Industrial Policy & Trade Monitor· 2662 actions· ✨ 89 recent

Canada's Budget 2025 (released 4 November 2025) creates the First and Last Mile Fund (FLMF), allocating $371.8 million over four years starting in 2026-27 to Natural Resources Canada to address transport and utility bottlenecks connecting near-term critical-minerals production sites to deep-water ports and downstream processing facilities. The fund absorbs the existing Critical Minerals Infrastructure Fund and leverages its envelope to provide up to $1.5 billion in total support through 2029-30. The FLMF is structurally distinct from the CMSF (equity/debt vehicle), the CMETC (exploration tax credit), and the Clean Tech ITC (manufacturing tax credit) — it is the infrastructure-grant instrument completing Canada's critical-minerals programme architecture.

On 31 October 2025, Canada's Minister of Energy and Natural Resources Tim Hodgson announced — on the sidelines of the G7 Energy & Environment Ministers' Meeting in Toronto — that the federal government will leverage the Defence Production Act (DPA) to designate critical minerals as defence supplies and build a strategic stockpile, with the Crown acting as buyer of last resort and setting confidential minimum prices to insulate Canadian producers from Chinese price suppression. The announcement was paired with an initial round of 26 investments, partnerships and measures totalling C$6.4 billion in unlocked critical-mineral capital (~C$120m direct federal spend plus up to ~C$1.2 bn in offtake agreements, expressions of interest and export guarantees) and aligned with nine allied countries. It is the first time Canada has invoked DPA stockpiling and priority-procurement powers for non-traditional defence inputs (lithium, nickel, cobalt, copper, rare earths, graphite, uranium) and repositions Canada as an allied-aligned strategic supplier parallel to US DPA Title III action under EO 14241.

The Building Canada Act (SC 2025, c. 2, s. 4), enacted as Division 4 of Part 2 of the One Canadian Economy Act (Bill C-5, 45th Parliament, 1st Session, Carney government), creates a federal "Projects of National Interest" (PNI) designation mechanism that streamlines and can override standard federal environmental and regulatory reviews for critical infrastructure and critical mineral mining projects. Once designated by the Governor-in-Council, a project automatically receives federal regulatory approvals listed in Schedule 2 of the Act, subject to conditions established by the Minister, through a single consolidated review process. Additional projects may be added to the Schedule over the five years following the Act's entry into force. This is the first Canadian project-permitting and approval-streamlining statute on the IPTM register, complementing the existing CA critical-minerals subsidy, tax-credit, and sovereign-fund instruments.

Canada Growth Fund Inc. (CGF), a CAD 15bn federal Crown investment vehicle, announced on 14 May 2025 a CAD 156 million (~USD 111.85M) cornerstone investment in a CAD 350 million non-brokered private placement by Foran Mining Corporation. CGF is acquiring 52,000,000 common shares at CAD 3.00 per share, alongside co-investors Agnico Eagle Mines Limited (~CAD 90M), affiliates of Fairfax Financial Holdings (~CAD 75M), an institutional investor (~CAD 28M) and Foran's CEO (~CAD 1M). Proceeds fund development of Foran's McIlvenna Bay copper-zinc-gold-silver project in Saskatchewan, and CGF frames the deal as advancing Canada's Critical Minerals Strategy.

Natural Resources Canada published Canada's Critical Minerals Strategy on 8 December 2022, committing $3.8 billion CAD over eight years (drawn from Budget 2022 and the Fall Economic Statement 2022) to develop Canada's position across the critical-minerals value chain. The strategy designates 31 priority minerals, sets six strategic pillars (data and geoscience, investment and trade, indigenous participation, workforce development, regulatory environment, and sustainability), and explicitly positions Canada as the preferred FTA-partner supplier for the US Inflation Reduction Act's domestic-content requirements under CUSMA/USMCA.