Trudeau visits Council on Foreign Relations to talk up Canada’s critical minerals
Trudeau said it's important to build democratic values into decisions about where to source minerals, and it's not just about telling companies not to get them from countries such as China.
Prime Minister Justin Trudeau took his Canadian sales pitch to an influential U.S. audience on Apr. 28.
Trudeau spoke at the Council on Foreign Relations, a respected New York think tank, to promote Canada as a wise investment and trusted trading partner.
The idea was to capitalize on the momentum that was generated by last month’s visit to Ottawa by U.S. President Joe Biden, the centrepiece of which was a new Canada-U.S. strategy for the extraction, development and processing of critical minerals.
As the Canadian government works to shore up that domestic industry, the prime minister emphasized that democracies must work together to protect their values and economic interests in the face of rising authoritarianism.
He said it’s important to build democratic values into decisions about where to source minerals, and it’s not just about telling companies not to get them from countries such as China.
“Instead, we should simply commit to sourcing our critical minerals from places that ban forced labour, that have safety standards, that pay their workers a living wage, that have high environmental protections, that work in partnership with Indigenous Peoples,” Trudeau said.
Experts say would-be investors and developers now want to hear more about how Canada plans to streamline the regulatory process in order to capitalize on the country’s underground riches.
Kirsten Hillman, Canada’s envoy to the U.S., acknowledges the appetite for clarity and says it’s a high priority — although the details likely won’t come on Apr. 28.
Contrary to conventional wisdom, Canada’s permitting processes are actually more efficient than those in the U.S., although she agrees they need improvement.
“I’m not saying it’s good enough. And I’m not saying we don’t want to continue to streamline and improve,” Hillman said Thursday.
“But we already have a natural advantage there, and we’ll continue to improve it.”
Trudeau spent the bulk of the day on Apr. 27 focused on promoting efforts to advance sustainable development outside North America, in particular the global South.
