Rare Earth Metals
At the crux of trade tensions
Another key group of minerals caught up in geopolitical wrangling are the rare earth metals. These 17 metals, comprising the lanthanide series of elements, plus scandium and yttrium due to their similar properties, offer a variety of exotic applications including in lasers, powerful permanent magnets and nuclear physics, as well as industrial and manufacturing settings, including as an agent in steel and aluminum alloys. As a result, the category has emerged as a subset of critical and strategic minerals of increasingly recognized importance.
China is unquestionably the dominant force in global rare earth production, accounting for 60% of their production and 90% of processing. That made China’s tightened restrictions on its rare earth exports to the US, following back-and-forth tariff rate and political ratcheting in early 2025, a significant concern for American strategic manufacturing interests. After continued trade tension and rare earth supply shortages in the US, the two countries struck a new agreement for the resumption of exports in June 2025, reportedly including caveated restrictions on certain military applications, potentially including use in building the F-35 fighter jet. The episode shone a stark light on US’ dependence on Chinese rare earths, revealing a potentially painful thorn in the side of President Trump’s mission to aggressively reshore strategic supply chains.
Paul Carmel, president and CEO of Montréal-based junior investment fund Sidex, commented: “With the potential for China to restrict exports of these critical minerals over the long term, Canada and North America would do well to secure their own supply.”
China’s dominance in rare earths, according to Torngat Metals’ CMO Christine Burow, came as no accident. “These elements are irreplaceable. China recognized this early, dominating supply through state-backed investment and looser environmental standards,” she maintained.
"Developing Canada’s rare earth resources appears increasingly important. With the potential for China to restrict exports of these critical minerals over the long term, Canada and North America would do well to secure their own supply." Paul Carmel, President and CEO, Sidex
It makes the strategic relevance of Torngat’s Strange Lake rare earth project, which received nearly CA$10 million from the Canadian federal government under its Critical Mineral Infrastructure Fund (CMIF), as well as financial support from Québec’s provincial research and development program, all the more clear. That funding is contributing to the project’s pre-feasibility and feasibility studies, which the company expects to complete by the end of 2025.
Strange Lake is a project receiving industry-wide attention, including from Metso’s North and Central America president, Giuseppe Campanelli: “Metso has supported the Torngat Metals rare earths project from its early stages, conducting extensive testing to help define the flow sheet. Unlike traditional commodities, rare earth processing is more complex, requiring extensive analysis to understand mineral compositions and recovery rates.”
With the project’s rare earth targets including dysprosium, terbium, neodymium and praseodymium, with potential to become the world’s leading supplier of dysprosium, it demands highly refined processing.
The project is not without hurdles. It requires a 180 km access road to a new port in Voisey’s Bay, Labrador, for shipping to a Sept-Îles, Québec separation facility, all of which will require funding, permitting, and the agreement of a number of local First Nations communities. With the mine site located in Nunavik, its operations would also be impacted by the region’s harsh, far-north seasonality. Though the mine site could operate year-round, the road would see winter use only. For Burow, though, surmounting these obstacles sooner rather than later would deliver outsize, strategic benefits for Canada: “Our project aims to bring rare earth industry to Canada by transferring proven technologies and global expertise into the country. This can drive major economic and social growth across northern Quebec, Labrador and beyond,” she said.
"Most of the global scandium supply comes from China, which also raises geopolitical and strategic concerns. As a result, there is currently no dependable, long-term primary source of scandium, creating a major barrier to commercialization." Guy Bourassa, CEO, Scandium Canada
Another rare earth project presenting Canada with an opportunity to disrupt conventional rare earth supply chains is Scandium Canada’s Crater Lake. Scandium is a metal with potentially wide-ranging applications (thousands of global patents utilize scandium-enhanced aluminum alloys), but one that also suffers from a miniscule and fragile global supply. In 2024, global scandium production totaled just tens of tonnes, with the majority of supply originating from China. The CEO of Scandium Canada, Guy Bourassa, expanded: “Scandium is almost exclusively a byproduct of mines focused on other, more abundant minerals. Most of the supply comes from China, which also raises geopolitical and strategic concerns. As a result, there is currently no dependable, long-term primary source of scandium, creating a major barrier to commercialization.”
Bourassa expressed hope that the Crater Lake project would receive funding from the federal CMIF to support the build-out of its transport and hydrometallurgical infrastructure. Alongside efforts to develop its project site, Scandium Canada is also conducting its own patent-pending scandium-aluminum alloy R&D, which it plans to commercialize by collating scandium by-product from small-scale global producers as, effectively, a broker for the rare earth metal.
Though the amounts involved are often small when compared to the immense tonnages of critical metals like copper, the unique properties of rare earths make them indispensable. For their very particular use cases, there frequently is no alternative. That makes their role in high-level, superpower trade disputes something worth watching – and their development in Québec and Atlantic Canada perhaps even more so.
Article header image by Robert Stump at Unsplash