Critical minerals – Permit to Prosperity

05/23/24 • 90 min

Canada has designed 31 minerals as critical – essential to our green digital economy, but whose supply is threatened. From copper to cesium they are in batteries; every electronic device, computer, and EV; permanent magnets; optical instruments; wiring; bearings; run-of river dams, wind farms, and solar arrays; aerospace alloys; catalytic converters & carbon dioxide scrubbers; and medical equipment. Our modern world simply does not exist without them.

As the world strives to electrify demand for critical minerals is skyrocketing. Electric vehicles don’t burn fossil fuels, but they require an average of 200 kilograms of critical minerals each – six times that required to build an internal combustion vehicle. It’s a theme repeated across numerous fields.

As a result, from 2017 – 2022 demand for lithium tripled, demand for cobalt rose 70 per cent, for nickel 40 per cent. The International Energy Agency predicts overall demand for critical minerals will more than triple by 2030 if the world continues to pursue the goal of net zero emissions by 2050.

This is leading to a shortage of many minerals as miners struggle to keep up with demand for responsibly-secured supplies – and to get through regulatory processes that can drag on for years.

Join us 7 p.m. May 22 for a conversation about critical minerals with an outstanding panel of experts working in this field every day.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

This is leading to a shortage of many minerals as miners struggle to keep up with demand for responsibly-secured supplies – and to get through regulatory processes that can drag on for years.

Join us 7 p.m. May 22 for a conversation about critical minerals with an outstanding panel of experts working in this field every day.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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Disaster Prepared - Are We?

Preparing for disasters has long been a consideration in municipal, household, and business budgeting. Earthquake prep perhaps attracted the most public focus in recent decades, before the 2020’s, while funding for some other streams fell off.

In late 2021 disaster preparedness became an urgent public priority virtually overnight when a series of storms dumped an unprecedented amount of rain on BC at the same time as unseasonably warm weather caused a rapid winter snow melt. Both the Fraser River in BC and the Nooksack in Washington State flooded, the water overwhelming dikes and plunging thousands of farms, businesses, and homes in the Sumas Prairie under deep water. Crops and farm animals alike perished on BC’s most productive agricultural land. All three highways connecting Metro Vancouver to the rest of Canada were severed, disrupting supply chains for shipments of food and other critical goods.

Since then, BC has weathered a series of intense wildfire seasons that have burned vast stretches of forest and many structures, droughts, heat domes, and cold snaps. The need for disaster preparedness has never been more top-of-mind – whether at a household, government, or business level.

We have brought together a panel of experts from business, First Nations, and government for a conversation about this critical matter – 7 p.m. April 30. The panel:

Christine Trefanenko, Director and Co-Founder, CCEM Strategies
Tony Geheran, TELUS Chief Operations Officer and Executive Vice-President
Ross Siemens, Mayor of Abbotsford
Leon Gaber, KPMG National Lead, Emergency Management
Bowinn Ma, BC Minister of Emergency Management and Climate Readiness
Tim Swanson, FortisBC Director of Corporate Security and Business Continuity

We hope you can join us for the conversation.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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Vancouver's AI Summit - Vancouver on the Global Tech Stage

A special edition from KPMG’s Vancouver AI Summit - Vancouver on the global tech stage.

Vancouver is at the forefront of advances in artificial intelligence that are already transforming robotics, medicine, mining, and even permit processing.

In a special edition of Conversations Live, we will webcast live from KPMG’s Vancouver AI Summit 5 – 5:45 p.m. Wednesday, May 29. With an outstanding panel we will delve into the state of AI today, what the future holds, and our opportunities and challenges.

Our panel: