Four copper and lithium mine developers in northwestern Ontario, collectively, will be pocketing almost $14 million in federal funding to build access roads and power lines into their future mine sites.
Federal Energy and Natural Resources Minister Jonathan Wilkinson delivered the news in Thunder Bay, Oct. 7, that $13.8 million is earmarked for five mining-related projects – including two with Sudbury’s Frontier Lithium – that will facilitate the mining and movement of these critical minerals for processing and eventually to the electric vehicle supply market.
The conditional approval of this money is coming from Ottawa’s $1.5-billion Critical Minerals Infrastructure Fund, part of the government’s larger Critical Minerals Strategy, geared to fund roads, power lines and clean electricity technology for mining companies and mineral processors.
“Northwestern Ontario will play an increasingly important role…in building a Made-in-Canada electric vehicle supply chain,” said Wilkinson.
Frontier Lithium will use $6.1 million to connect its PAK Lithium mine project to the Ontario power grid and undertake pre-construction and development work on a 56-kilometre all-season road to move lithium concentrate out for processing.
Green Technology Metals snagged $5.5 million to upgrade 112 kilometres of existing roads and replace three bridges near Armstrong where its Seymour lithium deposit is located. The road will bypass local residential areas.
Rock Tech Lithium, which has plans for a lithium refinery on Red Rock’s waterfront, will use $1.4 million to beef up and extend a 10-kilometre bush road, north of Nipigon, to haul out lithium concentrate from its future Georgia Lake mine site.
Generation Mining, operator of a future copper and palladium open-pit project, 10 kilometres north of Marathon, is allocating $771,100 for engineering and design work for a five-kilometre access road, along with feasibility studies for additional road and rail links to move copper concentrate to Glencore’s smelter and refinery in Quebec.
The final approval for funding these projects is pending due diligence work by Natural Resources Canada.
Wilkinson said allies in the U.S., Europe and South Korea are looking to this country to be the “supplier of choice” in providing the critical minerals needed for the global energy transition to greener forms of technology, such as electric vehicles.
Critical minerals, like lithium, represent a “generational economic opportunity” in mining, processing, battery and electric car plants that could create tens of thousands of new jobs, he said.
China is the world’s top developer in renewable energy technology and controls most of the global critical minerals value chain, including global processing.
“For Canada to be economically competitive moving forward we must seize the economic opportunities associated with the transition,” said Wilkinson.
Nathan Sims, Green Tech’s vice president of exploration, said the funding bolsters their efforts to become Canada’s first producing lithium mine. Seymour is the company’s leading project in the northwest, which will feed a proposed refinery for Thunder Bay. A big help, he said, were the letters of support from their Indigenous and industry partners during the application process.
Frontier Lithium CEO Trevor Walker said the funding not only helps his company feed the electric vehicle supply chain in southern Ontario, but delivers much-needed infrastructure for its partner Indigenous communities. This funding dovetails on recent federal-provincial funding to build the Berens River Bridge, a key logistical pinchpoint to move lithium out and connect remote communities to the Ontario highway system for the first time.
Jennifer Main, Rock Tech’s ESG manager, called it an exciting opportunity for area First Nations, like the Red Rock Indian Band, to achieve a measure of economic reconciliation, especially to process lithium close to where it’s being mined. In partnership with the band, the company has settled on the north shore community of Red Rock to be the site of its proposed refinery.
