This month, I happened upon Ed Thompson’s parting treatise from 2014 which still feels less like an industry history and more like perusing a premonition. When the Canadian mining legend resigned his directorships, he warned that regulatory indifference, sluggish permitting, and an anemic capital market would starve Canada’s junior exploration sector; the very engine that uncovers the mines of tomorrow. At the time, his frustration was directed at a post-supercycle hangover.
Looking back from the vantage point of 2026, one realizes that the playbook we relied on a decade ago was already failing to keep Canada atop the global mining heap. Today, in an era defined by aggressive global resource competition, we are losing ground faster than ever.
The world has pivoted from quiet commodity cycles to an intense geopolitical race for critical mineral sovereignty. Washington is treating copper, lithium, and rare earths as matters of national defense, backing its intent with billions of dollars in state-backed financing deals, workforce development grants, and streamlined industrial mandates.
Countless countries are making aggressive plays for capital deployment and regulatory easing. The UK, Saudi Arabia and the Gulf states have created sovereign wealth funds globally through vehicles like Manara Minerals, overhauling their regulatory frameworks to transform into processing and trading powerhouses. From South America to Southeast Asia, governments are rolling out the red carpet for resource capital.
Canada, meanwhile, risks confusing tactical comfort with strategic victory. Celebrations over high marks in annual jurisdiction rankings such as the Fraser Institute’s survey offer a flattering snapshot in time. While we applaud the recent approval to move Crawford forward but did it take seven years for federal approval and a tariff war to with the United States to appreciate its strategic value?
I worry that governments are narrowly focused on the near-term rather than the long game. These types of index scores are a lagging indicator, not a strategy. Relying on favorable policy report cards while global legislatures rewrite the rules of state-backed resource deployment is like admiring the shine on a sports car while the engine is being dismantled. Given the extreme volatility of international markets, these metrics cannot be taken as a guarantee of future security. We must do more to ensure we remain a premier destination for investment, as well as extraction.
The core vulnerability in Canadian policy remains a persistent misunderstanding of how discovery happens. Recent public and private investments aimed at expanding existing operating mines are welcome news for localized production. Extending the life of an established nickel or copper asset provides crucial output today. But harvesting a crop without planting new seeds is an exercise in eventual depletion. Major mining houses rarely discover major new deposits themselves; their business models are tuned for capital discipline and operational efficiency. The initial heavy lifting the speculative, high-risk work of putting boots on the ground and drills in the bedrock has historically fallen to nimble junior explorers. Yet the structural hurdles Ed Thompson identified more than a decade ago have only grown taller.
We know that junior companies operate on a finite capital runway. When a permitting process stretches across years instead of months, or when overlapping federal and provincial regulatory hurdles consume precious treasury dollars, private capital dries up. The result is a quiet crisis of depletion. Without new greenfield discoveries, Canada risks building sophisticated downstream battery hubs and manufacturing facilities, only to find itself entirely dependent on foreign nations for the raw minerals needed to feed them.
I think that to remain or regain superpower status in natural resources rather than a branch-plant bystander, Canada and mineral-rich provinces like Ontario must adopt a mineral-first industrial strategy centered squarely on exploration. This isn’t to the detriment of the investments in supportive infrastructure or operations This, is not a dichotomous relationship rather, a true end to end partnership that supports each quadrant of the mining ecosystem.
This does however require moving beyond existing investment policy levers to supercharge incentives specifically for frontier greenfield drilling in under-explored regions. It demands replacing administrative inertia with strict, statutory permitting timelines that match the pace of global investment, giving financiers the predictability they demand.
The critical minerals essential for the next century of industrial power lay buried beneath Canadian soil. Other nations have realized that raw geology is useless without the policy agility and capital motivation to bring it to light. It is time to stop assuming our past dominance guarantees our future position and finally build an exploration engine fit for the modern world.
It’s time for Canada to regain its leadership position and the OPA remains an active and willing partner to support this transition.
- Steve Virtue, Interim CEO, Ontario Prospectors Association