Amid trade skirmish, Wilkinson raises eyebrows with pitch for closer ties with U.S. on critical minerals and energy

The U.S. and Canada should “jointly invest” in North American critical minerals and energy megaprojects, Canada’s minister of energy and natural resources said Tuesday, raising eyebrows as Canada continues to grapple with the threat of punishing tariffs — and concerns the country could risk relinquishing total control of its natural resource wealth.

Such an alliance would aid the U.S. in reducing its reliance on rivals Russia and China for uranium, germanium, lithium and other next-generation energy materials, Jonathan Wilkinson said, while building on a “many decades-long” trade relationship between the U.S and Canada.

“If we actually work together, we can pull forward some very specific projects, but more generally down the road, creating tools to make joint investments,” he said,  speaking at the Atlantic Council, a Washington-based policy think-tank, a day after a U.S. threat to impose 25 per cent tariffs on Canada and Mexico was paused for 30 days.

“I do think there is real scope for those kinds of conversations,” Wilkinson said, but it “needed to be part of an overall agreement around that the tariffs aren't coming back.”

Wilkinson’s remarks build on his earlier proposals for a U.S.-Canada alliance on energy and critical minerals, but are at odds with some Canadian premiers who want to loosen economic ties to the U.S. in favour of more trade within Canada and with international partners.

“The idea runs contrary to what we are hearing not just from many of the premiers but to the general consensus that Canada needs to move away from our overdependence on the U.S. as a trading partner,” said Hadrian Mertins-Kirkwood, a senior researcher at the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives. 

“What [Wilkinson] is proposing is effectively co-ownership of Canadian natural resources. That should give us all pause for thought,” he told Canada’s National Observer.

'Historic reordering' of global trade

B.C. Premier David Eby said on Monday several “major mining and refining companies” in the province planned to redirect exports of aluminum and copper and other key transition materials away from the U.S. market as a “historic reordering” of global trading patterns takes shape.

Newfoundland and Labrador Premier Andrew Furey has sent his fisheries minister to Europe to promote the province’s seafood industry. Furey also launched a "buy local" campaign, saying Canada did not "bend the knee" or "kiss the ring" of President Donald Trump.

The Canadian federal government is also hard at work hammering out international trade deals in the aftermath of the Trump tariff threats.

Canada has signed a free-trade agreement with Ecuador, the sixth-largest economy in South America, and is negotiating deals with the 10-member Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN), Canada’s minister for trade, Mary Ng, told the Canadian Press on Tuesday. 

The U.S. was Canada’s top trading partner for critical minerals in 2023, with two-way trade totaling $38.2 billion, according to Natural Resources Canada. Most of that trade flowed south, with the U.S. accounting for nearly 60 per cent of Canada’s total critical minerals exports. 

The U.S. dependency on Russian uranium for its nuclear reactors and Chinese germanium and lithium for solar cells and next-generation batteries undermined U.S. national security, Wilkinson said, underlining Canada is an obvious alternative supplier.

“Both countries have a strong interest in the same goals and there is indeed enormous potential if we work together to collectively onshore production and manufacturing … so we cannot be held hostage by unreliable countries and actors that do not share our values,” he said.

Rising power demand in prospect

Wilkinson said deeper collaboration on energy and mineral resources would enable Canada and the United States — along with Mexico, which is also the target of a 25 per cent tariff threat by the Trump administration — to provide “much of what the world needs” as global electricity demand skyrockets with the expansion of clean power production.

“Between the three of us we have more than what we need to both build and power our economies and produce much of what the world needs and that has value in a world that is going to need more energy of all kinds,” he said.

Rather than developing a greater dependence on the U.S., Mertins-Kirkwood said Canada should concentrate on “decoupling” from the U.S. by lowering interprovincial trade barriers and “building east-west infrastructure” to transport power across the country so that high-value manufacturing could become more central to the national economy. 

“The threat of these tariffs lays bare how much the ground has shifted politically in the U.S. and how radically we should be decoupling from the U.S.,” he said. “This is a new and troubling reality for Canada now because you have a U.S. president who does not feel bound by international law. 

“We should take this as an opportunity to move more meaningfully toward developing our high-value manufacturing [sector] and east-west energy infrastructure — though not oil and gas but rather clean power for climate reasons,” said Mertins-Kirkwood.

Investments in deploying clean energy technologies and infrastructure in Canada grew by 19 per cent last year, to a total of over $50 billion, according to the latest Bloomberg NEF Energy Transition Investment Trends report, taking the country into the global top 10 clean economy nations for the first time.