Canada's Energy and Natural Resources Minister Tim Hodgson has announced 26 new investments, partnerships and measures to unlock C$6.4-billion of critical minerals projects.

These initiatives are being advanced under the newly-launched G7 Critical Minerals Production Alliance, which Canada is leading as part of its broader agenda to build resilient, secure and sustainable mineral supply chains.

“This first round of G7 Alliance projects sends the world a very clear signal: we are serious about reducing market concentration and dependencies, safeguarding national security and sovereignty, mobilising capital, and driving investments in sustainable critical minerals projects,” said Hodgson said during the closing press conference of the G7 Energy and Environment Ministers’ meeting in Toronto.

In his remarks he also underlined Canada’s role in sovereign-capability building, announcing that the government has “issued an order in council under the Defence Production Act officially designating critical minerals as essential to Canadian defence and national interests. This enables Canada to launch our own defence stockpiling regime and to support multilateral stockpiling efforts.”

That step, he said, would “strengthen our capabilities in strategic sectors and contribute to NATO and defence-spending commitments. By protecting domestic production under volatile global conditions, we ensure a secure supply of critical minerals to Canadian and allied defence industries.”

The project pipeline supported under the alliance includes investments and offtake arrangements aimed at boosting Canadian production and processing of key minerals. For example, Canada has entered offtake and investment agreements with Nouveau Monde Graphite for its Matawinie project near Montreal, aligned with Japanese, Luxembourg and Canadian partners, to diversify graphite supply chains.

Similarly, there is support for Rio Tinto’s pilot plant in Sorel-Tracy, Quebec, targeted at commercial-scale scandium production, backed by a C$25-million investment from the Canada Growth Fund. Other projects in the suite include rare-earth initiatives such as Torngat Metals’ Strange Lake project in Nunavik, an offtake for Northern Graphite’s Lac des Îles natural-graphite production, and a C$2-billion synthetic-graphite facility by Vianode in St. Thomas, Ontario.

"We are no longer just talking. Today is a proof of concept: now it is time to sustain and accelerate progress," said Hodgson.

He added that as the world moves more swiftly to reduce dependence on concentrated supply chains, “our collective commitment is clear: every delay is a concession of economic and national-security interests, and we will no longer accept that”.

Against the backdrop of increasing global competition for strategic minerals, Canada’s approach through the alliance emphasises public-private capital mobilisation, offtake agreements, processing capacity and multilateral partnerships.

“We have committed to action in the following areas: building resilient supply chains for critical minerals through the production alliance; mobilising private capital at scale, including by leveraging public financial institutions and agencies; strengthening support for Ukraine; and aligning innovation in AI, the nuclear industry and clean electricity.”

The announcements also reflect Canada’s intention to turn its domestic mineral-wealth endowment into a value-chain platform: mining, refining, manufacturing and recycling rather than simply raw-material export. Hodgson told the Ministers that his country wanted to be “masters in our own home” in critical-minerals value-chain development, and that Canada offered “regulatory certainty, a talented workforce, and a deep commitment to open markets and trade diversification.”