There’s no “cookie cutter” approach to support Canada’s investment-hungry miners , says Energy and Natural Resources Minister Tim Hodgson , as Ottawa tries to speed up the building of certain mines set to

produce minerals critical for the economy by referring them to a government office that focuses on advancing key projects.

The “reality is that” the market dynamics for each of the critical minerals are quite different, ranging from geopolitical situations to environmental issues to customer demand, he said.

“It’s a little too simplistic to say that there is a cookie cutter,” he said. “It’s going to be situation specific.”

Despite years of talk about how important it is for Canada to support mining projects trying to produce critical minerals, such as nickel or graphite, raising the necessary capital remains a formidable challenge, mining executives say, because investors recognize that China’s dominance over various commodities means it can single-handedly change global supply levels to crater or elevate prices.

More recently, though, the federal government has taken several measures to tackle these issues. On Thursday, it referred three mining projects that are expected to produce tungsten, nickel and graphite to its

Major Projects Office , which will work with different stakeholders to ensure these projects are built faster. That could mean working with Indigenous groups or investors to raise money.

But Hodgson said this may not be the template to help develop several other critical minerals projects in Canada that are led by cash-strapped junior miners.

Still, he said there’s a “whole bunch of tools” the government can use to support such projects, ranging from introducing them to equipment manufacturers and developing stockpiling arrangements to working with different levels of the government to “de-bottleneck” projects and make them more “cost competitive.”

Projects being developed by Toronto-based Canada Nickel Co. Inc.’s and Montreal-based Nouveau Monde Graphite Inc. were among the latest to be added to the Major Projects Office on Thursday. Both graphite and nickel are considered key to building electric vehicles and the energy transition away from fossil fuels.

At the same time, both are relatively small-sized mining companies with market caps of about $350 million and $650 million, respectively. Some junior companies have faced hurdles in completing their mines in the past and many have sold their projects after receiving lucrative offers.

“Our job is to help these entities get to production. If they believe it’s in their interest to bring a partner in, that’s up to them,” Hodgson said. “When we are assessing who we want to support, we look at the capabilities of the management team as part of the potential referral process.”

He also said both the nickel and graphite markets are being manipulated today and that has made it “increasingly difficult” for companies in the West to come on.

“We can choose not to react to that and watch the mining and metal-processing capabilities continue to dissolve in the West and be concentrated in authoritarian regimes or we can respond,” he said. “You have a number of major (original equipment manufacturers) in our allied countries who are looking for a stable source of supply outside Russian or Chinese control. Canada is a place to do that.”

Pierre Gratton, chief executive of the Mining Association of Canada , said the present government has been a lot more aggressive than the previous administration in promoting critical minerals and some of its steps have exceeded his expectations.

“Some of these critical minerals, where China has so much control, there’s been a recognition that governments now have to step in or we’re not going to be able to

reduce our dependency on China ,” he said. Gratton said there are more projects the government could support, but Ottawa is being “very careful” in terms of what it refers to the Major Projects Office. For example, he said Canada Nickel’s Crawford project has a “very solid” relationship with First Nations.

At a press conference on Thursday, Hodgson said the goal of the Major Projects Office is to create an environment where private-sector capital flows into projects.

“If we do the right thing, if we could create the right permitting environment … private capital will flow to these sorts of opportunities,” he said. “It is far better for Canadians to not have the federal government financing these private-sector initiatives.”

Hodgson also recalled the “horrible scene” of Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelenskyy being told at the White House that he didn’t have any cards to play.

“I go to bed every night thinking, how do I make sure Canada is never in that position?” he said. “We have an incredible hand of cards in critical minerals.”

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