Province wants to get rich by mining critical minerals

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The Holt Liberal government says New Brunswick should exploit its rich critical minerals that the world so desperately needs.

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Natural Resources Minister John Herron said on Wednesday he’s instructed staff to come up with a strategy to mine the precious minerals. He wants the blueprint ready within a year or less.

“The geopolitical, economic and trade landscape has greatly changed over the past few weeks,” he told the House on Wednesday. “It is vital that our province pursues opportunities to grow our economy.”

Ottawa has designated 34 critical minerals as being essential to Canada’s economic security, its transition to a green economy and as a good source for partners and allies.

Critical minerals are essential for our daily lives. They also represent a significant economic opportunity.

John Herron

New Brunswick is known to have at least 21 of them.

They include manganese, which is used in battery production, and copper, popular for electrical applications. Another is indium, used in solar panels and touch screens the world over. Tungsten, meanwhile, is coveted by heavy industry and the defence industry because it is essential for high strength, specialty steel.

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“Your cell phone probably contains at least 13 different critical minerals,” Herron said. “There is no question that critical minerals are essential for our daily lives. They also represent a significant economic opportunity.”

The Official Opposition welcomed the strategy, but wanted to know why the cabinet minister hadn’t gone further.

I’m tired of young people going to Alberta and Saskatchewan and doing the very things we refuse to do here.

Kris Austin

Progressive Conservative MLA and former cabinet minister Kris Austin recounted a comment an older gentleman told him a couple of weeks ago.

It was at an event to discuss the sweeping tariffs U.S. President Donald Trump has threatened to impose on Canadian goods on April 2, a move that could be deeply damaging to New Brunswick’s export-oriented economy.

“He said these tariffs, as terrible as they are and unjustified as they are, they may do one thing. They may kick us in the rear end to get ourselves moving as a province and a country to start looking after ourselves,” he told the House.

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“If these tariffs go through, it’s going to have a catastrophic effect on New Brunswick’s economy, and the sooner we realize that, the sooner we’ll be more aggressive extracting our natural resources. I don’t see anything in this statement, nothing in this statement about the 84 trillion cubic metres of natural gas that we’re sitting under our feet. I don’t see anything in the statement about the pipeline that we need built for the oil coming from Alberta that needs to come to our refinery in Saint John.”

Austin said until New Brunswick gets more determined about extracting its resources, it will remain behind and dependent on Ottawa for financial handouts through transfer payments from other provinces.

In the 2025-26 fiscal year, New Brunswick’s provincial budget will receive about $4.6 billion through major federal transfer payments. That’s nearly one-third of the Holt government’s inaugural $14.3-billion budget released Tuesday.

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“I’m tired of young people going to Alberta and Saskatchewan and doing the very things we refuse to do here,” Austin said. “I’m tired of us getting transfer payments from not doing the things they’re doing. We should be self-sufficient. We shouldn’t be relying on Alberta. We have everything we need right here.”

New Brunswick has several known sites of critical minerals and metals, including:

• The Bathurst Mining Camp that hosts 42 zinc-copper deposits in the northeast of the province
• North America’s largest undeveloped resource of manganese in the Woodstock area
• The world’s largest undeveloped resource of indium at the former Mount Pleasant mine in Charlotte County
• The Sisson tungsten-molybdenum deposit, which is one of the largest deposits of its type in the world

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Herron told reporters at the legislature it would take time to devise a framework that was environmentally responsible but also agile enough for investors to figure out how to make a profit.

He said a lot of consultation would have to take place with the public, First Nations and host communities closest to the mines.

The strategy will be ready within a year or less, he promised.

“The regulatory regime that we want to develop will be rigorous but not onerous,” Herron said. “At the same time, it will be timely and predictable.”

He said there was strong demand for critical minerals, but the situation was more complex for natural gas. The former Liberal government of Brian Gallant put a moratorium on new fracking for shale gas a decade ago to appease people worried about pollution.

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“I don’t think the social licence has been established by the sector. New Brunswickers are not particularly interested in that opportunity.”

The minister added that there was no market for New Brunswick’s natural gas, as cheap shale gas was already being exploited in high volumes nearby in the United States. Converting the liquefied natural gas terminal in Saint John to an export terminal instead of importing gas would be much too expensive, he said, pointing to an old estimate in 2010 that a conversion would cost $4 billion, a figure that would be much higher today.

Premier Susan Holt, meanwhile, told reporters on Wednesday that while she wants to see a pipeline built to bring western oil to Saint John, no private sector company is pitching such a massive infrastructure project after TransCanada pulled the plug on the Energy East proposal in October 2017.

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This strategy could ensure the province isn’t financially on the hook for mines that are abandoned by companies.

David Coon

David Coon, leader of the small Green opposition party, said coming up with a framework for extracting minerals was a good idea, rather than New Brunswick’s formerly wild frontier attitude toward mining.

He cautioned that in the past, provincial governments ignored the environmental and cleanup costs of mines.

“A strategy is a good idea. It’s something that can be scrutinized, debated and discussed. The public and First Nations can get engaged on it. That’s as it should be.”

He pointed out that New Brunswick is still paying the costs of remediating old mines.

“This strategy could ensure the province isn’t financially on the hook for mines that are abandoned by companies as has happened in the past. Today and every day, the Department of Natural Resources is still paying taxpayers’ money on looking after one old, maybe two old mines, after companies skipped out of the province.”

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