 Hi, this is Jack Lipton, and today I'm inaugurating the Critical Minerals Institute Report. And our first guest is going to be Mr. Ian London, who is the Executive Director of the CQMQA. And Ian, could you please tell us what CQMQA is first? Thank you. Good to see you, Jack. Thanks for the invitation, and I knew you were going to do this for me. CQMQA, the Canadian Critical Minerals and Materials Alliance. It is a group of a dozen plus companies and organizations, not just corporate entities, but commercial laboratories, and others, and a number of affiliates who have been active in the critical minerals and materials space, and we'll get into that dialogue shortly. International organizations and do a lot of work with our friends at the federal government and provincial government in helping Canada move this tremendous opportunity forward. Ian, can you give us a brief CV of your own background and how you came to this position? There's an interesting one. I'm actually a metallurgist by degree, I've never really practiced, got involved in my early career as a mechanical engineer, primarily and spent most of my career in the power sector, which also plays an important role in the critical materials today, and then got involved after a long career in the power sector and the international, and Ontario Hydro International, so we've worked in 80 countries, moved into the industrial supply chain sector, and that's components that build turbine, gas turbines, these are nuts, bold screws and other machine engineered components, machines, etc. So I've got a clear sense of how supply chains work, and about 15 years ago when you and I first met Jack, got involved in the critical materials space, then known as rare earth, or everything was captured by rare earth, it could have been battery materials, it could have been anything, if it was unique and appeared on a periodic table, it fell under the banner of rare earth. That of course has since expanded or been realized, there are several supply chains under critical materials, it's not just rare earth, there are battery materials, there are light weighting materials, there are electronics material chains. Okay, and based on your experience, your extensive experience and background, I really just have one question for you today. What do you see as a future for Canada in the production and processing and end use of critical minerals and materials? I think Canada has tremendous opportunities and is starting to, or finally, moving the agenda forward. Canada is in a rather unique position. We're primarily, we have had a long tradition of mining and metallurgy, oil and gas in the resource sector, forestry. Canada has a strong background in that, but it also has tremendous metallurgical capabilities. Had the steel industries, nickel, copper, Canadians, as a matter of fact, most mining projects around the world are actually financed through the venture exchange or the Toronto Stock Exchange, so a strong history in the mining and metallurgical aspects. Canada also enjoys strong industrial background, the automotive industry, you know, with our American friend south of the border. We get into telecom, the bell, bell northern, these are all Canadian organizations and have a strong industrial and manufacturing base, Bombardier and aircraft, just to name a couple. It also has strong trade relationships. One thing Australian has, etc., is strong trading relationship with the US, the Europeans, you know, and the Far East. So if you bring all those together, and if you look at the transition for climate, new technologies and all that, it's all going to be based on collaboration and filling and supply chain, so Canada is perfectly situated to do that. But it has to be more than, shall we say aspirational competitive markets are challenging nowadays, and Canada needs to, shall we say, up its gain. Potential is there, yes are our challenges as any new industries and emerging sectors will have, but Canada is clearly in the right spot to do this. That's very concise, thank you. I'm interested in your opinion on the difference in outlook and capabilities of Canada and Australia and the US. Can you apply to that for a moment in critical minerals and materials? Yeah, well, I have to admire some of the Australians have become very aggressive and progressive on the critical material front, critical minerals front. They're primarily a mining nation. Yeah, has some industrial base, but they're primarily mining miners and financiers of mining type operations and now front end processing. They have been quite aggressive on the rarer side with the great success of Linus, you know, they actually got into the separation more downstream processing, but primarily in the mineral side of the equation. As part of the C2M2A, I mentioned minerals and materials. At the end of the day, auto manufacturers don't buy minerals. They buy lightweighted frames. They buy electronics. They buy completed batteries. They don't buy lithium. They may want to secure lithium supply, but they buy batteries because they're assembly plants and they bring in, you know, what's the biggest hold up nowadays or was over the last while on the automotive sector, wasn't critical minerals. They need semiconductors manufactured elsewhere. Even if we had the raw materials or have we do have the raw material supply to them, you've got to put them in a form that could be integrated into an industrial base. Canada has an industrial base. It's in the oil gas business. It's in the manufacturing business that builds aircrafts. It has steel mills that has large aluminum manufacturers. Well, if you can produce aluminum and you have critical materials such as mineral such as some of the rare earths, we've now developed a number of lightweighted materials which would take the weight off an automotive automobile, improve its electronics and lightweight it through aluminum, you know, Scandium type alloys. Lots of potential. So Australia I see as, well, and we have great relationships and working relationship from a C2M2A perspective with our Australian friends and on the international front of them, but they're primarily miners, front-end metallurgists. Canada has the resources. We'll get into them. They have some large producers already. But has the manufacturing base and the industrial base and the trade relationships with the automotive as you see battery plants being announced and where they being announced right around the automotive industry. We've got to connect anodes, cathodes, lithium supply into it. Agreed. The Australian seem to be a little more aggressive on the mineral side. One last question to wrap up your Nostradamus version of yourself. It looks to me like the immediate demand for all of these materials outside of China is Europe. And what's your position on where Europe is going to source its materials and its maybe processing and even manufacturing of components. And in particular Europe nowadays with the challenges it has on energy supply, etc. The Europeans, the transfer of Germany was just in Canada a week, two ago, etc. And was quite clear. Looking at, as they say for a raw material supplies, I'm not crazy about the announcement in that regard, would like raw material supply so they can process it. And I understand you want the value added jobs. I don't think Canada should give them up as quickly. One of the key elements for our European friends where Canada is well positioned, and that's on ESG sustainability environmental governance and sustainability kind of measures and values. Because at the end of the day, their end components, the Volvos, the, the Volkswagen, the Mercedes are going to be producing products, which would need to be sustainable as part of their value system. And Canada is a great position to do that. Many of its companies are already moving forward through the Mining Association of Canada towards sustainable mining have reporting mechanisms, which are now adopted in 1012 countries. Canada with our Australian friends are actually leading some of the effort at the international standards organization on standards around critical materials. So, Europe will drive it at the end of the day. They're big consumers. They also have the end product manufacturing were Canada, you were automotive assemblers, etc. But they're the next generation, strongly committed to clean power environmentally or ESG reporting quality product which can be an Australian friends can produce. The Americans are coming along, not discounting them they are. They're still be a little behind my sense, not as aggressive, they have big dollars behind it. Canada is committed to it still a bit aspirational, and on the mineral side the Australian friends are moving forward quite aggressively. I'm going to, I'm going to let you off the hook right now. And thank you for being our initial guest on this series. And we're going to have you back sometime in the near future to see how many, if any, of your predictions and for agnostications come true. Thank you very much. Well thank you for your time Jack and good to see you again.