The Financial Post reports in its Tuesday, Feb. 18, edition that Ottawa has been working with the mining industry to eliminate unnecessary hurdles and speed up the permitting process, but more needs to be done, miners say. The Post's Naimul Karim writes that Mining Association of Canada chief executive officer Pierre Graton says: "We have to start to do things more seriously and accelerate permitting, diversify our markets, bring down internal trade barriers and actually try to sort of restart Canada. ... Because we've been slumping. That could be the silver lining in what is otherwise a very, very tense time." He says Ottawa needs to keep reminding U.S. President Donald Trump that Canada's critical minerals are more economically accessible for U.S. manufacturers. Canada Nickel CEO Mark Selby says he is not "losing any sleep" over the potential tariffs. He says, "Anything we can't sell to the U.S., we will easily be able to sell to Europe." In 2023, Canada produced about 4.5 per cent of the world's nickel and almost half of that was exported to the U.S., according to Natural Resources Canada, with 14 per cent going to the Netherlands, 7 per cent to China and 6 per cent to Japan.