CONTENTS
Standing Committee on the Economy
Supplementary Estimates
— No. 1
Saskatchewan Research
Council Vote 35
THIRTIETH
LEGISLATURE
of
the
Legislative Assembly of
Saskatchewan
STANDING
COMMITTEE ON
Hansard Verbatim
Report
No.
8 — Monday, December 1, 2025
Chair
Thorsteinson: — Good morning, everybody.
Welcome to the Standing Committee on the Economy. I’m the Chair, James
Thorsteinson. And with us today we have MLA [Member of the Legislative
Assembly] Kevin Weedmark; MLA Kevin Kasun; MLA Kim Breckner; MLA Sally Housser;
MLA Tajinder Grewal; and sitting in for Darlene Rowden, MLA Barret Kropf.
General Revenue Fund
Supplementary Estimates —
No. 1
Saskatchewan Research Council
Vote 35
Subvote (SR01)
Chair
Thorsteinson: — Today pursuant to rule
148(1), the following supplementary estimates no. 1 were committed to the
Standing Committee on the Economy on November 27th, 2025: 2025‑26
supplementary estimates no. 1, vote 35, Saskatchewan Research Council.
Today the committee will be considering the supplementary estimates no. 1
for Saskatchewan Research Council. We’ll begin with the consideration of vote
35, Saskatchewan Research Council, subvote (SR01).
Minister Kaeding is here with
his officials. I would ask that officials please state your names before
speaking into the microphones. As a reminder, please don’t touch the
microphones. The Hansard operator will turn your microphone on when you are
speaking to the committee. Minister, please introduce your officials and make
your opening remarks.
Hon.
Warren Kaeding: —
Well good morning, Mr. Chair, committee members. It’s a pleasure to appear
before the committee of estimates regarding Saskatchewan Research Council, or
SRC, for supplementary estimates. So with me today are SRC’s president and CEO
[chief executive officer], Mike Crabtree; COO [chief operating officer] Ryan
Hill; and SRC’s vice-president of finance, Jocelyn Allard.
For nearly 80 years, SRC has
proudly delivered smart science solutions with unparalleled service to clients
that grow and strengthen Saskatchewan’s economy. SRC lives by its core values
to build a better Saskatchewan and a better world.
SRC’s mandate is to take
under consideration matters pertaining to research, development, design,
consultation, innovation, and investigation in and commercialization of the
natural and management sciences as they affect the welfare of the province and
any particular matters that may be brought to SRC’s attention by the Lieutenant
Governor in Council. This is and has always been a fairly broad mandate which
affords SRC the opportunity to both react to the needs of the industry as well
as progress new, innovative ideas forward for the province.
SRC is the second-largest
research and technology organization in Canada behind only the National
Research Council, which is governed by the federal government. Home to several
state-of-the-art laboratories, SRC offers reliable, professional commercial lab
services. SRC also offers dedicated services that focus on contract research,
development and demonstration projects, as well as pilot plants that offer
clients the opportunity to test new technologies and processes. By investing in
new technologies and world-class researchers, SRC continues to expand its
capabilities, moving the organization to the forefront of research,
development, and demonstration and meeting the growing needs of Saskatchewan’s
industries.
Since its inception, SRC has
been a part of many important firsts for the province that have brought many
benefits to the Saskatchewan economy. In the 1970s SRC was a leader in
energy-efficient housing research, and its work formed the basis for the development
of the R‑2000 standard for energy-efficient homes. In the 1980s SRC
played a large role assisting the Saskatchewan oil and gas industry by enabling
the implementation of horizontal wells and the use of carbon dioxide for
enhanced oil recovery.
SRC’s geoanalytical
laboratories’ secure diamond facility, established in the early 2000s, is the
largest such facility in the world. Now not only does it offer diamond
services, but it also offers geochemical and mineralogical analysis for base
metals such as gold, lithium, uranium, potash, and rare earth elements.
SRC is also home to the
world’s largest uranium and potash labs staffed by world-class scientists,
engineers, researchers, and technologists. So these examples paint really a
small picture of the important work that SRC has done over its near 80‑year
history and the positive impacts that have followed.
So I mentioned before how SRC
is on the leading edge of bringing firsts to Saskatchewan. And I’d like to
shift gears to highlight why we are here today for the SRC’s rare earth
processing facility, which has already garnered significant national and international
attention.
For almost 20 years SRC has
been investigating and developing the technology and intellectual property to
process minerals containing rare earth elements, also known as REEs [rare earth
elements], as well as the technology required to separate individual REEs and
to eventually produce rare earth metals.
REEs are a group of 17
metallic elements found on the periodic table. And despite their name, REEs are
relatively abundant in the ground but are often difficult to extract and
separate from each other and from other minerals. The applications of REEs are
vast. If we didn’t have REEs, we would not have a lot of the technology that we
use every day, including cell phones, rechargeable batteries, LED
[light-emitting diode] lights, lasers, fluorescent lighting, HVAC [heating,
ventilating, and air conditioning] systems, elevators, and robotics.
Today REEs are considered one
of the world’s most strategically important mineral groups due to their role in
clean energy, advanced manufacturing, aerospace, medical technologies, and
national defence. It is why REEs already play an important role in directly
supporting Saskatchewan’s own critical mineral strategy.
The strategic importance of
REEs are also beginning to be recognized and prioritized by the Government of
Canada as well. And this can be seen in the most recent federal budget, where
they look to view defence and industrial security spending not just as a cost
but as a strategic investment.
Federal budget 2025 provides
$6.6 billion over five years to strengthen Canada’s defence industry
through a new defence industrial strategy. It also provides over
$2 billion over five years for the creation of a critical minerals
sovereign fund. These two initiatives alone provide the Government of
Saskatchewan and SRC an opportunity to demonstrate how the rare earth
processing facility fits under the federal government’s overall strategy to
increase domestic industrial activity.
Demand for REEs is forecasted
to grow significantly over the next two decades, driven largely by
electrification, renewal energy systems, and global supply chain security. Many
other jurisdictions including the European Union, the United States, Japan, and
Australia have also declared REEs as critical minerals and are actively seeking
to diversify supply chains and reduce reliance on China.
Currently 95 per cent of the
global REE sector is dominated by China. And that is why in 2020 the Government
of Saskatchewan commissioned SRC to begin constructing a North American-first
rare earth processing facility. Due to the volatility of the REE market as a
result of China’s dominance, the scope of the project increased substantially
over the last five years.
These scope changes include,
but are certainly not limited to, developing proprietary tech in-house,
independent of China’s REE dominance; the addition of a federally funded
bastnaesite pilot-scale processing project; increasing the number of furnaces
the facility will have to better meet commercial-scale targets; and adding
capacity to produce dysprosium and terbium, a set of heavy REEs that are
essential for high-efficiency permanent magnets primarily used in defence
equipment.
This facility is now set to
be the first fully integrated, commercial minerals-to-metals facility in North
America, with hydrometallurgy separation and metal smelting stages. The
objective of this facility is to stimulate the REE resource sector in Saskatchewan
and across Canada. The facility is meant to provide the early-stage supply
chain needed to generate industry investment and growth, and that is something
that we are already seeing happen.
Once complete, SRC’s facility
will take rare earth minerals and produce rare earth metals, specifically
neodymium, praseodymium, terbium, and dysprosium. These metals are a common
ingredient in permanent magnets used in electric vehicles, green technology
such as wind turbines, and in defence equipment.
SRC’s facility can be broken
down into three stages. The first stage of the facility is a monazite
processing unit. This unit processes the mineral monazite concentrate and
creates a mixed rare earth chloride, a liquid that contains all 17 REEs. During
this process, it also removes radioactive elements and impurities, ensuring
safe downstream processing.
The second stage of the
facility is a solvent extraction unit, and this is where in-house developed
technology will separate the 17 rare earths from one another, creating
individual rare earth oxides. This part of the facility, when complete, will
house more than 400 SRC-designed-and-manufactured solvent extraction cells.
These truly will be the workhorse of the facility, and they are technology that
SRC and the Government of Saskatchewan are extremely proud of, as Saskatchewan
is now one of a handful of jurisdictions in the world that has this capability,
one that is extremely integral to completing the rare earth supply chain.
Moving back to the various
facility stages, the individually separated REE oxides are then fed into the
third stage, a metal smelting unit where a semi-automated process converts
these oxides into REE metals. Once fully operational, SRC’s facility will be
able to process 3000 tonnes of monazite and produce about 400 tonnes of NdPr
[neodymium-praseodymium] metal, enough to power half a million electric
vehicles.
In mid‑2024, SRC’s
metal smelting unit began producing rare earth metals at a commercial scale,
making Saskatchewan and Canada the first jurisdiction outside of China to
achieve this milestone. The development of this hub is aligned with the
province’s 2030 growth plan, and the project is already attracting interest and
investment from abroad. The world truly is starting to connect REE technology
with Saskatchewan.
SRC has worked diligently to
secure feedstock for its facility and has recently entered into agreements with
suppliers in South America and Africa. SRC expects to complete the construction
of the facility in the fall of 2026, commissioning in early 2027, and be fully
operational later that year. From SRC’s perspective, the project’s schedule and
costs are currently on track.
And with that I would be
happy to take any questions from the committee. Thank you.
Chair
Thorsteinson: — Thank you, Minister. I’ll
now open the floor for questions. MLA Housser.
Sally
Housser: —
Thank you very much, Minister, for being here today and having the SRC
leadership. It’s a very exciting time for SRC and obviously critical and rare
earth minerals here in Saskatchewan.
Just
to jump right into it, first question is, what’s
the 68 million more specifically being used for in the processing
facility?
Hon.
Warren Kaeding: —
Okay. I think best, to understand the full scope of the project, that we let
the expert speak as to what that is going to. So I’m going to defer now to Mike
Crabtree to explain what has gone into that. Mike.
Mike
Crabtree: —
Mike Crabtree. I will forget to say my name every time I speak, so apologies in
advance.
So yes, the 68 million
is part of the stage-gated funding for the project. Projects of this scale are
funded on an annual basis. It has been in construction since the early 2020s.
The current tranche of funding is designed to allow us to complete the plant to
the end of 2026. That takes us through the construction, the commissioning, and
the early-stage operations of the plant.
As the minister said before,
the plant was originally designed with just three unit operations, so it was
designed to take monazite and really just produce that first and second stage.
What we have now is a plant that operates with nine unit operations, so it is
much more sophisticated.
One of the unit operations
which is unique to SRC takes those tailings and removes the uranium and the
thorium so the tailings are completely non-radioactive and in fact will be used
for things like road construction. So that uranium and thorium, changing it
from a dangerous waste product, is now a valuable sales product.
[09:15]
So that 68 million is a
part of that process to complete those nine unit operations and get us into
full operation by that fall of ’26 and into early ’27.
Sally
Housser: —
Thank you very much. Am I correct in assuming now the province has provided as
a grant 138 million for the development of the processing facility, and
then there’s an additional 30 million of combined funding from the
Government of Canada? Is that correct?
Hon.
Warren Kaeding: —
Okay. Can we get Jocelyn to clarify? There’s some intricacies around the
federal funding parts, and Jocelyn I think is very fully aware of how that
would break down for you. Jocelyn.
Jocelyn Allard:
— Yes. So in terms of funding for the facility, there are various aspects. So
in total right now, the Government of Saskatchewan has approved funding of
187 million. SRC has contributed a portion as well. So 16 million
came from SRC ourselves.
As well from the federal
government, there’s two aspects. So we have received 13.5 million that
went into the REPF [Rare Earth Processing Facility] facility on its own, and
then earlier we mentioned bastnaesite project. So that is a separate project
that the federal government has funded as well, and that project funding was
16 million. So in total that was the representative 30 million that
you spoke of earlier.
Sally Housser: — Thanks.
And I guess kind of what would be curious with it in supplementary estimates is
you talked about the scale up and the development. When were these decisions
made? And why are we in a supplementary for the 68 million now instead of
it having previously been a line item or booked by the government?
Mike Crabtree:
— Mike Crabtree. I’m doing really well so far. It won’t continue. I think it’d
be useful to answer the question in terms of the phasing of the funding of the
project against government budgets. And projects like this, in order for them
to be able to move forward with the momentum we need, quite often when we need
to change and pivot, it doesn’t exactly match the funding and budgetary
requirements of government to do that. So sometimes we have to go within the
existing year and look to what the following year could provide.
But putting that in context,
when we originally started this project and were given sanction by government
to do so, we were going to do what everybody does when they’re looking to
purchase equipment of this type, which was to go to China. And so we got
quotations from China for exactly the sort of equipment we were talking about —
those smelting units and the separation units. And we got those quotations.
But fortunately, before we
got the opportunity to place those orders, the Chinese put in a provision
whereby they would only sell the equipment to jurisdictions that they approved
of. And we were not a jurisdiction that they approved of.
So we were forced to fall
back on our own resources, and we designed our own separation and smelting
systems. So this took us about nine months to do this. We were able to move
forward with other aspects of the plant design on this, but we took about nine
months to completely redesign or put our own designs in place for SX [solvent
extraction] and smelters, which is actually quite incredible.
But on top of that we added
artificial intelligence to those systems, because one of the challenges in
competing with China is that China has low-cost workforce. We needed to be able
to be competitive with that Chinese pricing, so we needed to bring in AI
[artificial intelligence].
As we moved forward, we moved
forward into COVID. COVID did not shut SRC down. We continued to work and
design, but what we found is what most organizations found, that prices for
equipment before COVID and after COVID were quite different — very, very significant
levels of inflation. And at the same time, as I mentioned in my last response,
we understood that the market was changing and we needed to pivot from
something that was three unit operations to something that was much more
vertically integrated, which would protect us against the volatility of the
market.
So that combination of
designing our own equipment, COVID, the inflation post-COVID, the pivoting into
nine unit operations rather than three — which in itself was done in stages —
is the fundamental reason for the difference between the cost of the original
concept of the plant to where we are now. But what we have here now is a
globally first-of-a-kind capable plant.
Sally Housser: —
Absolutely. And yeah, I appreciate those challenges and the design changes. I
guess when we’re talking about pre-COVID and, you know, getting estimates from
China, it seems like we’re still a couple of budget periods past where all
those changes and decisions were made. So I’m still wondering why we’re talking
about the 68 million here today and not kind of in previous budgets.
Mike Crabtree:
— Mike Crabtree. If I look at the question in context, it’s why have we taken
longer to get where we are than we originally planned. I think the high-level
response to that: this is a first-of-its-kind plant globally outside of China.
And as we moved forward from those three unit operations to nine, one of the
drivers for that was the volatility that we were seeing in the market, which is
largely Chinese driven. And we recognized with the three unit operations that
we were going to take essentially that monazite ore to separated rare earth
oxides.
When we looked at how the
Chinese were manipulating the market, we were concerned that we could get
caught by the Chinese manipulating the market between the monazite and the
oxide. And I’ll give an example here. When we started the project, the monazite
was about $4,000 a tonne. And the product from the monazite, that mixed rare
earth oxides or chlorides, was about $9,000 a tonne. That is a good commercial
proposition. Couple of thousand dollars to process it; it’s a profitable
proposition.
By the time we were
post-COVID into ’22 and early ’23, monazite was $10,000 a tonne, and the mixed
rare earth chloride was $8,000 a tonne, purely through Chinese manipulation. So
if we stayed with that route we would have been very vulnerable to that.
In adding the additional unit
operations and moving from the oxide to the metal, we were able to re-establish
profitability in that by having a much more vertically integrated piece. And
I’ll give you an example of this, is that $10,000 a tonne for the monazite,
$9,000 for the intermediate. The combined metallization and products from that
average around $60,000 per tonne. And for the metals, significantly higher,
significantly higher than that.
So the decision to move from
three to six to nine unit operations was driven by the commercial realities.
And frankly the time taken to do that was because there are no designs for
this. There was no instruction manual. We had to create our own instruction
manual for that. And two implications for that: one, it took longer; and two,
it cost us more.
Sally Housser: — Thanks
very much. You’d mentioned initially I think that in terms of funding, the SRC
itself has put back 16 million into it. Is there any additional
investments or funding in the processing facility other than the money
contributed by the government? Anything in addition from SRC in that
16 million internal profits or money from private sector companies or from
other countries?
[09:30]
Mike Crabtree:
— Mike Crabtree. The contributions to the construction of the plant, you know,
capital, all of the construction costs, commissioning costs, are all funded by
the three entities that you’ve said — so Government of Saskatchewan, SRC, and
federal government — at the proportions we indicated.
Sally
Housser: —
Thank you very much. What’s the expected final total cost of the processing
facility as presently approved by the government, and are there any remaining
costs to be funded by the government?
Jocelyn Allard:
— Jocelyn Allard. So in terms of the total final cost for the project that is
currently budgeted, we’re sitting at 195 million for the capital
requirements. On top of that, SRC has gone through a very detailed budgeting
process so we have a 1,000‑line-plus budget that represents the capital
costs of the facility.
And throughout that process
what we have done is we have allocated a risk budget or a contingency, and that
amount sits on top. So we have a $22 million contingency that we’ve
currently budgeted for, and we will go through each of those 1,000 line items
and allocate the contingency based on any risks we’ve assessed throughout our
budgeting process.
In terms of the final
funding, we are going through that process and evaluating every month the final
budget. That has not changed in a number of months, but we are looking at
additional funding to come next fiscal year in ’26‑27 to get us through
that final construction phase.
Sally
Housser: —
Is there any estimate of what that might look like? Ballpark?
Jocelyn Allard:
— Right now we’re continuing to monitor that through that budget process, and
so there isn’t a final budget at this time to define.
Sally
Housser: —
Like 5 million, another 68 million, or anything close to that?
Jocelyn Allard:
— Jocelyn Allard. Yes, so to clarify, back when we went over the breakdown of
the numbers we’d stated the 187 coming from the Government of Saskatchewan, so
that is the total budget included. And so in multi-year projects such as this,
we would go through that phase process where we need that cash flow each year,
and therefore a part of that 187 million from the Government of
Saskatchewan would come next fiscal year. But there is no additional budget ask
beyond that final number.
Sally
Housser: —
Thank you. In the press release in September of 2024 it stated that:
SRC’s
facility is ready to produce 10 tonnes of neodymium-praseodymium [I think I got
that right] (NdPr) metals per month, with purities greater than 99.5 per cent
and conversions greater than 98 per cent. SRC is on track to upscale this
production to 40 tonnes of rare earth . . . [minerals] per month by
the end of December, 2024.
So
can you advise the amount of NdPr that you are able to produce now, and then
what actually is being produced?
Mike Crabtree:
— Mike Crabtree. So I can confirm the capacity of the furnaces — which is the
final stage of the process — is 40 tonnes per year, which is the design as
we’ve had at the end of 2024. Ultimately the fully vertically integrated plant
that will be operating at the end of next year will have a capacity of
approaching 400 tonnes per year. Thus far through commercial agreements,
actually with a German company and with a Canadian company, we have tolled,
toll manufactured about 20 tonnes. We have not pursued further expansion of
those contracts at this stage, because our focus is to complete the full plant
rather than go into tolling agreements for relatively small quantities.
So the purpose of doing those
commercial contracts was a number of things. One, we proved that we could do it
at that scale, at that purity, actually exceeding that purity. We are now
recognized as being a commercial producer of NdPr metals, but we don’t want to
go into, you know, full operation of that until full vertical integration. It’s
a distraction to the team otherwise.
Sally
Housser: —
Yeah, understood. So in terms of then from that press release from September
2024 that you said you would be producing 40 tonnes by the end of December and
we’re doing 20 now, so that was a decision in terms of . . . that was
made after December or September 2024?
Mike Crabtree:
— Correct. It was an operational decision.
Sally
Housser: —
Great, thanks. You mentioned tolling. During the estimates process in April
last year, it stated that:
. . .
we’ve designed that tolling price to be a profitable price. So the operation of
the furnace, the operation of all the operation pieces are covered by the costs
of the tolling.
And so essentially I
interpret this as only the costs of the facility are covered by the tolling,
but not the grant from the province or the federal government. And I’m just
wondering if there’s any expectation that the provincial government will get
that, you know, the grant that’s been provided, the 138 million that had
been provided to the SRC, back at any point.
Mike Crabtree:
— Mike Crabtree. So as SRC is 100 per cent government owned, the plant, when
it’s fully operational, will operate on a fully commercial P&L [profit and
loss] which includes depreciation. So that depreciation effectively delivers
the return on investment to government through a fully commercial profit and
loss.
Sally Housser: — Thanks. REalloys has
publicly announced that they’re one of your partners and that they’ve signed
MOUs [memorandum of understanding] with the SRC. That makes the relationship
public and open for public discussion, I would assume. Is the 68 million in
grant funding intended to meet REalloys’s needs as outlined in the public press
release that they put out in May of 2025? And that states that you’ll provide
processing to provide 500 metric tons of rare earths by the end of 2026, and
1000 metric tons by the end of 2028.
Mike
Crabtree:
— Mike Crabtree. So the 68 million is to complete the plant so that we can
engage with commercial contracts. And we will have a number of commercial
offtake contracts — not just one; a number of commercial offtake contracts —
for the products for the plant. So the 68 million completes the plant. We
will then be able to commercially deliver into offtake agreements.
Sally Housser: — Okay. Yeah, I just want to
read from the press release that the SRC was part of earlier this year:
[REalloys’s] planned production [of rare
earth magnet minerals at the SRC Rare Earth Processing Facility] starts in Q2,
with targeted expansion to 500 metric tonnes per year of magnet materials in
2026 and 1,000 mt by 2028. This is a major milestone to achieve the objective
of a secure & resilient North American magnet materials & magnets
supply chain focused on demand from U.S. Protected Markets (includes: National
Defense Stockpiles, Defense Industrial Base, Nuclear Industrial Base, Robotics,
Electric Aviation, Critical Infrastructure industries, and for U.S. Partner
Countries with Defense Treaties, Alliances &
Agreements).
Minister
Kaeding, during estimates in April you stated:
The companies that [the SRC is] doing
business with have many broad uses both for commercial and certainly for the
military sector. So I can’t say one way or the other that they will or will not
be used in those [US defence products].
[09:45]
I’m curious about the timing
because that release was only a couple of weeks after our questions in
committee. So it’s not questions regarding the use of the rare earths that
we’re producing, but I would just ask kind of what changed in those couple of weeks
in between our questions at committee and the release that more information
couldn’t have been provided to the committee, as there appeared to be much
available at the time?
Mike
Crabtree:
— Mike Crabtree. It was referenced in that September 24th MOU, 500 tonnes and
1000 tonnes as being REalloys’s estimated production for ’26 and ’27.
Sally Housser: — Sorry, do you mean May 2025?
Just making sure.
Mike
Crabtree:
— I beg your pardon. May, yeah. Sorry, my mistake. Those 500 tonnes represent
magnets, not the rare earth metals. The rare earth metals are fractional to
that. So 500 tonnes of magnets is probably 100 to 150 tonnes of metals, so it’s
significantly below that.
I
think the other thing to note is that of 100 per cent of SRC’s annual revenue,
about 20 per cent comes from Government of Saskatchewan. The other 80 per cent
comes from commercial operations. We have some 1,500 clients in 22 countries,
so the contracts that we enter into, particularly in the rare earth space, are
extremely commercially sensitive. The investment that is going into rare
earths, just within the North American continent at the moment, is way over a
billion dollars, US dollars. And that’s just from US government, not from
private sources.
So
in the areas we work with, a number of upstream, midstream, and downstream rare
earth companies, commercial companies, we have to maintain very clear
boundaries and very clear confidentiality in the contracts that we enter into.
Sally Housser: — Thanks. And understood, you
know, in terms of confidentiality. And I understand, you know, it’s one thing
to enter confidentiality agreements where the commercial business is being
funded, commercial for SaskTel or SaskPower. But when a project is being
funded, whether 20 per cent or subsidized through the legislature, I think it’s
reasonable that the committee and the legislature should be able to ask
questions around this, particularly when three weeks later announcements are
made regarding partnerships that were asked about a few weeks previously.
I
guess moving along here, just going back to the former minister of SRC
. . . And we’ve talked a lot about the volatility and the changes in
the markets and the delicate nature of it. And while it is very exciting, there
still remains that volatility and I think we’ve seen that here today with the
shifting requirements and changes.
But
back in 2023, the former minister of SRC acknowledged that no private sector
company would make the gamble to deploy capital into rare earths with the fear
that the Chinese would sink the market, again, wreck the economics of the
project, and they would lose their investment over it all.
So
just with that as the context . . . And you know, kind of lines up
with a lot of the things we’re talking about today. Has that shifted in terms
of what you perceive of private entities being more willing to invest in these
projects and markets? And what are we doing to safeguard us as a province and
of the public purse in the use of these public funds?
Hon.
Warren Kaeding: —
Absolutely. I think, you know, the previous minister had nailed it right bang
on, is that when you get to this early-stage investment in something that’s new
and novel, that honestly we have minimal to zero experience in developing, it
probably needs a catalyst like government to be able to facilitate that.
There is a huge technological
gap in that midstream processing that I think a previous minister was able and
certainly had the foresight to understand what that was, and that government
need to be involved in that to develop that technology to get us to the point
where now what we’re seeing is tremendous interest by the private sector in
investing in the downstream processing part.
I’d say that’s where industry
certainly sees the value, but they needed to get the midstream processing, I
guess, developed. And that’s certainly where SRC has played a pivotal role, in
fact the role to where we will be the first of its kind to be able to get this
process finalized and developed so that it is now ready for uptake by the
private sector.
So I certainly appreciate
previous minister foresight in being able to convince the Government of
Saskatchewan to invest in that. We now see the role that SRC has played in that
— in that a very prominent role, an industry-leading role — in being able to
develop this technology to get it to the point where now even part of our
provincial strategy was to now hopefully attract that downstream processing
facility.
And I’d say we’re in a very
good position with the technology that’s been developed by SRC and how they’ve
been able to get it to this point. Now very much looking forward to the
opportunities that we’re going to see in this province probably from some downstream
processing.
Sally
Housser: —
Thanks. And I think I can get one more in here. You brought up in your opening
remarks, Minister, the federal defence strategy. And so just wondering if we
are looking, you know . . . Should there be more supplementary costs
coming along if we are looking for either some private sector investment
potentially as people are more secure with the process going forward? Or also
any additional funds that might be available from the federal government either
around their federal defence strategy or their large-projects list?
Hon.
Warren Kaeding: —
I think what we’ve seen, just as we talked about just in the last federal
budget, certainly an interest by our federal government in this area in
particular. But I would even say that we need to look even beyond Canada’s
interests. I’d say there’s certainly North American interests. And I would say
even our allied partners’ interest around the world and what is currently going
on here.
So I fully expect our
conversations are not over. I’d say they’ve just begun. And it’s going to be
very interesting to see where this is going to lead to further investment —
private sector and government investment, certainly at the federal, international
level — into what we’ve got going on here in the province.
Sally
Housser: —
Thanks, Minister.
Chair
Thorsteinson: — All right. Seeing no further
questions, we’ll proceed to vote on the supplementary estimates no. 1 for
the Saskatchewan Research Council. Before we begin the voting process,
Minister, do you have any closing comments you wish to make?
Hon.
Warren Kaeding: —
Certainly. My apology for inadvertently introducing Michelle Lang as my chief
of staff, who’s also here with us today.
[10:00]
But also I think what we’ve
talked about today certainly identifies the incredible work that SRC has been
doing to put Saskatchewan at the forefront of technological advancements really
throughout the world. And appreciate the effort of the folks you see here today
and the incredible team behind them in the work that they’re doing to advance
Saskatchewan’s interests on the international stage.
Certainly appreciate all of
the committee members’ attention today and Hansard for accurately recording our
conversation. So certainly appreciate everyone’s attention this morning.
Chair
Thorsteinson: — Thank you, Minister. MLA
Housser, any closing comments?
Sally
Housser: —
No. I very much appreciate the informative conversation here. And thanks very
much to Hansard and my colleagues for being in attendance.
Chair Thorsteinson: — Thank you, Minister. You and
your officials are free to go.
And we will vote off this
resolution, vote 35, Saskatchewan Research Council. Saskatchewan Research
Council, subvote (SR01) in the amount of $68,000,000, is that agreed?
Some
Hon. Members: — Agreed.
Chair
Thorsteinson: — Carried.
Saskatchewan Research
Council, vote 35 — $68,000,000. I’ll now ask a member to move the following
resolution:
Resolved
that there be granted to His Majesty for the 12 months ending March 31, 2026,
the following sums for the Saskatchewan Research Council in the amount of
$68,000,000.
Kevin
Weedmark: —
I so move.
Chair
Thorsteinson: — MLA Weedmark. Is that
agreed?
Some
Hon. Members: — Agreed.
Chair
Thorsteinson: — Carried. Committee members,
you have before you a draft of the second report of the Standing Committee on
the Economy for the thirtieth legislature. We require a member to move the
following motion:
That the
second report of the Standing Committee of the Economy for the thirtieth
legislature be adopted and presented to the Assembly.
MLA Weedmark.
Kevin
Weedmark: —
I so move.
Chair
Thorsteinson: — Is that agreed?
Some
Hon. Members: — Agreed.
Chair
Thorsteinson: — Carried. Well that concludes our business for this
morning. I would ask a member to move a motion of adjournment. MLA Kasun has so
moved. All agreed?
Some Hon. Members: — Agreed.
Chair
Thorsteinson: — Carried.
This committee stands adjourned to the call of the Chair.
[The committee adjourned at
10:03.]
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