Alberta among six provinces pushing Ottawa to widen mining tax credit
A report commissioned by a mining industry group says expanding the credit could add up to 34,000 jobs over a decade on top of the sector's projected growth.
Why it matters
The outcome could affect financing for mineral exploration projects and related jobs in Alberta's mining sector.
Alberta has joined Nova Scotia, Manitoba, Saskatchewan, British Columbia and Yukon in writing to Ottawa asking the federal government to follow through on a 2025 election promise to expand a mining exploration tax credit. The provinces want the credit to cover engineering and feasibility studies for critical mineral projects, a change they say would help smaller mining companies survive what the industry calls the "valley of death" — the stage where projects stall because institutional investors won't fund technical and feasibility work.
The push is backed by the Association for Mineral Exploration, which commissioned a report from Ernst & Young finding 2,052 early-stage mining projects across Canada are currently stalled. The report estimates that expanding the tax credit could generate 14,000 to 34,000 additional jobs over 10 years, on top of a projected best-case scenario of 184,000 new sector jobs, and could add $5.2 billion to $12.2 billion to a projected $68-billion GDP contribution over the same period.
Since provinces largely mirror Ottawa's eligibility criteria for their own mining tax credits, a federal expansion would also widen provincial support. B.C.'s mining minister wrote to federal Natural Resources Minister Tim Hodgson and Finance Minister François-Philippe Champagne in August describing financing challenges for projects nearing the development stage.
A spokesperson for Champagne's office said the government already expanded the Critical Mineral Exploration Tax Credit last budget to cover 12 more minerals and introduced a new "Productivity Mega Deduction" covering 65 per cent of a mine's assets, which the mining sector has praised. The industry group is hoping the broader expansion is included in the upcoming federal budget.
Compiled by the Alberta Daily Desk — an AI-written summary of reporting from the credited sources below, produced and reviewed under our editorial policy.