Op-Ed: Canada’s critical mineral diplomacy aims to keep it at the table and off the menu—as U.S. competition looms

MoUs don’t make mines, and partnerships don’t build processing facilities

By Ailsa Popilian and Marla Orenstein

Originally published in The Hub, April 15, 2026

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India. Peru. Norway. Australia, Greenland. Italy. The European Union. With little glitz but lots of blitz, Prime Minister Carney has been racking up an extraordinary number of signed partnerships, joint statements, and MoUs on critical minerals. They’re coming in fast and furious, and the list keeps growing.

But MoUs don’t make mines. Partnerships don’t build processing facilities. Can Canada turn its diplomatic momentum into industrial reality? Will we be able to keep pace as nations, including our American neighbours, move fast to shape supply chains?

The tension here is particularly noteworthy—while America is itself a significant destination for Canada’s sought-after critical minerals, it, too, is moving to take advantage of the growing demand. Threading the needle as both partner and competitor in the North American marketplace has never been an easy task for Canada, least of all now.

Since hosting the G7 in Kananaskis last June, the federal government has signed bilateral critical minerals agreements with 21 global partners. This tally doesn’t include domestic announcements like the recent MoU between the Western provinces and Northern territories, nor the 30 new partnerships unlocking $12.1 billion in mining project capital touted at last month’s Prospectors and Developers Association Conference in Toronto.

Global players are waking up to Canada’s minerals opportunity, but these deals didn’t happen in a vacuum. Launched under Canada’s presidency, the G7 Critical Minerals Production Alliance has quietly become the multilateral vehicle mobilizing this capital and positioning Canada as a strategic trade partner of choice. Coupled with Carney’s call at Davos for critical mineral “buyers clubs,” the applause and handshakes are quickly becoming ink on paper.

The competition heats up

But Canada is not the only game in town. Carney’s counterpart to the south got the memo and moved fast. The United States has spun up its own version of a buyers club— the aptly named FORGE, the Forum on Resource Geostrategic Engagement—a plurilateral coalition that attracted 54 nations and signed 11 bilateral agreements in a single day.

FORGE followed President Trump’s Project Vault announcement: a $12 billion, U.S.-based strategic critical minerals reserve. Given how heavily nations have leaned on strategic oil reserves amid ongoing hostilities in Iran and the Gulf, it’s not hard to see the logic of building up mineral reserves in the same vein.

Yet the approaches couldn’t be more disparate. Canada and the United States are essentially courting the same global partners for the same critical materials, even as their own bilateral relationship navigates considerable friction. There’s a stark difference between the art of the deal and the art of diplomatic statesmanship. Carney, it seems, is the right guy to pull off the latter. As he recently put it, “if we’re not at the table, we’re on the menu.” Global partners, hungry to join stable trade blocs and sign agreements, appear ready to break bread.

Canada’s opportunity

Judging by the current frenzy of MoUs, Canada’s menu looks pretty enticing. Foreign industrial offtake agreements are finally taking shape, with heavy hitters knocking on the door of Canadian companies.

Just this week, Germany’s TKMS signed a teaming agreement with E3 Lithium to link into naval defence supply chains. Italy’s Leonardo, a state-backed aerospace and defence firm, entered a cooperation agreement with Canadian partners to secure critical mineral inputs for advanced manufacturing and defence supply chains. Japan’s Panasonic Energy signed an MoU with Frontier Lithium for future offtake, tying Canadian processing capacity directly into North American EV battery supply chains.

And big corporations like Apple and jewelry company Mejuri have staked a claim as partners in a metal extraction and site restoration project in Hedley, British Columbia. The message is clear: Canada checks the boxes as a stable, secure, and traceable supplier.

Slow progress so far

But amid the flurry of deals, there is little talk about the elephant in the room; many of these agreements are non-binding, and the lag between a signed document and an operating project can stretch into years. What’s left to be seen is how well—and how fast—these agreements will translate into industrial activity.

The recent postponement of Glencore’s planned copper smelter upgrade in Quebec is a case in point. Canada’s copper exports are worth over $10 billion, but Canada has one copper smelter. One. And its operating future is on the rocks.

It’s a cautionary tale about navigating tensions: how to reconcile the country’s industrial ambition with its bureaucratic, but necessary, regulatory and environmental regimes. The cost? A billion dollars in processing investment is being put on ice.

This points to a deeper challenge Canada has been slow to confront: the gap between extracting minerals and converting them into the materials the world increasingly needs. Allies want not just the ore, but the refined product. The lithium carbonate. The battery-grade materials. The processed rare earths. That’s where the value in the value chain can be captured, and it’s precisely where Canada’s industrial capacity remains underdeveloped.

At the table, not on the menu

For generations, Canada’s default stance to its abundant natural resources was to dig it up, ship it out, let someone else add the value. With the terms of global competitiveness shifting, is Canada ready to move from mines to midstream?

From a strategic standpoint, the signal is clear: Canada isn’t content to simply design the menu; it wants to be at the head of the table. And the rest of the world wants an invitation to dinner.

The past several months have been a whirlwind of strategic diplomacy, and credit is due. The real measure of the moment isn’t, however, in the number of MoUs. It will be in the industrial build-out—the tonnes of processed materials, operational refineries, and exports of new value-added products.

Canada has a mineral endowment. It’s piling up the partnerships. Whether it can build the midstream capacity to connect them could be the defining economic question of the decade.

America is rapidly crowding us out of the market. It’s time for the federal government to put its MoUs where its mouth is.