Critical minerals have rapidly moved from being viewed as commodity inputs to strategic assets tied to industrial policy, economic resilience and geopolitical security. Yet the mining sector says investment decisions still depend on one core factor: whether long-term demand and pricing visibility are strong enough to justify capital deployment…Baatar used gallium, a material increasingly used in semiconductors and advanced electronics as an example of how supply constraints are often less about geology and more about market certainty. While Western producers could technically expand processing capacity, miners remain reluctant to invest aggressively without clearer signals around future demand, pricing stability and commercial scale…The comments underscore a broader tension emerging across critical mineral markets globally. Governments are pushing for supply chain diversification away from concentrated processing hubs while miners and investors continue to evaluate projects through a commercial lens shaped by long project cycles, volatile prices and uncertain returns…“Some of these smaller minerals are very important drivers for energy transition to artificial intelligence (AI) to defence sectors,” Baatar noted…According to the International Energy Agency, demand for critical minerals linked to clean energy technologies could rise several-fold over the next two decades as electrification, battery storage and grid expansion accelerate globally…As hyperscale data centers expand globally, mining companies are increasingly recalibrating long-term commodity demand forecasts around AI-driven electricity consumption and grid buildouts…Even as governments focus on securing supply chains for strategic minerals, Baatar said mining projects continue to face another major constraint: maintaining long-term trust with host governments and local communities…Baatar said social licensing processes often take significantly longer than engineering execution itself.

Commodity supercycles are often described as simple stories of supply and demand. In reality, they are much larger historical phenomena. They emerge when technological systems, geopolitical structures, and industrial organization change, reorganizing the world’s demand for physical resources faster than supply systems can adapt…The world now appears to be entering a new cycle shaped by all three at once. While previous cycles have often been defined by globalization and expansion, this one is likely to be characterized by fragmentation, security concerns, and the rediscovery of physical constraints… More than any cycle in the past century, Canada has an opportunity to generate not only wealth but influence in the coming decade. Few nations have that privilege; Canada should not waive it…Commodities are the foundational physical resources – energy, minerals, and agricultural products – that industrial economies depend on for production, infrastructure, transportation, and security…Commodity prices and availability ebb and wane across cycles that typically last about a generation each. Commodity cycles are longer than normal business cycles, which tend to last only 5–7 years, because they are driven by long-term structural changes rather than short-term inventory fluctuations. The relatively slow supply response for commodities owes to the need to explore for new deposits, attract substantial capital, obtain regulatory approvals, and build new mines, railroads, pipelines, and ports before sufficient supply can return to the market. Cycles are characterized by booms, or investment phases, with high prices, followed by busts, or exploitation phases, with low prices…Since the beginning of the 20th century, there have been four commodity cycles, characterized respectively by: 1) industrialization and empire (1899–1933); 2) reconstruction and mass consumption (1933–1961); 3) energy scarcity and monetary disorder (1962–1995); and (4) hyper-globalization and the rise of China (1996–2014)…We are now entering the fifth, defined not by expansion but by breakdown; not by abundance, but by scarcity…Like all commodity cycles, the Rupture Cycle involves a transformative new demand driver: AI (artificial intelligence), data centres and the electricity infrastructure that powers it…Data centres are currently the biggest driver of investment in the world, having captured more than one-fifth of global greenfield investment (i.e., all new physical investment projects starting from scratch, across all economic sectors) in 2025. Unlike the tech boom of the late 1990s and early 2000s, which was largely digital and software-driven, the AI build-out is deeply dependent on physical infrastructure, energy, and raw materials…The AI boom is coming at the same time as existing infrastructure is aging, hotter temperatures are driving more use of air conditioning, and climate policy is driving electrification of transportation and heating…Most importantly, they are material intensive. We will need vastly more copper, aluminum, uranium, natural gas, steel, cement, transformers, and grid equipment to meet the coming surge in electricity demand. And because AI is not only important for the economy but for security, governments will be incentivized to financially stimulate electricity growth. In particular, the US cannot allow China to win the AI race, China cannot allow the US to win the AI race, and middle powers cannot allow AI capacity to be concentrated in the US and China. The AI build-out will not only resemble past technology-driven demand booms; it will resemble an arms race as well…While most commodity cycles are triggered by a black swan event, the Rupture Cycle has produced a flock of them: the COVID-19 pandemic; the Russian invasion of Ukraine; Trump’s widespread application of tariffs, and the closing of the Strait of Hormuz in Iran…Each one of these events severely disrupted global trade; in combination they have ruptured it, creating a post-globalization era…The policy consequence is that nations are now seeking to bolster and insulate their supply chains from future disruption. Following two decades in which the cheapest producer won out, this commodity cycle is seeing a security premium applied to raw materials. Governments are prioritizing the production of goods domestically, production by dependable allies and partners, and production nearer by…Oil, copper, and other minerals are increasingly short in availability and high in need, not only as a result of geopolitical disruption, but from structural demand growth for electricity and structural supply tightness from regulatory burdens and resource depletion. Prices must therefore rise. We are entering a period that will be inflationary and destabilizing…As in any commodity cycle upswing phase, countries with abundant energy and mineral resources are regaining leverage…What makes this cycle unique is that the Canadian virtues of political stability and reliability, adherence to the rule of law, and status as a trusted trading partner mean Canadian resources may command a strategic premium.