen said she had been arres­ted five times, rack­ing up thou­sands of dol­lars in fines, for break­ing into the mine site, chain­ing her­self to con­struc­tion equip­ment and demon­strat­ing against the project, which began pre­lim­in­ary tun­nel excav­a­tion earlier this year.

“We can’t sac­ri­fice our nature to stop the cli­mate crisis,” she said. “The reason we want to stop the cli­mate crisis is so that we can take care of our nature. And we can’t sac­ri­fice Sami rights. That doesn’t allow for a fair green trans­ition.”

A 2012 report into the min­ing project by the Nor­we­gian Insti­tute of Mar­ine Research con­cluded that the mine’s oper­a­tion would res­ult in two­mil­lion tonnes of waste rock, includ­ing high con­tents of heavy metals, being dumped into the fiord. The authors con­cluded that “the risk of ser­i­ous neg­at­ive impact on both trout, char and sal­mon is sig­ni­fic­ant.”

It also judged the risks to be “incom­pat­ible” with the gov­ern­ment’s goals of pro­tect­ing sal­mon stocks through the des­ig­na­tion of National Sal­mon Fiords and Rivers.

Nor­way is the world’s largest exporter of sal­mon, gen­er­at­ing rev­en­ues of $17 bil­lion (Cana­dian) in 2024.

Kargl­Simard, of Blue Moon Metals, down­played con­cerns, say­ing mine waste would settle 90 metres below the water’s sur­face, that the deep­water organ­isms likely to be affected would “come back within three­to­seven years after pro­duc­tion ends,” and that there would be “no impact” on sal­mon or other fish that stay within 40 metres of the water’s sur­face.

But for Muotka, the Sami Par­lia­ment’s pres­id­ent, it is illo­gical for the Nor­we­gian gov­ern­ment to pro­mote high­stand­ard sal­mon farm­ing while also back­ing a min­ing project that would dis­turb and threaten a nation­ally pro­tec­ted sal­mon reserve. “I think this is sense­less polit­ics,” she said. “I have told the dif­fer­ent min­is­ters from dif­fer­ent gov­ern­ments for sev­eral years, but I do not under­stand this.”

The other issue with the Nussir mine is the threat it poses to reindeer, for whom the mine site serves as an annual calv­ing ground, and to the live­li­hoods of Sami reindeer her­ders.

A 2020 report com­mis­sioned by the Sami Par­lia­ment said that the con­struc­tion in and around the mine site, coupled with the reg­u­lar explos­ive blasts to break up the rock inside the mine, risked scar­ing off the reindeer and redu­cing access to food, poten­tially res­ult­ing in dis­ease and death.

This is a major con­cern for mem­bers of the Sami Par­lia­ment, but there are dif­fer­ing opin­ions.

The oppos­i­tion party Nordkalottfolk cam­paigned in elec­tions this fall on a pro­devel­op­ment plat­form, accus­ing the elec­ted body of act­ing as a “no machine” that was con­stantly opposed to jobs, invest­ment and mod­ern­iz­a­tion in north­ern Nor­way while put­ting the interests of sev­eral thou­sand reindeer her­ders above all oth­ers.

“It is equally Sami to work in industry, teach in the coun­tryside, fish in the fiord or start a com­pany,” Nordkalottfolk pres­id­en­tial can­did­ate Vibeke Larsen wrote in July, present­ing the elec­tion as a choice between a Sami gov­ern­ment that “turns North­ern Nor­way into a museum and reindeer herd­ing reserve” and one that is open to devel­op­ment agree­ments so long as Sami interests are pro­tec­ted and their rights upheld.

These are issues that Indi­gen­ous Peoples around the world are grap­pling with as pro­spect­ors, power­ful mul­tina­tional and national gov­ern­ments seek access to bur­ied min­eral treas­ures or pas­sage for things like pipelines, which are con­sidered more crit­ical than ever as the world seeks out secure, stable sup­pli­ers of vital energy and min­er­als.

His­tor­ic­ally, Muotka said, Indi­gen­ous people have been pushed off their tra­di­tional lands by those seek­ing access to valu­able resources, and made to suf­fer if they res­ist.

But she said developed coun­tries with min­eral riches have an oblig­a­tion now to pro­ceed dif­fer­ently.

“What we should do in Nor­way is ensure that any kind of min­eral projects meet the highest stand­ard, both with regards to envir­on­mental issues but also human rights,” she said. “We are liv­ing in a coun­try where we are able to do that.”

She is com­mit­ted to that fight, not only for the bene­fit of her own people in Nor­way, but on behalf of the poor and exploited peoples of resource­rich nations.

“If we are giv­ing in and if we don’t take up this issue, I fear for the chil­dren in blood dia­mond areas who can only hope for justice at some point,” she said.

“So I think when you ask if this is an import­ant ques­tion for us, I can truly say that this is an import­ant ques­tion for us.”