Critical Minerals: A Joint Strategy For Western And Northern Canada

On June 25, 2026, British Columbia, Alberta, Saskatchewan, Manitoba, Yukon, the Northwest Territories and Nunavut released Stronger Together: A Critical Minerals Strategy for Western and Northern Canada (the Strategy).¹ Through the Strategy, the seven provinces and territories seek to accelerate the development of critical minerals mining projects, enhance value-chain opportunities and make supply chains more resilient. The ambition is to position Western and Northern Canada, which recorded more than CA$80 billion in critical-mineral shipments from 2020 to 2025, as a supplier of choice for responsibly sourced critical minerals worldwide.

The January 2026 memorandum of understanding

The Strategy delivers on a memorandum of understanding (MOU) signed by the seven provinces and territories on January 25, 2026. Under the MOU, the provinces and territories agreed to cooperate on three fronts: making Western Canada a global hub for critical minerals innovation and sustainable development, prioritizing regional critical mineral hubs, and planning the infrastructure investments required to expand extraction, processing and export capacity in the region. They also committed to considering and integrating Indigenous perspectives and input throughout the Strategy’s development and implementation.²

The Strategy was released in line with the 2026 Energy and Mines Ministers’ Conference, the annual forum where federal, provincial and territorial ministers responsible for energy and mining set shared priorities for the sector. At this year’s conference, held in Yellowknife from June 24-26, ministers reaffirmed their commitment to accelerate critical mineral development, attract strategic investment and expand domestic processing and refining capacity, placing the new Strategy clearly within these national priorities.³

Three pillars to guide the Strategy

The Strategy is organized around three priority pillars that reflect the region’s critical mineral value-chain strengths and growth opportunities:

1. Investment attraction and regulatory certainty: The aim is to position Western and Northern Canada as globally competitive and investment-ready. The provinces and territories plan to compare permitting best practices across jurisdictions to make timelines more predictable, offer investors coordinated entry points that simplify navigating regulatory and funding processes, and build shared investment tools, including a regional inventory and a shortlist of priority projects. They also intend to promote early and durable partnerships with Indigenous communities in project development, infrastructure planning and equity ownership.
2. Nation-building infrastructure corridors and hubs: This pillar focuses on the infrastructure the region will need to carry large-scale critical minerals projects: reliable energy supply and infrastructure, along with coordinated rail, road and marine transportation corridors linking resource regions to processing hubs and export gateways. Key priorities include addressing limitations in port capacity, rail congestion, logistics networks and power supply through coordinated planning and investment. The provinces and territories intend to support shared industrial infrastructure, such as processing zones, utilities and logistics hubs, to open up more export pathways, and to advocate for federal investments in port and export infrastructure that improves access to global markets. The provinces and territories also aim to advance projects that create economic opportunities for Indigenous communities through equity participation, procurement or employment.
3. Regional strengths and development opportunities: The provinces and territories aim to promote globally significant critical mineral projects across the region that offer scale, readiness and strong investment potential. They also intend to grow mid-stream processing and value-added capacity across the region to support integrated value chains, improve project economics and strengthen the case for federal investment. The provinces and territories will also promote regional commodity strengths and advocate for alignment in how the federal government frames and promotes critical mineral opportunities in the region.

What to watch

Federal advocacy letter: By January 2027, the Western Canada and Northern provinces and territories have committed to co-develop an advocacy letter to the federal government identifying priority infrastructure projects requiring federal support.

Next steps in 2027: The Western Canada and Northern provinces and territories will meet again no later than February 1, 2027, to assess progress, with a focus on continued joint advocacy to the federal government, private sector investment attraction and Indigenous economic reconciliation.

Implementation of shared tools: The rollout of the regional inventory, the priority project shortlist and the coordinated permitting approaches are intended to improve predictability and timelines for proponents across the seven provinces and territories.

Conclusion

The Strategy is expected to drive investment across exploration, mining and processing, and to build new value-chain potential, notably by bringing processing capacity closer to where resources are developed. In 2027, the provinces and territories will co-develop a federal advocacy letter and reconvene to assess progress. Following how the Strategy’s commitments are implemented across the seven jurisdictions will be essential as it moves from framework to execution. It will also be important to assess how the Strategy coordinates with the federal strategy, and integrates the interests of government, industry, Indigenous people and communities.

For more information on this topic, please contact the authors of this article, Peter Bryan (Calgary), partner in Dentons’ Energy group, or Anoosh Loertscher (Montréal), senior associate in Dentons’ Infrastructure and Public-Private Partnerships group.

The authors wish to thank Naomi Jauvin, a law student in the Montréal office, for her valuable contribution to this article.

Footnotes

1. Stronger Together: A Critical Minerals Strategy for Western and Northern Canada (25 June 2026). ↩

2. Memorandum of Understanding on the Development of a Western Canadian Critical Minerals Strategy (25 January 2026). The MOU also follows the Government of Canada’s Canadian Critical Minerals Strategy in December 2022, which set out a roadmap for Canada to become a global supplier for critical minerals, and strategies established by Ontario and Quebec. ↩

3. Natural Resources Canada, “Energy and Mines Ministers’ Conference” (26 June 2026). ↩