Event Date: September 25, 2025 - 5:00pm to 6:30pm
Location: CRX C632, 100 Louis-Pasteur Private

Presented by CIPS, IPEN, the CN-Paul M. Tellier Chair on Business and Public Policy & the Hyman Soloway Chair on Business and Trade Law, and part of the “Canada’s Critical Minerals Statecraft & Diplomacy” project funded by a Partnership Development Grant from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada

Critical minerals and metals (CMM) fuel the energy transition and are vital for national defense. While Canada has a long history of excellence in mining and significant deposits, the mining and processing of some critical minerals is concentrated with strategic rivals, predominantly in China. Canada’s 2022 Critical Minerals Strategy seeks to strengthen Canada’s role in critical mineral value chains from upstream mining and midstream processing to downstream manufacturing and recycling. 

This public panel kicks of a new research project at the University of Ottawa funded by Canada’s Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council to explore the transnational dimension of Canada’s critical mineral strategy. Over three years, the project in close collaboration with industry, civil society and public stakeholders, will map and analyse Canada’s CMM diplomacy and domestic flanking measures with a view to produce new research, frameworks and actionable policy recommendations.

The public panel will set the stage by situating Canada in global developments related to critical minerals, review the current state of Canada’s CMM statecraft and diplomacy, and identify gaps, strategies and opportunities for Canada to supply the world while diversifying from China.

Panelists

Heather Exner-Pirot is a Senior Fellow and Director of Energy, Natural Resources and Environment at the Macdonald-Laurier Institute in Ottawa, Special Advisor to the Business Council of Canada, Research Advisor to the Indigenous Resource Network, and Global Fellow at the Wilson Centre in Washington D.C. She has twenty years of experience in Indigenous, Arctic and resource development and governance. She has published on Indigenous economic development, resource politics and policy, energy security, Arctic human security, regional Arctic governance and the Arctic Council, Arctic innovation, First Nations equity and own source revenues, and more. She obtained a PhD in Political Science from the University of Calgary in 2011. Exner-Pirot sits on the boards of the Saskatchewan Indigenous Economic Development Network and the Canadian Rural Revitalization Foundation. She is a member of the Canadian Defence and Security Network and a Network Coordinator at the North American and Arctic Defense and Security Network. She is the Managing Editor of the Arctic Yearbook (an international, peer-reviewed annual volume),  a member of Yukon’s Arctic Security Advisory Council, and the former Chair of the Canadian Northern Studies Trust. She has published over 45 peer-reviewed journal articles, book chapters, and edited volumes, and presented at over 100 conferences and events nationally and internationally, in addition to authoring dozens of op-eds in Canada’s top publications. She currently lives near Calgary with her husband and two children.

Pascale Massot is an associate professor in the School of Political Studies at the University of Ottawa. She is also non-resident Honorary Fellow, Political Economy at the Asia Society Policy Institute’s Center for China Analysis, a Senior Fellow at the Asia Pacific Foundation of Canada and a non-resident Fellow with the Centre for China Studies, National Taiwan University. In 2022, she was a member and adviser to the Co-Chairs of the Canadian Minister of Foreign Affairs’ Indo-Pacific Advisory Committee, which was tasked with providing recommendations to the Minister on the development of Canada’s Indo-Pacific strategy. She also served as the Senior Advisor for China and Asia in the offices of various Canadian Cabinet ministers, including the Minister of Foreign Affairs and the Minister of International Trade, between 2015 and 2017 and again between 2020 and 2021. Pascale Massot is the author of China’s Vulnerability Paradox: How the World’s Largest Consumer Transformed Global Commodity Markets (Oxford University Press, 2024) – Winner of the 2024 Best Book Award in International Political Economy from the International Studies Association and 2024 Peter Katzenstein Book Prize.

Jason Garred is an associate professor of economics at the University of Ottawa in Ottawa, Canada. His fields of research are international trade and development economics; he mainly studies the international economic relations of developing countries. He is also a co-organizer of the Ottawa Applied Microeconomics Lab.

Moderator:

Wolfgang Alschner is an empirical legal scholar specialized in international economic law and the computational analysis of law. He holds the Hyman Soloway Chair in Business and Trade Law. His new book, Investment Arbitration and State-Driven Reform: New Treaties, Old Outcomes, recently published with Oxford University Press (2022), explores how a new generation of international investment treaties has been rolled back in investment arbitration practice. Professor Alschner is an Full Professor at the Common Law Section with cross-appointment to the Faculty of Engineering, School of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science. He is also a faculty member of the Centre for Law, Technology and Society at the University of Ottawa and heads the uOttawa Legal Technology Lab. Professor Alschner’s teaching materials on computational legal analysis are available on www.datascienceforlawyers.org.

Agenda

Round 1: Where we are — Why critical mineral (trade) matters  

• What are critical minerals (and metals)? 
• Why are they important? 
• What is China’s role in this space?
• How is geo-economic rivalry and economic security concerns shaping critical mineral trade and policy? 

Round 2: Critical minerals and geopolitics — Chokepoints, weaponization and trade restrictions

• How has the international trade in critical minerals changed?
• How have critical mineral dependencies been weaponized?
• What is China doing to leverage critical mineral supply chains?
• What are other countries doing to reduce their vulnerability and to gain access to critical minerals?

Round 3: Threats for Canada — How can Canada protect its autonomy and work together with like-minded countries?

• How does Canada intervene in international supply chains through domestic measures? (e.g. inbound investment screening, trade restrictions, technology restrictions)
• What are Canada’s defensive / economic security interests and how factor they in its critical minerals strategy? What are tools to advance Canada’s economic security (e.g. stockpiling)? 
• At the Kananaskis summit hosted by Canada, the G7 launched a new Critical Minerals Action Plan. What are the objectives of the Plan? How does that plan compare to other initiatives such as the Minerals Security Partnership?
• Critical mineral partnership agreements are proliferating? What are they about and how do they compare to other international instruments such as traditional investment and trade agreements?
• What is missing? How effective are these efforts? What else should Canada be doing?

Round 4: Opportunities for Canada — How can Canada become a supplier of choice and leverage its soft power?

• What is Canada doing to become a reliable supplier of critical minerals and what are obstacles? (hard infrastructure e.g. ports, soft infrastructure e.g. export finance)
• Canada is also home to many mining companies. What can Canada do support them abroad and to deepen its role in supply chains?
• Canada is a hub for international mining activities: 
  • Canadian Mining Association Towards Sustainable Mining (TSM) initiative
  • Toronto Stock Exchange (TSX/TSXV) important for mining finance
  • Annual PDAC (Prospectors & Developers Association of Canada) convention in Toronto
  • Number of junior miners HQd in Canada 
• Is Canada at the risk of losing this softpower through its national or international actions?
• Can Canada leverage this role more effectively?
• What is missing? How effective are these efforts? What else should Canada be doing?