SUDBURY, ONT. -- Mining and auto industry advocates are warning that despite Canada’s early successes in securing downstream components of the electric vehicle battery supply chain, slow progress on getting mines built puts Canada’s attempt to secure an outsized share of the battery market at risk.
“If we don’t figure out how we get more mines into production, it will all be for naught,” said Photinie Koutsavlis, vice-president of economic affairs and climate change at the Mining Association of Canada.
“I’m getting more and more worried that we’re not actually doing what we need to do to get mines into production quickly, that we’re not looking at why mines aren’t moving forward,” she told attendees at BEV In-Depth: Mines to Mobility conference in Sudbury May 31.
Koutsavlis was one of four experts to take part in a panel discussion assessing the future of EV manufacturing in Canada.
David Adams, president of the Global Automakers of Canada, which represents overseas automakers in Canada, also said the country must move more quickly.
“There’s a generational investment opportunity that’s open right now. It’s not going to stay open forever.”
Canada has secured billions in EV battery supply chain investments over the past two years, with much of that spending going to Ontario, its traditional automotive heartland, as well as to resource-rich Quebec.
The successful investment pitches, Koutsavlis said, have centred on Canada’s stores of critical minerals, and the country’s ability to ready those resources for use in batteries. But after creating an “insatiable demand for raw materials,” she said it would be “horrible if we can’t deliver” because of sluggish progress on the mining side.
Brian Kingston, president of the Canadian Vehicle Manufacturers Association, which represents the Detroit Three automakers in Canada, said governments and automakers themselves have set ambitious EV goals, but a raw material “supply gap” is beginning to emerge.
“This [EV] momentum could be stalled if we don’t have the ramp-up in all of the inputs necessary to meet the rollout of vehicles that’s coming quickly.”
And without output from mines, the value of the downstream investments in battery materials processing facilities, cell plants and EV assembly sites begins to erode, said Brendan Sweeney, managing director of the Trillium Network for Advanced Manufacturing, which advocates on behalf of Ontario’s manufacturing sector,
“The value of those battery plants increases in multiples if they’re running on Canadian materials that come from Canadian mines.”
