Direction Legault Government Has Set for Quebec Economy
Processing Critical Minerals in Bécancour Region
Port at Bécancour, Quebec
Bécancour on the St. Lawrence River in Central Quebec provides world-class industrial and port infrastructure to support the establishment of heavy industries. It is targeted by the Legault government as essential infrastructure for the further integration of Quebec into the U.S. economy and war machine.
The U.S. government is making no secret of the fact that it is working to secure a "Made in America Supply Chain for Critical Minerals," including rare earth elements, lithium, and cobalt which, among others, are needed to ensure the U.S. is combat-ready. No amount of declarations that the aim is beneficial to the people of Quebec and Canada by ensuring green energy transition and developing civilian electric vehicles as a key example of this transition, can hide the fact that the infrastructure that is being built serves the war machine and the U.S. striving for world domination. This goes against the striving of the people in Quebec and Canada to build an economy that looks after the well-being of the people and promotes trade on the basis of mutual benefit.
Recent
developments have highlighted the aggressive military aims that
are
behind the building of these plants and infrastructure. Major
emphasis
is being placed on having Canada break its relations with China
so that
the U.S. military can take over various mining deposits in
Canada
through
public funding recently announced by the Biden administration.
Public
funds in the U.S. were given to the military and now the
military is
using them to help U.S. companies take over various mining
initiatives
in Canada and to place Canada and its resources, territory and
workers
under their
control. This is all done in the name of national security and
countering Chinese influence on Canada. The people of Quebec and
Canada
are kept in the dark and presented with faits accomplis.
At the beginning of November, the Canadian government ordered three Chinese firms to divest from a trio of Canadian-based mining companies under the hoax of safeguarding Canada's national security. These are attempts led by the intelligence agencies to whip up hysteria against China in order to establish uncontested U.S. control over Canada's critical minerals and supply chains through infrastructure such as ports, highways, railways, etc.
Quebec Premier François Legault's "energy transition" involves what his government calls a "global battery cluster" in the industrial and port area of Bécancour.
In 2022, numerous mining and manufacturing monopolies involved in the production of rechargeable lithium-ion batteries have indicated their intention to locate in the Bécancour region to process lithium, nickel and graphite. These are minerals that the U.S. says are critical to its national security and combat capability. Lithium in particular is used in making missiles and in the portable equipment that soldiers carry. Claiming to support a green economy, the mining and manufacturing monopolies are demanding hydroelectricity rates that are favourable to their narrow private interests.
In June, the Brazilian mining oligopoly Vale announced plans to set up a plant in Bécancour. The plant will process, annually, 25,000 tonnes of nickel sulphide into nickel sulphate, the chemical compound used in the production of nickel-based lithium-ion batteries. The nickel would come from Vale's mining operations in Voisey's Bay, Labrador or Sudbury, Ontario. On November 23, Vale and General Motors announced they had signed a deal to supply nickel sulphate from a proposed Vale plant in Bécancour.
The Bécancour industrial park is also home to two other major projects, one by the German firm BASF and the other an alliance of the South Korean steel company POSCO and the American car manufacturer General Motors, to manufacture materials for cathodes -- the main component of lithium-ion batteries. Nickel is used in the manufacture of these cathodes, which explains Vale's interest in Bécancour.
The graphite used to manufacture the anode components of lithium-ion batteries is currently mined 120 kilometres north of Montreal at the Nouveau Monde Graphite (NMG) open-pit mine. This mining project was approved by the Quebec government without all the environmental studies requested by the Bureau d'audiences publiques sur l'environnement (BAPE) having been completed. The owners of NMG include the British group Pallinghurst and Investissement Québec. They have been joined by Japanese companies Mitsui and Panasonic, which announced on October 20 that they were investing U.S.$25 million, with Pallinghurst and Investissement Québec each contributing U.S.$12.5 million.
Graphic
produced by Nouveau Monde Graphite showing Bécancour as hub for
Lithium battery production and its access to markets.
The high-purity graphite extracted there could also be used for weapons production. It will be processed in a refining plant to be built in Bécancour as part of "brand new integrated anode production in Canada." Already in April, the federal and Ontario governments announced hundreds of millions of dollars in handouts to European company Stellantis and LG Energy Solution of South Korea "to build a $5 billion electric vehicle battery plant in Windsor."
During
his October 27-28 visit to Canada aimed at telling Canada to
fall in
line with U.S. attempts to further isolate China and Russia and
further
integrate Canada into the U.S. war machine, Secretary of State
Antony
Blinken, along with Foreign Minister Mélanie Joly, visited a
pilot plant in
Montreal for recycling lithium-ion batteries for electric
vehicles. The
pilot plant, Recyclage Lithion, is jointly owned by foreign
private
interests General Motors (GM), South Korea's IMM Global Battery
Limited, and the Canadian and Quebec governments. In April, the
Legault
government invested $15
million in equity in Recyclage Lithion and provided $7.5 million
in
subsidies to the company.
The location of the first of these recycling plants has not yet been determined, but if GM gets its way with the Legault government on hydro rates, there is a good chance that it will set up a $500 million plant in the Bécancour region, which fits well with the trade corridors that feed the U.S. manufacturing sector.
In Sorel, less than 100 kilometres upstream from Bécancour, a plant owned by Anglo-Australian mining company Rio Tinto processes titanium ore from Havre St-Pierre to extract titanium dioxide and scandium oxide, two other strategic minerals that also have military applications. On October 11, during a visit to the plant in Sorel, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and François-Philippe Champagne, Minister of Innovation, Science and Industry, announced federal government grants of $222 million to Rio Tinto to proceed with "the electrification of furnaces and the replacement of coal" for the "decarbonization" of the plant. Rio Tinto has already announced that it will also proceed with refining lithium at the same plant from a number of international sources "if the conditions are right."
Rio Tinto Metallurgical complex at Sorel-Tracy.
It goes without saying that for these narrow private interests, the issue of obtaining a favourable rate for hydroelectricity from the Quebec government will be a determining factor in their decisions to go ahead with these projects in Bécancour and Sorel. Guy Leblanc, CEO of Investissement Québec, the subsidy provider for Quebec's Ministry of Economy and Innovation, agreed. He said, "We are in discussion with several groups. It is confirmed: the entire chain will be established in Quebec. For the first time in the history of Quebec, we will be processing our minerals on site."
Even if this processing is done on site, there is no indication that the Legault government will be able to control where these processed minerals will end up. In other words, the supply chain of critical minerals that begins with their extraction and then their processing is not under the control of the Legault government but rather of large Anglo-American, Brazilian, European, south Korean and Japanese private interests that compete with China and Russia.
It is an integral part of the further integration of Quebec and Canada into the U.S. imperialist war machine, under the guise of developing the green economy. The Bécancour industrial and port zone is being organized as part of the essential infrastructure needed for this integration.
This article was published in
Volume 52 Number 53 - December 3, 2022
Article Link:
https://cpcml.ca/Tmld2022/Articles/D520531.HTM
Website: www.cpcml.ca Email: editor@cpcml.ca