Jul 28, 2026 · 27 min · 11 segments
Canada has what the world needs. We’ve been hearing that a lot. Heather Exner-Pirot, Senior Fellow and Director of Energy, Natural Resources and Environment at the Macdonald-Laurier Institute, joins…
I think kicked us out of our complacency, got a new leader, you know, got a new government and promoted, you know, sovereignty and economic growth a bit more.
One is that we've had these, you know, I joke that we didn't just have a black swan event.
So first COVID and then Russia invaded Ukraine and then the Trump tariffs and then the Strait of Hormuz closure.
And that really put a lot of burden on supply chains and also made countries really prioritize security, reliability, stability issues.
In addition, you just have what I think is a normal upswing of the commodity cycle.
Most people on your listening would know commodity cycles last about a generation.
And you usually have, you know, 10 or 15 years where you have an upswing and you have more investment and 10 or 15 years where you have a downswing.
And we obviously had the bust in 2014, and now it looks clear to me the markets are saying that we're going into this upswing.
We are a big resource exporter, and so you do see the money come back in.
And finally, just on top of all that, the last layer I would say is Chinese dominance in critical minerals.
And so trying to regain for the Western states some kind of autonomy or some kind of redundancy in critical mineral supply chains, which China has not only come to monopolize, but also weaponize.
I think kicked us out of our complacency, got a new leader, you know, got a new government and promoted, you know, sovereignty and economic growth a bit more.
One is that we've had these, you know, I joke that we didn't just have a black swan event.
So first COVID and then Russia invaded Ukraine and then the Trump tariffs and then the Strait of Hormuz closure.
And that really put a lot of burden on supply chains and also made countries really prioritize security, reliability, stability issues.
In addition, you just have what I think is a normal upswing of the commodity cycle.
Most people on your listening would know commodity cycles last about a generation.
And you usually have, you know, 10 or 15 years where you have an upswing and you have more investment and 10 or 15 years where you have a downswing.
And we obviously had the bust in 2014, and now it looks clear to me the markets are saying that we're going into this upswing.
We are a big resource exporter, and so you do see the money come back in.
And finally, just on top of all that, the last layer I would say is Chinese dominance in critical minerals.
And so trying to regain for the Western states some kind of autonomy or some kind of redundancy in critical mineral supply chains, which China has not only come to monopolize, but also weaponize.
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