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Canadian PM Carney uses G7 summit to deepen critical minerals and defence partnerships

Jun 17, 2026 , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Évian, France, 17 June 2026

Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney used the 2026 G7 Leaders’ Summit in Évian to position Canada as a strategic partner for critical minerals, defence procurement, AI governance and collective security. Ottawa announced new Russia sanctions, critical minerals partnerships worth more than $5 billion, defence cooperation with European and Indo-Pacific partners, and Canada’s first procurement under the EU’s SAFE initiative.

 

Prime Minister Carney secures new partnerships in defence and critical minerals at the 2026 G7 Leaders’ Summit – Statement

Évian, 17 June 2026

As our institutions and alliances are tested in an increasingly volatile world, the G7 remains a force for unity, purpose, and collective action. Over the past year, Canada has worked with speed and ambition to broaden, deepen, and diversify our international partnerships to build a more resilient, more secure, and more prosperous world for all. During Canada’s G7 Presidency last year, we made progress on this front – focusing on energy, critical minerals, technology, and security.

Building on that momentum, the Prime Minister, Mark Carney, attended the 2026 G7 Leaders’ Summit in Évian, France, this week. At the Summit, he worked with leaders to strengthen collective security and secure critical mineral supply chains. To that end, Canada and our G7 partners committed to collective action on a number of issues, outlined in the following joint statements:

To increase pressure on Russia in the face of its ongoing aggression against Ukraine, the Prime Minister announced that Canada isimposing new sanctions targeting Russia’s shadow fleet, energy revenues, defence industrial, and disinformation actors. This package will target a total of 162 individuals, entities, and vessels – all parts of the Russian war machine. Since 2014, Canada has imposed sanctions on more than 3,400 individuals and entities as well as over 600 vessels that are complicit in the violation of Ukraine’s sovereignty and territorial integrity and in gross and systematic human rights violations.

In Évian,Canada welcomed 13 new partnerships and initiatives with more than eight countries through the Critical Minerals Resilience and Production Alliance. Launched during Canada’s 2025 G7 Presidency, the Alliance brings together trusted partners to diversify critical minerals supply, reduce market concentration, and create a reliable buyers’ club that can attract investment and accelerate production for projects. Together, these projects and initiatives will unlock more than $5 billion in capital investment for projects across the Canadian critical minerals value chain, including:

  • German company RCT Solutions will partner with Canada’s Sio Silica and other partners to support a high-purity silica project to extract 99.9%+ pure silica sand and build a fully integrated solar manufacturing hub in Manitoba.
  • Japanese company Hanwa Co. Ltd. will partner with Canada’s KAP Minerals to boost the development of phosphate and rare earths in Ontario.
  • Italian company Eni is investing in Canadian-based Nouveau Monde Graphite’s Matawinie Mine to produce graphite in Québec.
  • Denmark’s Export Credit Agency and Italian companies SACE, Cassa Depositi e Prestiti, and SIMEST – including Italian engineering group MAIRE – will support Canada’s First Phosphate in relation to a new phosphate mine and phosphoric acid processing production facility in Saguenay-Lac-Saint-Jean, Québec.
  • Dutch company Liminal By WMC will partner with U.S. company Regeneration Enterprises Inc. on critical minerals recovery and restoration projects in New Brunswick, British Columbia, and the Yukon.
  • French company Schneider Electric will partner with Canada’s Torngat Metals to advance rare earths mining and processing in Québec.
  • Japanese company Sumitomo Corporation will partner with Canada’s Ucore Rare Metals Inc. to supply rare earths for magnet makers across Japan and North America.
  • Portuguese company Lifthium Energy will partner with Canada’s NORAM Electrolysis Systems Inc. (NESI) to provide Canadian technology services for lithium refining in Portugal.

At the Summit, Prime Minister Carney held bilateral meetings with G7 leaders and other partners, including Germany, India, Italy, the Republic of Korea, Ukraine, the United Arab Emirates, and the European Union (EU). During these meetings, he forged new partnerships in critical minerals and defence. France, Germany, Italy, and Korea intend to partner with Canada to stockpile critical minerals, which will catalyse further energy partnerships.

Canada announced the first procurement secured through the EU’s Security Action for Europe (SAFE) initiativesince becomingits first non-European member in February. Under the agreement, Montréal-based Marconi Technologies will build made-in-Canada ORION tactical radios for the Polish Cyber Command. Canadian workers will help build the advanced gear to protect our allies, with deliveries expected to begin later this year and continue through to 2030. Marconi will leverage nearly 100 Canadian suppliers – from the skilled trades to advanced engineering – to help build this state-of-the-art product.

Canada and Italy also announced the launch of negotiations for Canada’s purchase of M-346 advanced jet trainer aircraft designed and produced by Leonardo, one of Italy’s largest aerospace companies. Leveraging Italian expertise in aerospace and defence, this agreement will enable the Royal Canadian Air Force to train in state-of-the-art equipment and build sovereign training capability.

Canada agreed to formally launch negotiations on new General Security of Information Agreements (GSOIA) with India and Germany.These agreements will strengthen defence and industrial cooperation, and unlock further defence procurement opportunities for Canadian businesses.

The Prime Minister participated in an artificial intelligence (AI) roundtable alongside other leaders from the G7 and partner countries as well as leading AI companies. They discussed the importance of a robust, coordinated approach to address the risks of AI. The Prime Minister raised Canada’s AI for Allstrategy and Canada’s objectives of prioritising online safety, including child safety, creating opportunity for workers and businesses, and building AI sovereignty.

In an increasingly uncertain world, a strong, confident Canada is taking control of its future. We are building our strength at home and forging new partnerships abroad to protect our sovereignty, build resilience, and seize new opportunities. Partners across the G7 and around the world want to build with us and partner with us, because Canada has what the world wants and the values to which many others aspire. We are a reliable stable partner in a world that is anything but.

Quote

In an uncertain world, Canada is a pivotal, powerful, and purposeful force for good. At the G7 Leaders’ Summit in Évian, we secured new partnerships to build energy projects in Canada, new agreements to make it easier for our businesses to sell abroad, and new deals to equip our Canadian Armed Forces with the hardware they need. Canada is showing up – not only with the strength of our values, but with the value of our strength.”

Mark Carney, Prime Minister of Canada

Quick facts

This Summit followed Prime Minister Carney’s visits to France and Ireland, where he advanced Canada’s partnerships with two of our strongest allies.

  • In France, on June 12, Prime Minister Carney and President Macron announced the new GSOIA to strengthen defence and industrial cooperation, and advanced collaboration in strategic sectors such as aerospace and quantum science cooperation.
  • In Ireland, on June 13 and 14, the Prime Minister strengthened cooperation on AI, health technologies and biomanufacturing, agri-food, climate and clean growth, and research and innovation.

The G7 Leaders’ Summit is an annual forum that brings together government leaders from the world’s most advanced economies and democracies to discuss and collaborate on global economic, security, and geopolitical issues.

  • At this year’s Summit, France also invited the leaders of Brazil, Egypt, India, Kenya, the Republic of Korea, Saudi Arabia, Ukraine, and the United Arab Emirates.

The G7 Critical Minerals Action Plan and the Critical Minerals Production Alliance, announced in June 2025 at the G7 Leaders’ Summit in Kananaskis, Alberta, represent a shared commitment by G7 partners to diversify the responsible production and supply of critical minerals, encourage investments in critical minerals projects and local value creation, and promote innovation.

  • In Évian, leaders agreed to broaden the Alliance into the Critical Minerals Resilience and Production Alliance, providing a framework for cooperation across the value chain.

Canada consistently ranks among the top destinations for foreign direct investment confidence, holds AAA credit ratings and the lowest net debt-to-GDP ratio in the G7, and is home to seven of the 50 safest banks in the world.

With 16 free trade agreements across 51 countries, Canada has preferential access to 1.5 billion consumers representing two-thirds of global GDP.

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G7 Leaders’ declaration on securing supply chains for critical minerals

Évian, 17 June 2026

“We, the leaders of the G7, recalling the Critical Minerals Action Plan we launched last year, recognise the strategic role of critical minerals value chains for our countries’ economic prosperity and security, including our digital and energy sectors. In light of the high degree of market concentration, the need to reduce vulnerabilities regarding those resources and the growing use of arbitrary trade restrictions, we recall the urgency of diversifying our supply chains and building our collective resilience. Australia, partner country of the G7, also supports this declaration.

We express our grave concerns regarding the use of non-market policies and practices and economic coercion, including arbitrary export restrictions and retaliatory measures on critical minerals and their related dual-use items, all of which undermine economic security and resilience. We will work together with partners to reduce critical dependencies and ensure that attempts or threats to weaponize economic dependencies fail. We seek to deter and stand ready to take actions, where necessary in a coordinated manner, against economic coercion.

We further recognise the importance of maintaining and strengthening our midstream and downstream industries’ competitiveness, including in relation to critical minerals, by protecting critical technologies and commit to working within the G7 and with partners to coordinate on policy measures for technology control.

We recognise the pivotal role of international cooperation among G7 and like-minded countries, pursuing mutually beneficial partnerships based on high-quality standards and transparency to ensure diversified, resilient and durable supply chains to the benefit of the global economy. To that end, we reaffirm the G7 Roadmap to Promote Standards-based Markets for Critical Minerals.

Building on previous commitments of the G7 and on the Critical Minerals Production Alliance set up under the Canadian presidency of the G7 in 2025, we commit to coordinating efforts within the G7 and with partner countries to establish and develop the necessary processing and industrial capacities for diversification of our critical minerals value chains, including by supporting local value creation and promoting innovation.

To this end, we, together with partner countries, will cooperate closely to advance production, processing and recycling projects across the entire supply chain. We will promote the development of coordinated projects through demand aggregation and the mobilisation of public and private collective financial capacities. In so doing, we aim to significantly reduce our dependencies on a single supplier outside the G7 and partner countries for rare earths and permanent magnets to under 60 per cent by 2030 and continuing to decrease further over time, with an ambition to reach 50 per cent as soon as possible. For other critical minerals, we task the relevant ministers with setting a specific target for reducing these dependencies before the end of the year.

We welcome the progress towards these goals, especially through the 195 projects announced since the beginning of 2026 that have reached 64 billion euros of investment including equity participation and offtake agreements in the critical minerals value chains from G7 and partner countries, and through the joint plan for developing industrial capacities for rare earth and permanent magnets.

We recognise that the development of industrial capacity, including processing and recycling, necessary for diversification, requires the mobilisation of public and private capital, including equity investments, guarantees and offtakes. We recognise the increasing need for stable investment frameworks and for market transparency and valuation for the security of supply. This could incentivise financing of the critical minerals value chains to bridge the investment gap before 2030.

We encourage accelerating the mobilisation of multilateral development banks (MDBs) and development partners to design and implement strategies that lift global mining standards between G7 members and like-minded partners as well as in developing countries. These efforts will enhance the diversification, resilience, security and reliability of critical minerals supply chains worldwide, including through quality-based procurement approaches and sustainable mining practices. They exemplify our renewed approach to international partnerships. To ensure greater impact, we task the G7 Development Finance Institutions (DFIs) and export credit agencies to enhance coordination and collaboration on critical minerals and enabling infrastructures, including with the private sector.

We further recognise that ensuring the long-term viability of diversified supply capacities requires an appropriate market environment and closer cooperation with trusted partners, including through plurilateral trade agreements.

In this regard, we intend to continue to discuss the feasibility and development of policies and mechanisms that would be necessary to ensure supply chain resilience and diversification, in a coordinated manner where relevant. These policies and mechanisms may include, as appropriate, resilience criteria, standards-based approaches, transparency and traceability mechanisms. We also continue to explore demand and supply-side measures such as diversification requirements, revenue stabilisation mechanisms including price-gap subsidies, joint procurement instruments and trade-related instruments such as quotas and price floors. These measures should take into account factors such as their effectiveness and potential impacts on competitiveness, public finances, macroeconomic conditions overall and in particular on midstream and downstream industries, as well as the costs of inaction.

We recognise the importance of strong transparency and traceability frameworks to ensure supply chain security and the compliance with high standards in resilient market environments, as well as tackling illegal trafficking of critical minerals. Acknowledging ongoing work by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) and International Energy Agency (IEA), we are committed to working towards establishing harmonised, interoperable mechanisms aligned with our interests that ensure traceability and transparency regarding the origin of critical minerals. This would start with two pilot critical minerals – lithium and nickel – and aim to avoid undermining competitiveness or imposing excessive cost burdens. We will seek to extend the pilot to five new critical minerals each year with particular attention given to rare earths.

We will work towards improved knowledge transparency of global raw material markets and supply chains, including through the development, voluntary and confidential exchange and publication of shared analytical tools, market indicators and better visibility on prices, supply, demand and processing capacities. We recognise the indispensable role of data underpinning this work. To reach those goals, we commit to working together through the platform below, that marshals existing work and capabilities in the OECD and the IEA Critical Minerals Security Program including in a structured dialogue with businesses.

We will seek to promote a level playing field in the extraction of critical minerals by aligning practices with internationally recognised labour standards and encouraging coordinated action to address systemic risks of forced labour, in accordance with the “G7 Toolkit for Standards-Based Criteria to Identify Risks of Forced Labour in the Extraction of Critical Minerals”, adopted in June 2026.

We acknowledge the essential role that stockpiling can play in improving the security of supply and stability of the market. We commit to developing and increasing domestic capacities or stockpiling critical minerals in the industrial or the public sector, where appropriate for our respective economies, trade and national and collective security including through existing initiatives. We concur to exchange information on stockpiling systems, best practices and methodologies and procurement and release mechanisms, particularly through the IEA Critical Minerals Security Program and by drawing on the expertise of relevant institutions and initiatives such as Japan Organization for Metals and Energy Security (JOGMEC). We intend to leverage stockpiling mechanisms to support the diversification of critical minerals supply chains, including in partner and emerging economies.

To facilitate supply crisis anticipation and management and to prevent price instability, we commit to establish a joint cooperation mechanism with the help of the IEA and its data environment. This mechanism would allow us to share, when necessary, with G7 members and like-minded countries data and alerts on future market stress or disruption in supply or demand.

Convinced that the circular economy and substitution are key to addressing the growing demand of critical minerals and to securing the supply of critical minerals, while contributing to mitigate environmental impacts, we recognise the importance of promoting efficient design, reuse, repair and remanufacturing of products and components rich in critical minerals. We will make efforts to advance the recycling of critical minerals by supporting both the supply of and demand for recycled critical minerals and establish efficient and competitive secondary raw materials markets, through economic and regulatory incentives such as recycled content requirements.

Furthermore, we promote recovery from alternative and secondary sources, such as mine waste and tailings reprocessing, for residual critical minerals and associated by-product elements, while recognising the benefits of trade in recyclable materials amongst trusted partners and of technological innovations to reinforce recycling. We call on continued collaboration on innovation through the Conference on Critical Minerals and Materials. We seek to increase and enhance the collection and recycling capacity of the G7 to avoid the leakage of valuable and end-of-life products containing critical raw materials and to better combat the illegal transfer of waste rich in critical minerals by improving its traceability and enforcement of relevant laws and international frameworks. We recognise digital traceability and extended producer responsibility schemes for manufactured products are effective tools for helping to achieve these objectives of developing a circular economy for critical minerals. We also recognise the opportunity for emerging market and developing economies to benefit from capturing added value through the recycling and secondary processing of their mining waste, as well as from circular economy innovations.

We aim to sharply increase the recycling rates for critical raw materials with the commitment to monitor and assess progress. We will work towards recycling targets by the end of the year for selected critical minerals or their derivatives. Our aim is to increase our collective recycling capacity capable of producing a significant share of the annual consumption of G7 members by the end of 2030.

To achieve these objectives and ensure long-term coordination of our efforts, we establish a non-binding G7 Critical Minerals Resilience and Production Alliance, whose terms are annexed to this declaration. This initiative builds on the existing Critical Minerals Production Alliance and will be open to like-minded partners subject to the approval of participating countries. The Alliance provides a comprehensive platform for cooperation within the G7 and partner countries to strengthen the diversification and resilience of critical minerals value chains and streamline existing initiatives on critical raw materials.

To support the implementation of the Critical Minerals Resilience and Production Alliance, a G7 platform for Critical Minerals Cooperation, operating under the G7 and other platform members, will facilitate discussion, support data-driven decision-making and foster coordination among members. The platform will consult, as it deems appropriate, the IEA Critical Mineral Security Program and OECD, to provide analytical and data-driven assessments of market developments and supply chain vulnerabilities, facilitate information-sharing on stockpiles, conduct emergency exercises and monitor progress in financing, diversification and transparency commitments. We call on the IEA and the OECD to provide data, in line with their expertise, allowing members to identify and receive early warnings of market distortions and plan for coordinated responses.

This declaration reflects the outcome of the discussion between G7 members, benefiting from productive exchanges of views with.”

Source – Prime Minister of Canada

 

Joint statement by the leaders of Canada and Germany on critical minerals

Évian, 17 June 2026

“Prime Minister Carney and Chancellor Merz took stock of shared challenges in the raw materials supply chains of both Canada and Germany. They agreed to cooperate closely on the issue, both bilaterally and in the G7, and stressed the need for industry to diversify raw materials supply chains.

Under the Joint Declaration of Intent announced in August 2025, Germany and Canada have already deepened critical minerals supply chain integration through a Canadian business mission to Munich, a high-level German critical‑minerals delegation to the Prospectors and Developers Association of Canada (PDAC) annual convention, and the launch of a joint supply chain mapping initiative to identify priority battery‑value‑chain opportunities.

Building on the success of this collaboration, Canada and Germany agree to work together to advance critical mineral supply chain resiliency focused on enhancing a partnership on critical minerals stockpiling and leading to capital investments by the end of 2026.”

Source – Prime Minister of Canada

 

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