Leaders from both sides of the Atlantic met at this week’s EU-Canada Summit in Montreal to discuss deepening trade, technology and defence ties.
A key focus of the summit, now in its 21st year, was critical minerals.
“Canada has rich resources and deep mining expertise. Europe brings industrial demand, technology and investment,” EU Commission President Ursula von der Leyen said Thursday at a summit event hosted by the C.D. Howe Institute.
Canadian Finance Minister François-Philippe Champagne similarly touted the opportunities, mentioning critical minerals numerous times in an Oct. 29 address.
“On critical minerals, we can help them with economic growth,” he told reporters.
But Stéphane Dion, a former Liberal Party leader, says he has been hearing the same message for years — and not seen much change.
Dion was the special envoy to the European Union from 2017 to 2025.
“Each summit we say ‘critical minerals, critical minerals,’ then the money does not come, the investment does not come, it’s only talk,” Dion told Canadian Affairs in an Oct. 29 phone interview.
“I hope we’ll get out of that and we come with concrete results.”
‘The new oil’
Critical minerals refer to a broad range of mined metals and materials, including lithium, graphite, nickel, cobalt, copper and rare earth elements.
They are used in a wide range of technologies, including mobile phones, wind turbines, solar panels, EV batteries and defence applications.
Critical minerals are so crucial to the green transition that Evan Pivnick, program manager at the industry association Clean Energy BC, dubs them “the new oil.”
“We have a civilization built materially on fossil fuels and now it should be done on minerals — that’s the big picture,” Dion said.
“To have a source of energy that is not fossil fuels, you need the minerals. And Europe is looking for that.”
Currently, the European Union relies heavily on China for critical minerals, creating a significant vulnerability.
China has “introduced an ever-widening set of export controls …. [that] concerns both critical raw materials and certain technologies. These controls are negatively impacting EU supply chains,” a European Commission factsheet says.
“The EU is committed to de-risking, not decoupling from China. This entails reducing critical dependencies and vulnerabilities,” the factsheet adds.
In 2023, the EU passed the Critical Raw Materials Act, which sets targets for how much critical minerals Europe should mine and process itself by 2030. The act says the bloc should not rely on any single external country for more than 65 per cent of a strategic material.
Philippe Le Billon, a professor of geography at the University of British Columbia, notes the EU’s progress toward these targets has been limited.
“It’s going very slow,” he said.
Globally, China accounts for over 90 per cent of battery-grade graphite production, 85 per cent of magnet rare earth separation, 75 per cent of cobalt refining, 70 per cent of lithium refining and nearly 50 per cent of global copper refining capacity.
Within the EU, China provides 97 per cent of the EU’s magnesium, a critical resource for the auto sector. And the bloc’s entire supply of rare earths — often used for green technology — are refined in China.
Dion notes there are limits to the EU’s ability to diversify away from China.
“I don’t think they may be completely independent of Chinese critical minerals, it’s not possible,” said Dion.
“But they would like to be less dependent. They would like to have other options. And Canada is key for that because we have the resources and we are a strong ally in NATO.”
Pivnick, of Clean Energy BC, says the EU is increasingly willing to pay a “security premium” for non-Chinese supplies.
“They’ve seen what happens when they’re overly reliant on a given country,” he said, noting Russia was the EU’s main supplier of natural gas before its 2022 invasion of Ukraine.
“They’ve been in this place with Russia when it came to gas. They see the value of diversification.”
Opportunities
The EU’s desire to diversify suppliers could present Canada with an opportunity.
“Canada has meaningful reserves of critical minerals,” said Pivnick.
Canada is the world’s largest producer and exporter of potash, which is mainly used in fertilizer. It is the world’s second-largest uranium producer, and a significant producer of cobalt and nickel. It also holds a substantial share of the world’s lithium and rare earth reserves.
In total, Canada exported over $49-billion worth of critical minerals in 2025, with about 11 per cent going to the European Union.
This week, the European Investment Bank — an EU bank that invests directly in projects in line with EU goals — signed a framework agreement with Canada to allow investment into Canadian critical mineral projects.
“This Framework Agreement marks a critical step in strengthening Canada-EU economic ties and unlocking investment in Canadian resource projects,” Natural Resources Minister Tim Hodgson said in a press release.
It is not clear how much the bank will invest into Canadian projects.
The deepening of ties is creating enthusiasm in the minerals industry, says Gillian Holcroft, CEO and co-founder of Green Graphite Technologies, a company that produces mined and recycled graphite for batteries.
“It’s an exciting time for a company like ours,” she said, noting that the company is starting work with a European battery cell firm that she cannot name.
“We love working with Europeans.”
Pivnick says the EU bank’s moves point to the bloc’s willingness to pay a security premium for non-Chinese supplies.
“Some of the funding from the European Union — whether it’s through the [European Investment Bank] or individual nation states — can be thought of as paying some of that security premium … that helps them achieve their diversification goals.”
Pivnick says Canada should be “leaning into” its relatively high regulatory standards, which are similar to the EU’s own regulations.
“We’re going to be a higher cost jurisdiction regardless. We develop things with higher standards, both environmental, social governance, you name it,” he said.
Holcroft agrees.
“It’s very difficult to compete head to head with China using the values for the environment and people that we have in North America and Europe,” she said.
“Copying what they do in China and trying to replicate it here in North America, I always say it’s like a race to the bottom.”
‘Very frustrated’
Canada’s big challenge, however, is getting its critical minerals to market.
In 2022, Canada launched a Critical Mineral Strategy aimed at jumpstarting the industry. The government pledged $3.8 billion for exploration, processing, recycling and manufacturing of 31 critical minerals, as well as $1.5 billion to develop mine infrastructure.
In March, Natural Resources Canada also committed a separate $3.6 billion to get new extraction projects off the ground.
And yet, progress has been slow.
“When I talk to people wanting to start critical mineral projects here, [they say] it’s super slow and they’re very frustrated,” said Le Billon, of the University of British Columbia.
In recent years, Canada’s refining capabilities have been flat. Canada currently has 31 operational critical mineral processing facilities, down from 33 in 2016.
There are signs of hope: 32 new projects are now in “advanced” stages of development.
Holcroft’s firm processes its graphite — which has to be over 99.95 per cent pure to be used in batteries — using a technique she says is both cost and resource effective. The Chinese method is much more water-intensive and uses large quantities of highly-toxic hydrofluoric acid, she says.
“To use Chinese technology in North America, you can do it, but it’s going to cost you a lot in terms of water treatment and water usage,” Holcroft said.
“To keep people safe is also extremely expensive because that’s one of the nastiest acids out there, so you need incredible personal protection [equipment].”
Le Billon says boosting Canada’s refining capacity will be essential for both sides to realize their critical mineral goals. But he worries Canadian governments often concentrate their support too heavily in select industries.
“We’ve seen these things collapse,” said Le Billon, referencing Quebec’s $510-million investment into the Northvolt battery plant, which went bust after its parent company declared bankruptcy in March 2025.
But Holcroft says funding from the Canadian government, particularly from the Business Development Bank, has been essential to getting Green Graphite Technologies off the ground.
She adds that government funding will be essential to rebuilding not just the mining industry as, but also Canada’s manufacturing and industrial sectors as a whole.
“These jobs and industries have disappeared and it’s not so easy to get them back. What the government’s doing is saying is ‘Canada has the resources in the ground, these critical mineral resources. Let’s be a complete solution,’” she said.
“It would be fantastic to build up this industry, but it takes a lot of government support.”
Pivnick points out that raw material extraction and processing are only one part of the puzzle. Ports and rail infrastructure are going to need to see major investments, he says.
“That’s going to be a really big signal about how serious Canada is in looking at exports to the EU — is whether we build the port infrastructure needed to both stockpile and store critical minerals, but also move it in meaningful quantities across the ocean,” he said.
Pivnick says he will regard this year’s summit as a success if it leads to concrete agreements and a pathway for European investment.
“For this to become real, we really have to move from MOUs to offtake agreements,” he said.
This point echoed a call by Tobias Cremer, a German member of European Parliament and the EU’s rapporteur on Canada, last week.
“For the last couple of months, we’ve been great, Canada and Europe, at writing each other love letters and saying how much we really want to work together,” Cremer said in the EU Parliament.
“But I think now is really the time to start to get serious and turn that love story into concrete commitments.”
