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Canada’s Saskatchewan province eyes deeper ties in rare earths, uranium supply
Moe said in an interview with HT that Saskatchewan is looking forward to the planned conclusion of a Comprehensive Economic Partnership Agreement (CEPA) to drive the region’s trade with India
Canada’s Saskatchewan province, which is central to plans to ramp up cooperation with India in rare earth elements and uranium supply, is open to exploring joint ventures and investments for exploration and processing of minerals and working on projects for food security, provincial premier Scott Moe has said.
Moe, part of the delegation that accompanied Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney on his recent visit to India to rebuild bilateral ties and diversify trade and supply chains, said in an interview with HT that Saskatchewan is looking forward to the planned conclusion of a Comprehensive Economic Partnership Agreement (CEPA) by the end of this year to drive the region’s trade with India.
India’s Department of Atomic Energy and Canada’s Cameco, one of the largest publicly traded uranium companies, signed a $1.9-billion agreement for the supply of 22 million pounds of uranium ore over nine years during Carney’s visit. All the uranium ore produced by Canada, the world’s second largest producer, comes from mines in Saskatchewan, making Moe very upbeat about the agreement.
“The uranium agreement is tremendous – something we’ve been working on alongside our industry and Cameco. Saskatchewan provides about 20% of global uranium supply and we’re pleased to see this agreement – it’s long-term security for our uranium mining companies, but it’s also energy security for India,” Moe said.
The new pact replaces a five-year agreement from 2015 and is nearly 10 times the value of the previous one. “[This] is an agreement that’s double in length and close to triple in size. It’s a substantially larger agreement and it has the ability to flex up and grow to larger volumes, and be an opportunity for additional energy security through nuclear power [in India] as we see a target to build 100 GW of nuclear power by 2047,” he said.
The two countries also signed a memorandum of understanding (MoU) on cooperation in the exploration, mining and processing of critical minerals, and Moe said Saskatchewan, a powerhouse for rare earths, is open to joint ventures and investments to develop the sector.
“There are other critical minerals that we mine in Saskatchewan and foreign investment does land as portions of those projects. We have a copper mine and a potash mine under construction. We have an aluminium find that is moving through the process of solidification. You add to that lithium and helium – there’s many opportunities in the future for us to work together,” Moe said. Noting that the Saskatchewan Research Council has an advanced zero-waste rare earth elements processing facility, he added: “We have the IP property on the machinery, but there’s the ability to use India’s experience in scaling up at pace and quickly to lend that technology to allow some rare earth elements processing capacity in a country like India and other countries.”
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Moe was also enthusiastic about plans to set up the India-Canada Pulse Protein Centre of Excellence in Haryana, given Saskatchewan’s role as a global leader in pulse production and innovation. The new centre is meant to advance pulse protein processing and fortified food development, while improving access to affordable and high-quality nutrition.
“The centre can deliver nutritional security to students, mothers and families, which is a commitment made by Prime Minister Narendra Modi. Saskatchewan and Canada can be part of delivering that nutritional security by providing the pulses,” he said, while noting that his province’s trading in peas and lentils had been hit by Indian tariffs.
Moe said the CEPA, which India and Canada expect to finalise by the yearend, is the “next obvious step” to grow the trade relationship for Saskatchewan and Canada, especially for the agri-food and natural resource industries and rare earth elements. “It was very ambitious for both PMs to speak of bringing that agreement to a conclusion this calendar year, but that should be an indicator to the business and investment community that the PMs are serious about moving forward with deepening trade ties,” he said.
“I think the [target of] doubling two-way trade by 2030 is an impressive goal. However, I also think it’s entirely achievable and we can go right past it as well,” he said, referring to plans by the two sides to grow bilateral trade to $50 billion by 2030. India-Canada trade in goods was worth almost $10 billion in 2024, while trade in services was valued at almost $14.5 billion in the same period.
