 Today, we have the privilege of speaking with Under Secretary Fernandez. How are you today? Great to be here. Thank you for having me. You're here at PDAC 2024, a follow-up for your MSP initiative last year. I don't really know where to start other than thank you for getting involved in critical minerals. It's a fabulous place to come. This is now my third straight year that I've been here. And we're making progress in some of the work that we're trying to do. So it was a good opportunity to publicize our successes and hopefully to learn about what we can do better going forward. I spoke to many experts in the industry today from around the world, and they all want to ask you the same thing, you know, about the supply chain and government's involvement. You're really involved in helping create the strategies, correct? Well, you know, we and the number of other countries and companies and organizations have basically seen that there's a need, and there's a vulnerability, and there's a challenge. And just to put it simply, the need is we are going to need exponentially greater numbers of critical minerals than we use today. Just to give you a couple of examples, 42 times the amount of lithium that we use today, we will need by 2050, 25 times the amount of manganese. The numbers are staggering. That's the need. The vulnerability is that right now, two-thirds or even more of these minerals are own controlled mined or processed by one country, the PRC. That's the vulnerability. And the challenge is that for our companies to become more involved in this industry, which we need in order for us to diversify our supply chains, we are going to need to promote our values. And what are our values? We will respect the environment. We will work with communities. We will do all that we can to improve transparency. And that's our selling point. That's the challenge. And you know what? We're making progress. It's not as fast as we would like, but I think we're making progress. Well, you've been traveling the world. I mean, I was doing research on you. You're putting a lot of air miles in, and you just got back from Indaba. And you had a very successful, well, you chaired actually the C5 plus one critical minerals dialogue. And I mean, it was impressive what your agenda was. Can you tell me in kind of, all right, we have a business audience. Can you tell us a little bit more about what you think you achieved at the CMD? Well, the C5 plus one is basically Kazakhstan, Turkmenistan, a number of other countries in Central Asia that are interested in working with the United States in order for these countries to take advantage of their mineral resources. That's the challenge. They're looking for alternatives. And we talked about opportunities. We are going to follow up with our companies as well in order to promote some of the projects that we're seeing. And at the same time, I think they are seeing the benefit of working with the US and also with a number of our partner countries. So we're pushing an open door. These are countries that want to work with us, and we are prepared to work with them. So now it's our challenge to make it happen. Of course, the US has two critical mineral lists that we follow, the DOE and the USGS. Can you tell me which of the critical minerals you're prioritizing right now? You mentioned lithium at the beginning of this conversation, but we follow all the lists from Japan to Korea. So we of course have a critical mineral list ourselves. The ones that we've been focusing on are the ones that are needed for the clean energy transition. And those are four or five minerals. They include nickel. They include manganese, cobalt, lithium. And we're working to find ways to expand the supply of that. And we think that there are opportunities in the number of countries that have reached out to us. And now what we're trying to do is to really not focus so much on the philosophy of things, but actually on concrete projects. How do we go to a country in Africa that's looking for investment and provide them an alternative? And in order for us to do that, we're going to have to find the right companies. Our banks are going to have to get involved in the financing. And these companies, and we are going to have to convince the countries that we will do things the right way. Everyone's excited about these initiatives. But what milestones should we be looking forward to? So I'm glad you asked that question. We actually have made good progress in London in October of last year when we had one of the MSP, first MSP meetings. We announced four projects. Now mind you, we've only been in place for a year and a half. So that is lightning speed in the mining world. Some of these projects, as you know, take 15, 20 years to see the light of day. In the year and a half, in less than a year and a half, we've had four projects that we have been able to push through the starting gate and now have financing, have concessions and are starting to put a spade in the ground. Just at Indaba, a month ago, two projects. One of them a graphite project in Mozambique, another one a project in the Democratic Republic of the Congo involving JAKMAC, a Japanese entity. And we have a couple more that we're holding in our back pocket that we think we ought to be able to announce pretty quickly. If we can do that, I think we will have made enough progress, I think, in the year and a half to think that we are on the right track. Right now, we're looking at 23 projects within the Mineral Security Partnership at all stages of the production, be it extraction, processing, smelting, recycling. We're looking at 23 projects, about two-thirds of them are either in Africa or in Latin America, but we're also looking at Asia, we're looking at Europe. So we are scouring the world, looking for projects, and we're getting every week we get a country that has projects that is looking for the type of investment that we are proposing. Well, of course, you come from a financial background too. So you've got financial, legal, and government background. Can you comment about how the government is going forward with basically creating partnerships with banks to invest in these types of projects? I mean, we're looking at trillions of dollars, arguably, in the future, to help create these sustainable supply chains we need to compete. That's right, and we just announced yesterday the creation of what we're calling the Mineral Security Partnership Forum, and a partnership called Minvest. And what we're doing there is establishing a line of communication with companies and with financial institutions on one side of the ledger. On the other side of the ledger, we're talking to countries. And countries are coming to us and basically saying we have a project involving Lithium in this province. MSP, do you have any member companies that are interested in investing? Do you have any member private equity shops, banks that are interested in investing? And so we're playing marriage broker. We're playing a midwife, whatever metaphor you want to use, to basically bring these financiers and developers together. That's our competitive advantage. Our competitive advantage is our private sector. And we haven't done as good of a job as we should in making sure that we're galvanizing them. And once we galvanize their efforts, they were then supporting them. And so that is something that I think, if we are successful, we'll have a multiplier effect in our efforts. And we'll be able to cover more projects, benefit more companies, and work with countries in the MSP forum that we've created to show them the benefits of the types of investments that we are promoting. One of the things that we're hearing a lot about in the Canadian resource sector, for instance in the critical mineral sector, is that in looking for capital, they're going to the Middle East. Can you comment on that? I think you've got a situation where capital has always been hard to find. Remember, minimal projects are tough projects. They take five to ten years to get started. In the meantime, your money's sunk, so it's only a certain type of investor that is prepared to make that kind of a commitment. We have engaged countries in the Middle East. We've engaged countries in Asia. There are, in many parts of the world, countries need these type of minerals in order for them to do what they need to do in order to take advantage of a clean energy revolution. And so we welcome Middle Eastern investors. We welcome investors as long as they're prepared to adhere to the principles that we are promoting. And again, we will promote high ESG principles, we will work with communities, and we will make sure that countries do not need to choose between environmental degradation and economic growth. So, Africa, what is our interest? I mean, you brought up the Congo right at the onset. Do you not think through the leadership of the American government we couldn't raise the level in Africa, for instance, in the Congo and have compliant extraction of critical minerals? Tracy, I think we cannot control everything that happens. We have to be, humility is important here in terms of the challenge. But the one thing that we can do is to do everything that we can to make sure that our companies reflect our values. And I have been in meetings with African leaders, where we'll talk about the types of investments that we're prepared to make, where they tell us the kinds of projects that they have. And where I talk about technical assistance, where I talk about transfer of technology. And I've had leaders literally hug me because this is what they want. And they need choices. And again, from a sales point of view, you put on your salesperson hat. And you sell your advantages. You sell the things that you're good at. We are good at doing things right from an ESG perspective. Consumers demand that. Our stockholders demand that. And our laws punish us for engaging in bribery and for doing those kinds of malign activities. We can do this. We just have to find ways to bring all of our talents together. And I'm happy to say that we're making progress. Having, being able to say that in a year and a half, you've completed six projects that you've got 23 other projects in the pipeline. Many of them will make it. Some of them won't. That's progress. And that's what we need to do in order to get out of the spot that we have put ourselves in. And that is a very vulnerable, very vulnerable place that threatens our clean energy goals and are addressing the existential crisis of our time. Well, you have a formidable task. And we support you in this endeavor. Thank you so much for your time.