The Globe and Mail reports in its Saturday edition that at the world's biggest mining conference in Toronto earlier this year, two federal cabinet ministers engaged in a public discussion about Canada's critical minerals industry. The Globe's Niall McGee writes that conspicuously absent from the conversation was any Canadian mining company. Instead, Industry Minister François-Philippe Champagne and Natural Resources Minister Jonathan Wilkinson chatted amiably with Jakob Stausholm, chief executive officer of Rio Tinto PLC, a giant British-Australian multinational. Mr. Champagne helped plug Rio's efforts to make green aluminum. The subtext from the conversation was clear: A giant foreign company is the modern-day poster child for the Canadian mining industry. Canada's politicians talk a big game in critical minerals, but the list of domestic companies benefiting from the mining or refining of energy transition metals such as nickel, cobalt, lithium and aluminum is short. Two decades ago, the power players in these metals were Alcan, Falconbridge, Noranda and Inco. All have long since been swallowed up by foreign behemoths. Meantime, Teck Resources, one of the few Canadian stalwarts left, appears to be on borrowed time.