Trudeau Allows China to Acquire Canadian Lithium Mine

Chinese state-owned corporation Zijin Mining Group Ltd. has acquired the Canadian mining company Neo Lithium for $960 million. Neo Lithium is developing a lithium mine in South America, which could prove to be a significant strategic asset due to the growing demand for lithium.

“Prior to the takeover, Neo Lithium was working to establish itself as a key player in the global battery metals sector by developing one of the world’s largest lithium brine projects [in] Argentina,” wrote Resource World. “Neo Lithium’s 100 percent-owned Tres Quebradas (3Q) Project is a unique high-grade lithium brine lake and salar complex, situated in Catamarca, a region known as Latin America’s ‘Lithium Triangle.’ It is estimated to contain enough reserves to produce battery-grade lithium for 50 years.”

The mine in Argentina promises to be profitable. “A key feature of the project is an unusually low level of impurities that should allow Neo Lithium to develop a project that will rank much lower on the cost curve than other comparable operations,” Resource World explained.

Lithium demand is projected to triple over the next five years due to many Western governments passing regulations that will force auto manufactures to pivot to electric vehicles. The metal is also used in batteries for electronic devices and in the production of iron, steel, aluminum and heat-resistant glass and ceramics. Since the beginning of 2021, lithium prices have increased 280 percent.

Currently, China dominates control of global lithium reserves. “More than 80 percent of the world’s raw lithium is mined in Australia, Chile and China,” wrote cnbc. “And China controls more than half of the world’s lithium processing and refining and has three-fourths of the lithium-ion battery megafactories in the world, according to the International Energy Agency.” It is clear China has been positioning itself to have a monopoly on the electric vehicle, battery supply chain.

Lithium is not a rare resource, with 96.2 million tons of identified reserves. The top three reserves are in Bolivia, Argentina and Chile. The United States is fourth, with 8.2 million tons, but only has one lithium mine in operation in Nevada. China has the sixth-largest reserve, at 5.4 million tons, and it also controls 80 percent of the raw lithium processing in the world market.

The acquisition of Neo Lithium by the Chinese government further solidifies China’s hold on the global market and continues to make the Western world subservient to Chinese manufacturing through aggressive green energy policies. The Chinese company Contemporary Amperex Technology Ltd. supplies electric car batteries to Tesla, Daimler and Toyota.

Following Canada’s election in September 2021, the Liberal government has set the goal for all new passenger vehicles to be electric by 2035. They are also promising more than $1 billion to install new charging stations, update infrastructure, and give people incentives to buy electric cars.

The Canadian government allowed the Chinese-owned company to acquire Neo Lithium without doing a formal security review on the impacts of national security. “Liberal industry minister François-Philippe Champagne said that the federal government had initially looked over the project and had no qualms with it,” True North reported. “‘This transaction was absolutely reviewed to make sure there was no security risk,’ Champagne said.”

Why would Justin Trudeau’s government allow China to purchase a profitable, strategic resource while pursuing policies that make Canada’s economy uniquely dependent on China? Trudeau’s world vision has Canada revolving around China.

When Trudeau first ran for leadership of the Liberal Party in 2012, his platform focused on Canada attaching itself to China, as Terry Glavin from the National Post explained: “Trudeau joined the race for the party leadership and invested his credibility in a big idea: China is the future. … Beijing’s promise of a win-win relationship would unlock untold riches for Canada’s middle class. The power would not shift westward, but would rather entrench itself in the Liberal Party’s bastions within the Montreal-Ottawa-Toronto triangle.” Nine years into Trudeau’s leadership, this is exactly what has happened.

There are deep ties between the Liberal Party, the Canadian political elite, and the Canada-China Business Council based in Montreal. The Trudeau family has deep personal connections with the Communist Chinese, as Trudeau admitted in 2013. His father, Pierre Trudeau, was instrumental in legitimizing Mao’s Communist China, even praising it in a book he wrote on his visit to the country.

“There’s a level of admiration I actually have for China,” Justin Trudeau said in 2013. “Their basic dictatorship is actually allowing them to turn their economy around on a dime.” Not only is Trudeau chasing Chinese money, but there is an ideological alignment.

The Canada-China Business Council (ccbc) was founded by Paul Desmarais, the wealthy Quebec businessman who owns Power Corp., in 1978. Desmarais once commented that Mao was one of four historical figures he admired the most. The ccbc’s founding members include the Chinese state-owned company citic, Power Corp., bmo Financial Group, Bombardier, snc-Lavalin, Barrick Gold Corp., Export Development Canada, Manulife Financial and Sun Life Financial. All of these groups are or were based in Montreal. Trudeau illegally shielded snc-Lavalin from fraud charges and awarded it a multimillion-dollar contract during the pandemic to make hospital beds that were never used.

Interestingly, bmo invested in the Canadian pharmaceutical company AbCellera, which became the most valuable biotech company in Canadian history after winning many contracts to develop covid-19 treatments. “In 2018, AbCellera got us$30.6 million from darpa to lead one of four research groups aimed at developing antibody treatments for pandemics,” Globe and Mail reported. “Antibodies can temporarily immunize people and help fight the virus in an infected person. AbCellera also received $4.8 million from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and $175.6 million from the Canadian government to build antibody therapies for pandemics.” However, Canadians can’t buy stocks in AbCellera, only foreigners. The company revenue surged by 1,908 percent during the pandemic.

Four former prime ministers—Pierre Trudeau, Brian Mulroney, Jean Chrétien and Paul Martin—all have ties to the ccbc. “Jean Chrétien … led several ‘Team Canada’ missions to China and played a critical role in rehabilitating the regime in the boardrooms of the world after its slaughter of students and pro-democracy activists in Tiananmen Square in 1989,” wrote Glavin. “Chrétien’s son-in-law, Andre Desmarais, is honorary chairman of the Canada-China Business Council.” (To learn more about the ccbc and its ties to Power Corp. and the Liberal party, please read our Trumpet article on the subject.)

Justin Trudeau has promoted and empowered former ccbc members and Chinese businesses. “Trudeau appointed Peter Harder, head of the ccbc, to lead his transition team,” Glavin explained. “Trudeau later saw to it that Harder was given the Liberals’ top seat in the Senate.” Immigration Minister John McCallum took $73,000 in free trips in China and was later replaced by Dominic Barton, who helped Trudeau win party leadership in 2013.

McKinsey & Company, which formerly employed Barton, was deeply involved with China. “McKinsey had advised a company involved in the construction of illegal islands in the South China Sea, and drew unwanted attention to itself by holding a corporate retreat in Xinjiang within walking distance of a Uyghur concentration camp,” Glavin wrote.

The Trudeau government also tried making a partnership with the Chinese Army, invested $1 billion in the Asia Infrastructure Bank run by China, and happily worked with Huawei in telecommunications infrastructure around Ottawa. It also allowed China to buy $1 billion in a network of retirement homes, and to acquire Nosat International, which supplies the United States military with satellites. Finally, two Chinese billionaires made generous donations to the Pierre Elliott Trudeau Foundation. bmo is a principal partner of the Trudeau Foundation.

It has been proved that the Communist Chinese government helped Trudeau win the September 2021 election by targeting Conservatives in 13 electoral districts. Clearly having Trudeau as leader of Canada benefits China.

The network of Chinese influence is firmly entrenched in the Canadian elite. The decision to allow China to tighten its grip on strategic lithium supplies is just another step forward in fulfilling the vision of a China-Canada union. This is not just an economic relationship but an ideological one. Trumpet executive editor Stephen Flurry wrote in “Wake Up to the Threat From China”:

Many, many of these elites are only concerned with money. But some are concerned with ideology too—and they find socialism and communism attractive. …

God repeatedly warned Israel against forsaking His law and looking to foreigners for prosperity, protection and guidance. Isaiah 2:6, for example, says that God “hast forsaken thy people the house of Jacob, because they be replenished from the east, and are soothsayers like the Philistines, and they please themselves in the children of strangers.” America has committed the same sin. Rather than trusting God to bless and defend them, our people have recognized and traded with Communist dictatorships and even invited Communist professors from China and other nations to teach generations of young Americans and Britons. This has corrupted our youth, sapped our economy, and fatally weakened our nation.

Canada is part of the end-time nations of Israel, as explained by the late Herbert W. Armstrong in The United States and Britain in Prophecy. Bible prophecy warns that because of our national sins our leaders will weakly surrender to Gentile powers. “China has a game plan. There is nothing inherently sinister about that,” Trudeau said in 2012. The truth is, however: There is something sinister and dangerous about it. China wants to rule the world and seeks to destroy any opposition. This is leading to the worst time in human history, but that is quickly followed by the most hopeful and inspiring moment in human history, the return of Jesus Christ. To learn more, read “After the English-Speaking Nations Fall—What Next?”