Hodgson downplays U.S. government ownership stake in Canadian critical minerals

Energy and Natural Resources Minister Tim Hodgson says Canada is embracing a 'multilateral approach' to securing critical minerals supply chains.

Energy and Natural Resources Minister Tim Hodgson is downplaying the U.S. government’s ownership stakes in two Canadian critical minerals companies, saying Canada is embracing a multilateral approach to securing critical minerals supply chains.

In early October, U.S. President Donald Trump announced the White House had purchased minority ownership stakes in the Vancouver-based mining companies Trilogy Metals Inc. — a 10 per cent share — and Lithium Americas — a five per cent equity stake. Both companies operate mines in the United States, in Alaska and Nevada, respectively.

“Let me give you a little bit of a history lesson,” Hodgson told CTV Question Period host Vassy Kapelos, when asked several times why his government is handing over any portion of its strategic assets to the White House while repeatedly stating it’s trying to reduce dependence on the United States. “For the last many years, people have been talking about the challenges of critical mineral supply chains.”

“It was our prime minister who was the head of the G7 in Kananaskis in Alberta, who said Canada will take the lead,” he added. “Canada proposed a critical minerals production alliance. It was a Canadian initiative.”

“We got the agreement of the other G7 countries,” he continued. “We suggested the other countries appoint critical mineral envoys, which they all did in response to our request. And since the summer, we, Canada, have been taking the lead with our critical mineral envoys, working with the critical mineral envoys of nine other countries, including every single G7 country, to turn that talk into real action.”

The minister’s comments — made during an interview airing Sunday — come amid an ongoing, protracted trade war with the United States that has further escalated in the last two weeks.

Trump announced last weekend that he was terminating trade talks with Canada, after the Ontario government ran an anti-tariff ad featuring former U.S. president Ronald Reagan.

The U.S. ambassador to Canada, Pete Hoekstra, meanwhile, said he no longer sees a path to a new security and economic deal between the two countries — which could see the reduction or full removal of tariffs — before the new year.

And, according to two sources in the Ontario government, there was an “unpleasant exchange” between Hoekstra and the Ontario’s trade representative in Washington, David Paterson, during which Hoekstra hurled “insults, and swore” over the anti-tariff ad.

Pointing to the strained relationship with the United States and the federal government’s insistence that Trump’s trade war highlights the need to diversify trading partners and reduce Canada’s reliance on the United States, Kapelos asked Hodgson again how he justifies giving Washington more leverage.

Hodgson said he “fundamentally reject(s)” the premise of the question, pointing instead to 25 new deals Canada signed at the G7 Energy and Environment Ministers’ Meeting in Toronto this week.

“The vast majority of those deals were with countries other than the United States,” he said. “The United States did participate in that we want them to. We believe in multilateralism.”

“What we are doing is aligning ourselves with the G7,” Hodgson added. “We are aligning ourselves with a multilateral approach to solving this problem.”

Canada’s Investment Canada Act, passed in 1985 and amended in 2022, gives the federal government the power to conduct a national security review of foreign investments in Canada. The amendments in 2022 dictated foreign ownership would be approved only in exceptional circumstances.

When pressed again by Kapelos, who said the minister’s answer did not address the substance of her question, Hodgson said the categorization of the state of the Canada-U.S. relationship is inaccurate.

“We have never said we don’t want to trade with Americans,” Hodgson said. “Americans have been great trading partners. What we’ve said is we want to diversify and grow our trading relationships.”

“We are not proposing to shrink our relationship with the Americans,” he also said. “We are proposing to grow our relationship with others.”

In March, amid rising tensions with the United States over Trump’s tariffs on Canadian goods, Carney said the old relationship with the U.S., “based on deepening integration of our economies and tight security and military cooperations, is over.”

You can watch Energy and Natural Resources Minister Tim Hodgson’s full interview on CTV Question Period Sunday at 11 a.m. ET.

With files from CTV News’ Stephanie Ha