Canada updates national security review guidelines to add critical minerals, sensitive technology and SOE scrutiny

Mechanism

The guidelines operate under Part IV.1 (national security review) of the Investment Canada Act and replace the government's 2016 guidance:

• Critical minerals: acquisitions or investments touching the 31

minerals on Canada's Critical Minerals List (announced 11 March 2021) are flagged as a national-security factor for the first time.

• Sensitive technology and personal data: investments giving access to

sensitive technology/know-how not in the public domain, or to sensitive personal data, are similarly flagged.

• State-owned/state-influenced investors: reaffirms enhanced scrutiny of

SOE investors regardless of deal size.

This is guidance, not a categorical bar — it sets the interpretive standard later hardened into an explicit near-categorical restriction on foreign-SOE control of critical-minerals businesses (filed separately as 2022-10-28-canada-ised-critical-minerals-soe-investment-policy).

Downstream implications

• First formal linkage of Canada's Critical Minerals List to the Investment

Canada Act's national-security review trigger.

• Predicate for the October 2022 SOE-specific critical-minerals policy and

the November 2022 forced divestiture orders against Chinese-controlled lithium-junior stakes.

Open questions

• The guidelines are interpretive, not a fixed rule; case-by-case discretion

rests with ISED and the national-security review process.