November 10, 2021
In a virtual workshop that gathered over 60 delegates from all levels of government, industry and academia, the GNWT’s Department of Industry, Tourism and Investment began an important discussion Tuesday morning on the future of critical minerals exploration and development in the Northwest Territories.
Critical Minerals (or elements) are those considered essential for renewable energy and clean technology applications like batteries, permanent magnets, solar panels and wind turbines (read more...)
The federal government has identified 31 minerals that it believes will position Canada as a leading supplier of critical minerals. Almost half of these minerals can be found in the NWT.
In her opening remarks to the event, Minister of ITI Caroline Wawzonek noted that the NWT has an opportunity to play a key role in the supply of critical minerals and metals to meet growing international demand.
“Today marks an important opportunity for us to begin work towards a strategy that will enable the NWT to achieve a key place on the supply chain for critical minerals and metals not only because of our incredibly promising geology, but because we also have such potential to provide high return on Environmental, Social and Governance factors, or ESG,” she noted.
“We want to be prepared to take advantage of favourable commodity markets generally, investment capital in search of quality projects, the growing focus on Environment, Sustainability and Governance (ESG) standards, geopolitical factors and – obviously, the growing demand for a reliable supply of critical minerals that we now know our territory can provide.”
Read more: Caroline Wawzonek: Critical Minerals Workshop November 2021
The workshop’s keynote speaker Siddhartha Subramani (Hatch Ltd) endorsed the Minister’s comments and the importance of the NWT workshop.
“The first step (for government) is to develop a critical minerals strategy. Ideally this should be a combined provincial, territorial and federal policy where everyone works together. This work is already underway in Canada and this workshop is a part of it.
“At an idealistic level, you are here today for nothing less than a conversation about the future of our economy, and the place of the mineral resource sector within it,” Minister Wawzonek told delegates.