If you’ve been watching Canada only for fighter-jet drama, you’re missing the story that actually matters for U.S. power and production. Ottawa is moving — unevenly but unmistakably — to become a backbone of allied critical-minerals supply.
That shift will shape the availability of magnets, batteries and guidance systems across the U.S. defense-industrial base for decades. It’s a Canadian build-out with American consequences.
Canada’s play isn’t just about digging more holes in the ground. It’s about stitching together the whole chain — mine, refine, component and, increasingly, recycling — inside a trusted jurisdiction.
From nickel in Ontario and Manitoba and cobalt (largely as a by-product) in Ontario and Québec, to graphite and battery-grade materials in Québec and rare-earth processing on the Prairies, the pieces are being assembled to reduce dependence on supply lines that run through geopolitical chokepoints. When those Canadian pieces click into place, U.S. production lines get time, certainty and options.
Why this matters south of the border is simple: Modern weapons and resilient energy systems live or die on specialty materials. Missiles, radars and electric naval auxiliaries run on permanent magnets and high-purity metals; surge capacity isn’t real if a single upstream refinery halfway around the world can throttle it.
A continental system anchored in Canada means fewer hard stops when the world wobbles — and fewer opportunities for adversaries to use licensing regimes and export controls as strategic levers.
It also matters because legitimacy and durability are part of the supply chain. Much of Canada’s new capacity depends on long-term partnerships with Indigenous nations who hold rights, title and local authority in the North and in key mining regions.
Projects that are co-designed and co-owned are likelier to survive court challenges, election cycles and commodity downturns. For the U.S., that translates into fewer “stop-start” shocks rippling into munitions and energy programs.
This is not just a climate or a commerce story — it is the mathematics of deterrence. If the alliance cannot source and process critical inputs at scale, production targets for precision munitions, sensors and next-gen platforms become PowerPoint fiction. Canada’s mines and processing plants are how North America can turn procurement plans into delivered capability.
What should Congress care about? First, lock-in and interoperability. Long-term offtake agreements — contracts where a buyer commits to purchase a set volume or share of output (often at a formula-based price) from a specific mine or processor — turn Canadian output into American readiness.
Pair offtakes with shared stockpiles and aligned specifications for magnets and battery-grade materials, and you get predictable demand signals. Without that, Canadian facilities won’t scale and U.S. lines won’t invest.
The second should be refining and midstream capacity. The bottleneck isn’t ore — it is upgrading raw material into defense-grade inputs. Joint financing, tax credits that recognize cross-border value chains and targeted Defense Production Act coordination can push crucial processors over the finish line — on this continent, under allied rules.
Align these moves with existing U.S. sourcing rules for defense magnets and components so Canadian volumes qualify cleanly and immediately for the Defense Federal Acquisition Regulation Supplement update effective Jan 1, 2027.
Third, focus on permitting and infrastructure. The best geology will fail if there is no road, no power, no port or no predictable timeline. Coordinated U.S.-Canada corridor planning — especially in northern regions — reduces project risk that otherwise prices out private capital. That’s how mines become materials that become missiles.
Fourth comes recycling and reprocessing. North America needs a metals “reserve” it can mine above ground. Get behind Canadian facilities that can reclaim rare earths, nickel, cobalt and graphite from end-of-life equipment and manufacturing scrap. Every ton recovered shortens surge timelines and trims exposure to external shocks.
Fifth, we need resilience against coercion. We must expect competitors to tighten export controls, extend “country-of-origin” rules to mixed-content goods and use financing to capture mid-stream chokepoints. A North American ecosystem, with Canada as a keystone, is the blunt instrument against those pressure tactics: diversified inputs, transparent standards and credibly enforceable contracts.
Finally, there’s the matter of expectations-management. None of this happens on a cable-news clock. The building of a continental critical-minerals base is measured in years and milestones: permits filed, plants commissioned, first production runs qualified to defense standards, offtakes exercised and stockpiles rotated.
The worst mistake would be declaring victory because a ribbon got cut. The better course is steady, binational oversight tuned to real deliverables.
The bottom line: Canada’s critical-minerals pivot isn’t a niche Canadian story. It is the quiet edge of U.S. military readiness and industrial resilience.
If Washington wants production lines that bend but don’t break under pressure, it should lean in — contractually, financially and diplomatically — to help Canada’s build-out succeed. Do that, and the next supply-chain shock becomes a headline, not a halt.
Andrew Latham is a professor of international relations at Macalester College in Saint Paul, Minn., a senior fellow at the Institute for Peace and Diplomacy, and a non-resident fellow at Defense Priorities in Washington
