The Canadian Critical Minerals Strategy

Released in Vancouver on 9 December 2022 by the Minister of Natural Resources, the Strategy is backed by up to CAD 3.8 billion in federal funding allocated in Budget 2022, covering geoscience and exploration through mineral processing, manufacturing and recycling, including research, development and technological deployment. Natural Resources Canada states five outcomes for it: supporting economic growth, competitiveness and job creation; promoting climate action and environmental protection; advancing reconciliation with Indigenous Peoples; fostering diverse and inclusive workforces and communities; and enhancing global security and partnership with allies. The Strategy addresses Canada's 31 critical minerals across the value chain, and the release names lithium, graphite, nickel, cobalt, copper, rare earth elements, potash, uranium and aluminum as the opportunities validated in consultation.

Canada's principal positive-inducement instrument, and the counterpart to the investment-screening measure already coded here — together they show one government using funding and gatekeeping on the same resource base. The framing is the distinguishing feature: alone among the strategies coded in this tranche, it places reconciliation with Indigenous Peoples among the stated outcomes on equal footing with security and growth, and it names allied partnership as an outcome rather than as a means. Material scope is coded narrowly to the minerals the release itself names among those this database tracks; the full 31-mineral list was not machine-read.