In the News May 20

Mining in Northwest Territories

Promoting the War Industry in the Name of “Greening” the Economy

– Fernand Deschamps –

Recently the federal and Ontario governments, in the same way Quebec and other provincial and territorial governments have, pledged to increase the supply of critical minerals that will benefit the U.S. war economy. Canadians are not consulted when agreements are reached between the U.S. and Canada and they are opposed to the exploitation and plunder of natural resources to benefit war production.

Canadian provinces and territories and Quebec are already sites for the extraction of critical minerals for the U.S. war industry including uranium, nickel, cobalt, scandium, etc. Production of other critical minerals including lithium, rare earth elements (REE) and graphite, will soon start in such places as BC, Yukon, the Northwest Territories (NWT), Saskatchewan, Ontario, Quebec and Newfoundland.

Provincial and territorial governments, along with their federal counterpart, are already bending over backwards to supply the mining oligopolies with the infrastructure, subsidies and tax breaks these rich private interests are seeking. This was referred to in a presentation made in February 2021 by Simon Moores, CEO of Benchmark Mineral Intelligence, to the House of Commons’ Standing Committee on Natural Resources.

Some of these projects are at a preliminary stage of exploration while others have started extraction and production of critical minerals such as REE as well as elements for lithium-ion batteries such as lithium, graphite, cobalt, manganese and nickel.

The following articles include two examples of mining projects close to Yellowknife in the NWT for what have become “minerals critical to the national security” of the United States, as well as the United Kingdom, Australia and the European Union.

In March 2021, the U.S. Department of Commerce (DoC) launched a program to help U.S. mining companies and battery makers expand into Canada. In the words of the DoC, the move is part of a strategy to boost North American production of minerals used to make electric vehicles and “counter Chinese market dominance.”

What is becoming apparent is that more of these mining properties, where extraction of critical minerals is planned, in Quebec and in Canadian provinces and territories are being operated or acquired by foreign private interests. These are mostly Australian, U.S. and British, with the help, in certain cases, of foreign governments.

TML Daily, posted May 20, 2022.