Many do not know this, but zinc is an important ingredient in disinfectants, such as soap.
So, in a sense, zinc is playing an important role in preventing the spread of COVID-19 as many Canadians use disinfectants containing zinc.
After all, the twin pillars of COVID-19 prevention are social distancing and washing your hands, preferably with proper soap. So, mining this bluish-white metal is important to Canada’s strategy for addressing the pandemic here at home.
Beyond soap, however, zinc is used to galvanize steel to protect it from corrosion and zinc is an essential element for human health, as over 200 enzymes in the human body require zinc for functioning.
For some readers, it may come as a surprise that Canada is an important zinc producer in the world. At one point, Canada was the world’s largest zinc producer. Zinc mines are currently operating in British Columbia, Saskatchewan, Manitoba, Ontario, Quebec, Northwest Territories, Yukon, and Nunavut. It is almost the case where one would ask where zinc is not produced in Canada.
Now, easily, China is the world’s largest producer of zinc from mining, producing almost 34 percent of the world’s total production. By 2018, Canada had fallen to 9th place in the world, representing about 2.2 percent of world production. The world’s largest zinc mine is an open pit zinc-lead-silver mine in Alaska, which accounts for 4.2 percent of world production all by itself.
Now, this is no cause for alarm. The world is not about to run out of zinc. Total global reserves – as recently as February 2020 – are estimated at 250 million metric tons. However, experts have said that with the current heavy consumption of zinc, reserves of it are only expected to last for the next 17 years.
As of 2019, Australia – an ally to Canada – has the most of these global zinc reserves, at around 68 million metric tons. The other most significant reserves are in China, Peru, and Mexico. China itself in 2019 was producing about 4.3 million metric tons of zinc.
Although China is not per se an enemy of Canada and we maintain friendly bilateral diplomatic and trade relations with them, with mounting evidence that Communist China was not transparent about the COVID-19 pandemic in their own country, it is possible the world may turn on them.
The two main Conservative leadership candidates considered frontrunners have been aggressive and bellicose in their rhetoric against China since the pandemic began.
If past behaviour is any indication and especially in its economic relations with the United States, the world knows that China is capable of retaliating when other countries do not follow its lead. In 2010, China restricted exports of rare earth elements to Japan over a diplomatic dispute which led to a sharp increase in prices, causing turmoil in global markets, given the importance of these metals to many consumer goods.
In this case, Canada was also an important producer of rare earth elements, but was relegated to being an exporter of unrefined ore to China.
The problem is that although we ought to be running world markets on a free price-based system of proper market signals, China as one player often manipulates global markets for its own strategic interests. Other countries do this too, but China as a large superpower can do it to great effect. In the case of rare earth elements, for decades the Chinese government bought up production and supply chains around the world in these important elements used in cell phones and electric cars, as well as advanced military hardware, in order to serve their own strategic interests.
Although zinc is not as strategically important as rare earth metals, it would be important for Canada to shore up its own domestic supply of zinc to avoid any potential anti-trade actions by China or even any other large player. Just like the domestic supply of personal protective equipment (PPE) became an issue of great concern in Canada as the pandemic ramped up here, ensuring our country has an assured supply of metal that is used in disinfectants such as soap might be a wise idea. Or perhaps, Canada could work with Australia and other allies that have dependable zinc reserves to ensure the global system has a reliable zinc supply based on proper market and price-based considerations, not the threat of anyone manipulating global markets.
Canada needs a national mining strategy that takes this into consideration.
Joseph Quesnel is a research associate with the Frontier Centre for Public Policy. www.fcpp.org
