All the largest companies are doing it. Why shouldn’t Canada do it, too? The global mining industry has converged on a single idea: copper is the most important strategic metal.
BHP, Rio Tinto, Glencore, Anglo American and Barrick Mining are all reshaping portfolios around it, whether through attempted mega-mergers, project builds or joint ventures. Even failed deals tell the story.
Rio Tinto and Glencore’s abandoned $260-billion merger was fundamentally about copper. BHP’s latest results showed copper outperforming iron ore, a reversal that would have been unthinkable a decade ago.
The projects now defining the next cycle are enormous. The Vicuña joint venture between BHP and Lundin Mining, straddling Chile and Argentina, has declared a $9-billion net present value, while systems such as Reko Diq and Rio Tinto’s Resolution continue to anchor long-term supply expectations. Copper is driving the new search for scale.
Canada has its own ambitions. After producing nearly 515,000 tonnes of copper in concentrate in 2024, the federal government is moving to accelerate Newmont’s Red Chris expansion in British Columbia through the Major Projects Office, with the aim of lifting national output by more than 15% later this decade. That is a meaningful increase in a country where copper production has been relatively flat.
Our top story points to a different kind of opportunity. Osisko Metals’ Gaspé project in Quebec, the largest undeveloped copper resource east of the Mississippi, represents the redevelopment of a past producer that ran for 44 years until 1999. It is a reminder that Canada’s copper future is not only about new discoveries, but about revisiting known systems with modern economics and technology.
Copper’s appeal is straightforward. It is essential to construction, electrification and digital infrastructure, from power grids to electric vehicles to data centres. The International Energy Agency has warned that demand from energy-transition technologies alone is set to rise sharply while the supply pipeline struggles to keep pace, creating a structural gap that will require significant new mine development.
More than 60 new copper mines may be needed by the early 2030s, requiring roughly $285 billion (C$390 billion) in investment, according to Benchmark Mineral Intelligence. Prices hovering near US$6 per lb. have already pushed marginal deposits into viability.
But if copper is Canada’s strategic metal, the country still faces a harder question: how to turn a copper opportunity into a financeable project. That’s where the focus shifts from geology to metallurgy.
It’s not that Canada lacks science. It’s that the country shies from the expensive, time-consuming proof work that lenders, majors and regulators require before committing capital. The gap sits in what might be called the “missing middle,” the stage between discovery and construction where flowsheets are tested, recoveries are proven and risk is reduced.
A feature by renowned metallurgist Phillip Mackey lays this out in detail, arguing that Canada’s decline in processing capacity and fragmented research effort have weakened a once-integrated system. Where seven copper and copper-nickel smelters once operated across the country, only a handful remain today, with much of Canada’s concentrate now shipped abroad for treatment.
Natural Resources Canada’s CanmetMINING labs continue to carry out work in comminution, flotation and separation, the technical foundations of mineral processing, but capacity is limited relative to the scale of projects now being contemplated. The issue is less capability than coordination and investment.
Industry groups have made the same point from another angle. The Mining Association of Canada has said that expanding the country’s role in critical minerals will require not only new mines, but also new smelters and refineries. Without that midstream capacity, Canada risks remaining a supplier of raw concentrate rather than a full participant in value chains.
Examples of the missing middle do exist. Corem in Quebec provides ore characterization, pilot plant testing and circuit development, combining processes such as flotation and leaching. This kind of work, which is neither early exploration nor full construction, is precisely what turns a deposit into a bankable asset. It is also the least visible and least celebrated part of the mining cycle.
That is beginning to change. As Northern Miner Group President Anthony Vaccaro argues in a column, the global race for critical minerals is no longer just about resources, but about processing, speed and execution.
Canada has the geology. It has many of the institutions. What it lacks is scale and speed in the stage that matters most.
Permitting can be streamlined and capital can be raised, but neither will compensate for insufficient technical proof. In a copper market defined by tight supply and rising demand, projects will compete not only on size or grade, but on confidence, in metallurgy, in recoveries and in execution.
If copper is the new gold, then metallurgy is the new feasibility.
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