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At the PDAC Convention 2026 in Toronto, Canada's Minister of Energy and Natural Resources Tim Hodgson announced the Critical Minerals Sovereign Fund (CMSF), a CAD 2 billion vehicle to be operated by Natural Resources Canada that will deploy equity investments, debt, and offtake agreements into Canadian critical-minerals projects and companies. Initial focus covers six of Canada's 34 critical minerals — copper, nickel, lithium, graphite, cobalt, and rare earth elements — with capital expected to begin flowing in spring 2026. The CMSF is part of a broader CAD 3.6 bn PDAC-day announcement package that NRCan estimates will unlock CAD 12.1 bn in mining-project capital across 30+ partnerships, and is structurally modelled on Australia's Critical Minerals Strategic Reserve.

The Government of Ontario launched the Critical Minerals Processing Fund (CMPF), a CAD 500 million (~USD 364 million) provincial financial-support program to accelerate processing and refining capacity for critical minerals mined in the province, administered through Invest Ontario. The fund targets nickel, graphite, copper, cobalt and lithium, with a geographic emphasis on the Ring of Fire region northeast of Thunder Bay, and is intended to keep Ontario-mined minerals processed domestically rather than exported raw. It complements a separate CAD 3.1 billion package of loans, guarantees, grants and scholarships supporting Indigenous participation in the province's critical-minerals supply chain, and was first flagged in Ontario's 2025 Budget.

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.

On 2025-08-13 the Government of Ontario launched the Protect Ontario Financing Program, offering term loans of C$250,000 to C$40 million per business, with repayment terms of up to six years, to Ontario-based companies in the steel, aluminum, copper and automotive sectors facing working-capital strain from US Section 232 tariffs. The program is the first phase of the province's broader C$5 billion "Protecting Ontario Account" and is administered by the Ministry of Economic Development, Job Creation and Trade. Eligible firms must show at least C$2 million in annual revenue, 10+ full-time Ontario employees, three years of operations, and must have exhausted or faced significant barriers accessing comparable federal support.

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.