The Ford government is continuing its efforts to convince president-elect Donald Trump to back away from his threat of tariffs on Canadian goods with a pitch to collaborate on critical minerals.
On Monday, Premier Doug Ford promised that if the United States is willing to work with Queen’s Park and Ottawa, Canada can help offer critical minerals buried in northern Ontario to help automakers reduce their reliance on China.
“The success of Fortress Am-Can depends on the critical minerals needed for new technologies, including advanced military technologies that will define geopolitical and economic security for the next century,” Ford said.
“Ontario and Canada have critical minerals in abundance and America needs them. At a time when China is winning the race to dominate these resources while also restricting the sale and shipment of critical minerals to the U.S., Canada and Ontario need to urgently get our critical minerals out of the ground, processed and shipped to the factory floors that are building for the future.”
The announcement is the latest in a string of proposals and offers from Ford designed to try and convince Trump to drop his threat of levying 25 per cent tariffs on Canadian imports to the U.S.
Ford has also offered to work with the U.S. to provide electricity produced in Ontario as part of the Fortress Am-Can plan and has made firefighters and two waterbombers available to deal with the California wildfires.
The proposal unveiled Monday sees Ontario suggesting an alliance with the United States to expand processing capacity for critical minerals mined in northern Ontario and work to reduce regulatory barriers.
“We’ll do it as partners,” Minister of Indigenous Affairs and First Nations Economic Reconciliation Greg Rickford said on Monday.
The plan also pitches the idea of creating a cross-border working group to keep the price of critical minerals stable.
“Ontario’s abundant resources and robust mining industry are essential to the success of Fortress Am-Can,” George Pirie, minister of mines, said in a statement.
“By continuing to develop our vast reserves of critical minerals and strengthening supply chains, we will create more jobs, unlock economic growth and build a stronger more prosperous future for the United States and Canada.”
How readily accessible Ontario’s critical minerals will be remains unclear.
For years, the Ford government has promised to build an all-season road to the Ring of Fire, a particularly resource-rich area of northern Ontario. The road would unlock large-scale mining operations, which are significantly harder, if not impossible, without year-round access.
In 2023, the government approved a plan from a First Nations community to build an all-season road but even while announcing it, officials admitted they didn’t know when it would be built.
Pirie called questions in March 2023 about the timeline to build the long-discussed road “hypothetical.”
“It’s another hypothetical question, there’s lots of steps that have to be finished prior to a mining operation being built,” Pirie said at the time.
Trump, however, recently announced he doesn’t need Canada’s resources or want to import goods from industries like the auto sector.
Trump repeatedly stated at a news event on Jan. 6 that the U.S. “subsidizes” Canada to the tune of US$200 billion in trade and spends billions more on continental defence programs like NORAD than Canada, which he said “don’t essentially have a military.”
“We don’t need their cars, we don’t need their lumber,” he continued. “We don’t need anything they have. We don’t need their dairy products. We don’t need anything. So why are we losing $200 billion a year and more to protect Canada?”
If Ontario’s latest offer to collaborate is not accepted by the incoming U.S. president, and Trump goes ahead with the tariffs when he takes office, Ford has also backed retaliatory measures, including cutting off power to some parts of the U.S. that use Ontario-made electricity and adding tariffs to U.S. products.