While the United States dawdles, Canada has quietly taken the lead in countering China’s grip on the global supply of critical metals. Both the United States and Canada have raised the alarm over China’s control of mineral supply chains, but only our northern neighbors are taking decisive action to do something about it.

It is not rocket science to figure out how to solve the crisis. Nor is it hard to tell whether a country is serious when it proposes a solution. Canada wants to slash the time it takes to get new mines up and running, and it’s zeroing in on streamlining regulatory review and improving its mine permitting process. With global mineral demand exploding from the energy transition, and China’s grip on mineral markets only tightening, the Canadians recognize time is of the essence.

To reduce reliance on mineral imports from China — and to provide the West with a new, secure and reliable supplier — Canadian authorities say they plan to slash the time it will take to obtain permits to extract and process six battery metals — lithium, nickel, cobalt, graphite, copper and rare earth elements. Instead of a regulatory and permitting process that takes 12 to 15 years, the plan is to reduce it to five.

Canada is taking two essential steps: federal and provisional permitting will be done at the same time. And it plans to reduce delays by conducting permitting and environmental assessments simultaneously, while providing better funding and staffing for the regulatory agency.

Three additional steps should help to solve the problem: Canada is putting in place investment tax credits to pay a significant share of the capital for mining and processing; it is investing government funds specifically for battery projects; and it is providing loan guarantees for indigenous communities to lower the cost of debt for investing as equity participants in existing and future mining projects. In other words, Canada wants to make sure indigenous communities are true partners and beneficiaries from mining.

U.S. politicians know that some or all of these actions are needed in the United States.. The China problem can’t be ignored. But by and large, just the opposite is happening here. While funds are beginning to flow to support some domestic mining projects, U.S. mining policy is in shambles. Instead of improving the regulatory process, the Biden administration has thrown additional uncertainty into it.

The administration spent a year pulling together an interagency working group to propose changes to improve our mining policy with the central task of increasing our supply of critical minerals.  Astoundingly — despite ample evidence otherwise — the working group rejected evidence that there’s a mine permitting problem in the United States and actually proposed establishing huge new royalties and fees on domestic production while simultaneously rewriting the nation’s foundational mining law. Nothing could have sent a stronger signal to prospective miners to go elsewhere.

It’s outrageously self-defeating. The U.S. has world-class mineral resources and already has world-leading environmental and labor standards for mining. We should be ramping up domestic production and tackling the self-imposed barriers, but we’re simply failing to rise to the occasion.

We are allowing our country to fall into the same precarious position that OPEC exploited in 1973. It’s a good thing we have a close ally that is taking China’s mineral supply chain dominance so seriously, because if action — or the lack of it — tells the story, we aren’t. It’s past time we get our house in order and take the common-sense steps required to build secure, domestic mineral supply chains that our economy, energy future and national security need.

This story was published by Nebraska Examiner, an editorially independent newsroom providing a hard-hitting, daily flow of news. Read the original article: https://nebraskaexaminer.com/2024/03/22/canada-leads-on-critical-mineral...