According to Reuters, the Canadian government, ruled by Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, will make the investment to accelerate the extraction and production of the important minerals, which include nickel, lithium and cobalt, in order to diversify the supply chain for the production of EV batteries.

According to the undisclosed sources, the investment could be spread over more than a year.

Last month, Canada announced that it will financially support two projects, one which is a facility that will make battery materials for electric vehicles, and the other, one being a battery gigafactory.

Jonathan Wilkinson, Natural Resources Minister, said that " there are some particular projects that we are looking at and working on at the present time. The projects, whether they're extraction or processing, need to be accelerated significantly, and that's what the critical mineral strategy will be about."

Canada has important resources of the critical minerals required for building EV batteries and it also has a multi-billion-dollar fund for investments in green technologies, which is why the country officials plan to make Ontario the strategic point of for manufacturing the materials required for the green energy transition.

Ontario is an important strategic point as it is close to Ford and GM factories in Michigan and Ohio, which means that it could become an important supply chain for the factories located there.

Opening new mines can take many years, which is why Wilkinson pointed that some of the projects could involve processing "tailings from existing mines from which you could extract critical minerals."

Brendan Marshall, vice president of economic and northern affairs for the Mining Association of Canada, mentioned that this kind of process can't be done right away and that it would require some research.

"There needs to be research and development to develop technologies that can identify and separate critical minerals from the general waste stream," he said.

General Motors also stated on Monday, April 4th, that it will be investing 1.6 billion USD into two facilities, one of which will be producing a commercial electric vehicle to be used in Canada.

The demand for minerals required to build batteries could increase by as much as 500% by 2050, according to estimates from the World Bank.

China is currently the worldwide dominant player when it comes to processing and production of critical minerals and rare earth elements required to build EVs.