Teck CEO calls for more investment in crucial mining infrastructure at investment summit

Mark Carney’s government is moving in the right direction to strengthen Canada’s critical minerals sector, but more investment is needed in crucial mining infrastructure, Teck Resources Ltd. TECK-B-T chief executive Jonathan Price said Tuesday at the Canada Investment Summit.

In a panel discussion at the summit alongside Cameco Corp. CEO Tim Gitzel and Agnico Eagle Mines Ltd. CEO Ammar Al-Joundi, Mr. Price called for more money to be put into electricity grids, and transportation corridors, a move that will benefit many mining companies.

Mr. Price pointed to the Ring of Fire in Northern Ontario and British Columbia’s Golden Triangle as remote areas of the country where such infrastructure investment is particularly needed.

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“To unlock those deposits, we need access either by road or rail, we need power solutions, we need a route to port, and we need port capacity to get those products to market,” he said.

“When that infrastructure comes, and the Major Projects Office is working on this right now, particularly in B.C., that will allow multiple proponents to develop multiple mines.”

Several infrastructure projects that would benefit the mining sector have already been referred to the MPO, which was created last year by Mr. Carney to both reduce red tape and potentially facilitate funding.

Those projects include the North Coast Transmission Line in northwestern British Columbia, the Taltson Hydro Expansion in the Great Slave Lake region of the Northwest Territories, and the Arctic Economic and Security Corridor in the NWT, a 400-kilometre all-season road through the Slave Geological Province to the Nunavut border.

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The goal of the inaugural Canada Investment Summit in Toronto is to help attract hundreds of billions of dollars of investment into Canada to help cushion the blow of the continuing trade war with the United States. The event, which kicked off Monday evening and continued into Tuesday, is being led by Mr. Carney and co-hosted by big Canadian pension funds.

In a speech on Tuesday morning at the summit, Mr. Carney said that building resource projects faster by removing federal red tape is one of the ways to make Canada the most attractive country in the G7 to invest.

“For projects and supply chains, our standard will be simple: One project. One review. One year,” he said.

“Canada will remain a country of high standards. But high standards do not require slow decisions. Speed, certainty and predictability are themselves competitive advantages.”