The federal government's inaugural deployment through the Canada Critical Minerals Accelerator bypassed lithium developers and nickel mines, directing support instead to germanium, antimony, and gallium production at Teck Resources' Trail smelter in British Columbia — a facility operating since the 1890s. The Canada Growth Fund agreed to a commercial framework for an equity-like investment of up to $400 million, paired with a potential $850-million commitment from Teck, while Ottawa secured the right to negotiate purchase agreements over a portion of the output. That decision offers greater insight into Ottawa's strategic thinking than any published policy document.

Natural Resources Canada is accepting submissions only until Aug. 14 on an update to the Critical Minerals Strategy, the first revision since 2022. The existing strategy treats all 34 designated minerals as a single policy category — an approach suitable for an inventory exercise but problematic for a document now used to direct capital allocation.

Defence and Semiconductor Metals

Germanium, gallium, antimony, and tungsten merit top priority. Beijing placed germanium and gallium under export control in 2023 and extended restrictions to antimony the following year. China is the world's leading producer of all four — and the dominant supplier of gallium, germanium, and antimony — giving the export controls leverage over Western defence and semiconductor supply chains. These materials have few practical substitutes in their critical applications: germanium is essential for fibre optics and infrared optics, gallium for radar semiconductors, antimony for munitions and flame retardants, and tungsten for armour and cutting tools. While volumes are small and pricing opaque, the buyer is increasingly a defence ministry working to a deadline rather than negotiating on price.

Trail anchors this category and has now received funding, with expansion plans to double existing germanium and antimony capacity and potentially add gallium output that North America currently lacks. The leading candidate behind Trail is Fireweed Metals' Macmillan Pass district in the Yukon, where the Macpass project holds what the company describes as the largest known accumulation of germanium and gallium, while the adjacent Mactung deposit ranks among the largest high-grade tungsten resources globally.

Washington and Ottawa have already committed to the district, awarding Fireweed up to $35.4 million in joint funding, including US$15.8 million from the US Department of Defense. A separate NRCan agreement provides up to $12.9 million to plan road and transmission upgrades along the North Canol corridor. Access, not geology, is the binding constraint — making the corridor a candidate for the First and Last Mile Fund and its $1.5 billion allocation through 2030.

Rare Earth Processing

In rare earths, the chokepoint lies not in mining but in separation and metallization — the chemistry that transforms concentrate into metal usable by magnet manufacturers. China processes an estimated 85 to 90 percent of global rare earth supply, according to International Energy Agency assessments, leaving allied nations dependent on a single jurisdiction for materials essential to electric vehicle motors, wind turbines, and guided munitions. Canada holds a notably advanced integrated rare earth processing position in North America. The Saskatchewan Research Council's Rare Earth Processing Facility in Saskatoon became the first operation on the continent to produce rare earth metals at commercial scale in 2024, with integrated operation scheduled for 2027. Planned output includes magnet-grade neodymium praseodymium metal alongside the heavy elements dysprosium and terbium — sufficient at capacity to supply magnets for roughly 500,000 electric vehicles annually.

REalloys signed a five-year agreement in December to purchase the majority of that production, driven by US defence supply chain requirements taking effect in January 2027. The company has since committed approximately $20.6 million to expanding throughput and funding a heavy rare earth metallization plant. The customer materialized before the capacity was completed, and private capital followed.

Federal priority should replicate that sequence — backing processing capacity with contracted output and the deposits able to supply it. Torngat Metals' Strange Lake project on the Quebec-Labrador border is globally unusual for its share of heavy rare earths, while Defense Metals' Wicheeda project in British Columbia represents the stronger light rare earth case. Support for either should require the material to feed a Canadian separation circuit, since concentrate exported is value exported.

Battery and Electric-Vehicle Minerals

Lithium, graphite, nickel, and cobalt rank behind the defence-linked metals because their domestic customer base has receded. Global EV sales growth moderated through 2024 after several years of rapid expansion, prompting automakers across North America and Europe to reassess battery supply chain investments. Honda indefinitely suspended its $15-billion Alliston, Ontario complex in May. Beneath the assembly-plant headlines sat a 36-gigawatt-hour battery factory and cathode material processing facilities that represented the domestic offtake against which Canadian graphite, nickel, and lithium projects had been financed.

Stellantis has similarly exited the NextStar Energy joint venture in Windsor by transferring its interest to LG Energy Solution for a nominal US$100. The plant has since pivoted toward stationary storage.

These minerals remain worth retaining, since demand will recover and deposits do not relocate. However, a federal dollar behaves differently depending on where it lands: behind germanium at an operating smelter with offtake attached, it becomes metal production and a strategic reserve.

As Aug. 14 Nears

Proponents should frame submissions around four characteristics that distinguish projects worth federal support from those that will merely consume it. The first two are expansion of facilities already operating and purchase agreements signed before construction concludes. The remaining two are infrastructure that opens a district rather than a single deposit, and feedstock chemistry matched to a plant Canada operates or is building — because material that can only be processed in Asia is not a Canadian asset regardless of grade.

Such submissions will serve officials better than requests for funding envelopes, because capital is not the constraint. Ottawa committed more than $3.6 billion at PDAC in March, and the Critical Minerals Production Alliance launched during the 2025 G7 presidency has mobilized $18.5 billion across two rounds. What the sector lacks is a published order for deploying the remainder.

The list of 34 was written to describe what Canada has. The update needs to establish what Canada intends to build. The distance between those two documents is worth several billion dollars in capital otherwise committed in the wrong places.

Noah Chaikin is a strategy consultant in Kearney's Foresight practice, where he advises senior executives on navigating geopolitical disruption and long-term strategic uncertainty. His work focuses on strategic foresight, including scenario planning and corporate statecraft, with particular expertise in critical minerals, trade, industrial policy, and economic security. He holds a master's degree in international relations from Harvard University, where his thesis examined how Canada could build sovereign rare earth refining and permanent magnet manufacturing capacity.