Western Standard - October 20, 2025


What the proposed Anglo Teck merger means for Canada's mineral industry

Guests
Maximilian Hess
Mentioned
Enmetena Advisory
Should conservatives vote for Sonya Sharp？ Jeromy Farkas addresses Calgary at Old City Hall

Episode Stats


Length

8 minutes

Words per minute

178.98

Word count

1,607

Sentence count

54

Harmful content

Hate speech

1

sentences flagged


Summary

Summaries generated with gmurro/bart-large-finetuned-filtered-spotify-podcast-summ .

In September, a proposed $53 billion merger between Vancouver-based tech resources and British mining giant Anglo American was announced, making it the second largest mining deal in history. The proposed merger would create one of the world s largest copper producers headquartered in Vancouver, but with major foreign ownership and global influence. Now, local bands are raising the alarm saying the deal moved ahead without their consultation.

Transcript

Transcript generated with Whisper (turbo).
Hate speech classifications generated with facebook/roberta-hate-speech-dynabench-r4-target .
Hosts, guests, and mentioned names generated with spaCy (en_core_web_sm), reconciled against Wikidata.
00:00:00.000 Hello Western Standard viewers, today we are looking at one of the biggest resource stories
00:00:13.820 in Canada in recent times and what it could mean for the country's control over its own
00:00:17.640 mineral wealth. In September, the proposed $53 billion merger between Vancouver-based
00:00:22.840 tech resources and British mining giant Anglo-American was announced making it the second largest
00:00:27.960 mining deal in history. The proposed merger would create one of the world's largest copper
00:00:32.560 producers headquartered in Vancouver, but with major foreign ownership and global influence.
00:00:37.580 Now, local bands are raising the alarm saying the deal moved ahead without their consultation.
00:00:43.260 This merger raises the question, who really benefits from our resource wealth?
00:00:46.780 Canadians or multinational corporations? Joining me is Maximilian Hess. He's the founder of London-based
00:00:52.660 political risk firm Enmetena Advisory and an analyst of the mining sector with an interest
00:00:57.320 in Anglo-American's international operations. Max, thanks for joining us.
00:01:01.960 Thanks so much for having me, David.
00:01:03.620 Well, right off the bat, Anglo-American has a massive global reach with subsidiaries such as
00:01:08.100 De Beers. If foreign mergers such as the one between them and tech keep consolidating control
00:01:12.480 over Canadian mines, do you think the country risks losing strategic control of its resource
00:01:16.780 base to global finance?
00:01:18.760 I think that's precisely the issue at risk here. This is not only a question for Canada,
00:01:23.680 but a question for the world today. We live in an era of resource nationalism where there's
00:01:28.780 particularly intense competition between both companies and states over the future of a lot
00:01:34.480 of these resources. In this proposed merger, that's one of the key factors that has Anglo-Americans 0.83
00:01:40.220 so interested in tech, in particular for its copper assets.
00:01:44.120 But as we've seen this be billed as a supposed merger of equals, it's actually Anglo-American
00:01:49.720 that will emerge with nearly two thirds of the shares and Canada would be losing one of its largest
00:01:54.720 remaining mining companies on the Canadian listing, as the new listing would be in London with Anglo-American's
00:02:00.760 existing one. This would weaken Canada's leverage not only over control of its own assets, but in terms of its
00:02:06.460 geo-economic position in dealing with the future of these resources and resource competition between Canada and the United States,
00:02:13.820 Canada and Europe, Canada and China, and so on and so forth.
00:02:17.860 Okay, well, previously De Beers operated in Canada through the Victor Diamond Mine project in northern Ontario,
00:02:22.820 and it was a project that faced a major criticism for environmental damage and for failing to deliver promised benefits
00:02:28.200 to local communities. Do you think that history should disqualify the company from future Canadian expansion?
00:02:34.520 I don't know if I would go quite so far as to say it should disqualify it from future Canadian expansion,
00:02:39.900 but it does show that there needs to be additional attention paid to the company's past track record in Canada,
00:02:47.140 as well as elsewhere. De Beers is also currently in the process of being sold. Anglo-American wants to remove it
00:02:53.500 ultimately from the future company that it is creating here, and this comes amid a major downturn in the diamond prices.
00:03:00.520 If you ask De Beers, their success story has always been helping the development of the country of Botswana,
00:03:05.760 but we now see a real crisis in that country due to those low diamond prices De Beers trying to get out at this time,
00:03:13.220 and real questions over how that country is going to continue to develop, grow, and invest these resources.
00:03:19.000 So it has a track record of getting out when the going gets tough,
00:03:22.200 and then leaving local authorities, whether they be in Ontario or whether they be in Botswana,
00:03:26.920 to deal with the mess after.
00:03:27.980 Do you think this proposed merger as well could mark a moment where Canada shifts from being a resource nation
00:03:33.960 to simply a resource platform for firms like Anglo-American?
00:03:38.300 Well, in some ways it has been a strength of Canada that it does have a relatively low-touch regulatory environment
00:03:44.000 for the mining sector to attract global miners to come be based there and leave.
00:03:48.740 But now they're considering leaving because other countries have engaged in similar kinds of competition
00:03:53.740 and potentially would have even less regulatory oversight over them.
00:03:58.340 Canada wants to ensure, however, that it has key regulatory oversight over its own domestic mining base in the future,
00:04:03.960 and any move to bring the listing outside of Canada would have a real negative impact on that.
00:04:11.080 I think that Canadian mines will still continue to be profitable,
00:04:14.080 and Canada will still have a very large and thorough mining sector,
00:04:16.980 but ultimately who controls it, whether at the corporate level or at the national level, are really at stake here.
00:04:25.280 Well, Canada promotes itself as well as a leader in responsible mining,
00:04:28.540 yet much of its mineral sector is owned or financed by foreign interests.
00:04:32.280 Do you think that undercuts the federal government's ability to align extraction with national or indigenous priorities?
00:04:39.020 It's a difficult balance to be struck, for sure.
00:04:42.320 I think Canada is genuinely a leader in these matters.
00:04:45.420 The question here is whether it becomes weaker and being able to exercise that influence going forward.
00:04:51.900 So Canada has a better track record on that, certainly, than a lot of other regulatory environments do.
00:04:59.180 But if this listing goes ahead and other Canadian resources continue to be sold out of Canadian-majority ownership,
00:05:05.120 then the ability for the Canadian authorities to decide how they want to shape the global mining sector going forward,
00:05:10.880 and it will always be a global sector.
00:05:12.460 It will always be that the products are mined in one place, sold in another, refined in often yet another.
00:05:18.000 But Canada has had an important role in that and, in many ways, a force for good compared to some of the other environments.
00:05:24.560 This deal would risk undermining that.
00:05:26.980 And as well, if the federal government does approve this merger without indigenous consent,
00:05:31.480 you do think that that could undermine Canada's credibility as an ethical source of critical minerals for the global market?
00:05:37.020 That is perhaps going one step too far, the questions around indigenous consent and the like very, very heavily from country to country.
00:05:47.120 I think Canada has been a leader in that model, and it has been a country that has shown that you can have a successful,
00:05:53.620 profitable, and good-growing mining sector when still taking local communities' concerns into account
00:05:59.040 and ensuring that after projects are done, that the necessary costs are paid to ensure that the impacts on the landscape
00:06:06.440 and on the livelihoods of the people are addressed.
00:06:09.740 So Canada would weaken its position in terms of being able to set an example for others, is certainly how I would put it.
00:06:16.140 And also, do you think ongoing land disputes in places such as British Columbia
00:06:19.880 deter capital investment in Canada's resource sector,
00:06:22.440 or does a clear consultation make projects less risky over the long term?
00:06:27.360 I think clear consultation makes projects less risky over the long term.
00:06:30.940 Of course, you have very big differences in a state-by-state and a province-by-province approach,
00:06:35.980 whether it be in Canada or the United States or elsewhere.
00:06:38.760 In some ways, Canada has a federal system that allows a lot of decisions to be made locally by local governments.
00:06:45.540 Of course, there will be disagreements between indigenous communities in certain areas
00:06:49.140 and the provincial-level government amongst them,
00:06:51.680 but it allows that process to play out on that level rather than have a federal regulator say
00:06:57.660 one rule applies for all, and I think that is very important.
00:07:02.600 And also as well, how do global investors balance Canada's political reliability
00:07:06.680 against growing uncertainty around consultation and environmental compliance?
00:07:11.960 Well, I think one of the arguments that critics of reviewing the merger would have
00:07:16.700 would be to say, you know, Canada needs to join this global rush to deregulate,
00:07:21.000 to, you know, allow business to flourish and have that competition.
00:07:24.100 I think those arguments miss the point, whereas that Canada is really an island of stability
00:07:28.820 in the environment that we see now where the United States is taking stakes in key mining companies.
00:07:34.720 Both China and the United States are imposing controls on where certain products can be sold,
00:07:41.860 whereas Canada is broadly very supportive of continued global trade on these matters.
00:07:47.240 So Canada has brought in new powers to allow the government to review these kind of transactions.
00:07:51.960 And the question is, is what is that review aiming to achieve?
00:07:55.260 If that review is aiming to achieve priority for Canada's interests
00:07:59.600 and in which that interest is a continued flourishing of the global market,
00:08:03.120 then I think it is further evidence of that stability that investors have historically welcomed in Canada
00:08:08.140 rather than a sign that Canada is slipping down that same slope that the United States and China, for example, are.
00:08:14.460 And from an investor standpoint, is the greater long-term risk to Canada's mining sector over-regulation
00:08:20.400 or maybe underestimating indigenous environmental blowback?
00:08:24.840 Both are risks that any investor will certainly have to consider
00:08:29.140 and what may be a larger risk at one point or another changes very much from time to time.
00:08:35.780 Today, it is this example of geo-economic competition
00:08:39.120 and states looking to bring resources under their control
00:08:42.580 in a way that disadvantages others that is the primary risk.
00:08:46.740 And that is what I think Canada should be focused on trying to address and mitigate here.
00:08:52.340 Well, thank you for your time, Max. I really appreciate it.
00:08:55.160 Thank you so much, David. It's been a pleasure.
00:08:56.920 For The Western Standard, this is David Winnick.