Ottawa Not Forcing Chinese State Investors to Sell Shares in 3 Canadian Mining Companies

Natural Resources Minister Jonathan Wilkinson rises during question period on Parliament Hill in Ottawa on Feb. 16, 2023. The Canadian Press/Adrian Wyld

The federal government will not be forcing Chinese state-investors to sell their substantial amounts of shares three of Canada’s largest mining companies, says Natural Resources Minister Jonathan Wilkinson, Reuters reports.

Wilkinson made the comments during an interview with the news agency on March 7 at the Prospectors and Developers Association of Canada conference in Toronto.

The minister said during the interview that retrospectively addressing foreign investments would have a negative impact.

“If you start looking backwards at investments, it will create all kinds of uncertainty about whether an investment is ever really an investment,”he said.

Natural Resources Canada confirmed Wilkinson’s comments to The Epoch Times.

The three Canadian mining companies that Chinese investors will not be ordered to divest stakes in are Teck Resources, Ivanhoe Mines Limited, and First Quantum Minerals Limited.

Each of the companies count Chinese state-owned enterprises as their biggest single shareholders.

Wilkinson also told Reuters that Canada would seek to continue trading with China. Tis in part could involve “trade in critical minerals,” which include resources like lithium, copper, and cobalt.

Wilkinson’s comments come several months after Innovation Minister Francois-Philippe Champagne ordered three Chinese companies to sell their investments in Canadian lithium companies.

Champagne said on Nov. 2 that the federal government had ordered Sinomine Rare Metal Resources Co. Ltd. to sell its investment in Power Metals Corp., Chengze Lithium International Ltd. to sell its investment in Lithium Chile Inc., and Zangge Mining Investment Co. Ltd., to sell its investment in Ultra Lithium Inc.

Critical Minerals

Champagne said in a statement that Ottawa would “act decisively” when foreign investments threatened Canada’s national security and critical minerals supply chains “both at home and abroad.”

Champagne’s order for the Chinese investors to divest in the lithium companies came shortly after his department said in a statement that “significant transactions by foreign state-owned enterprises in Canada’s critical minerals sectors” would only be approved on an exceptional basis and if Ottawa sensed it would result in a net benefit for Canada.

He said he was advised on ordering the companies to divest by Canada’s security and intelligence community, among others.

The federal government introduced its Critical Minerals Strategy in December 2022, which included an investment of up to $3.8 billion in the sector.

Wilkinson recently announced that the federal government would be putting over $344 million of that total investment into critical minerals development programs across the country.

Reuters and Rahul Vaidyanath contributed to this report.