The M&E Dispatch // 122

Hello Everyone,

The last time Canada declared something a matter of national security and started buying it in bulk, we ended up with grain elevators, railways, ports, and a century’s worth of regional growth.

During the First World War, Ottawa faced a familiar problem: critical exports with no stable buyer. Prices were collapsing, private markets were erratic, and transportation bottlenecks threatened supply. To stabilize the system, the government stepped in, first through the Board of Grain Commissioners in 1912, and later through the War Grains Board in 1917.

Its job was simple: guarantee prices, move grain, and keep the Allies fed. But the effects were anything but temporary.

With the stroke of a policy pen, Canada didn’t just secure food for Europe, it built the foundation of an export economy. Rail lines expanded to reach elevators. Farmers pooled crops and standardized grading. Insurance, storage, logistics, and trade finance matured almost overnight.

By turning grain into a strategic asset, Ottawa effectively built an ecosystem that lasted long after the war. What began as emergency procurement became the architecture of Canadian agriculture, one that supported prairie towns, banks, and transport networks for generations.

Today’s talk of critical mineral stockpiling carries that same DNA. Once again, Ottawa is stepping in as the buyer of last resort, not because of market failure, but because of strategic necessity.

And just like in 1917, that certainty will ripple outward. The moment government guarantees demand, private capital finds its courage. Processing plants, storage yards, inspection facilities, data systems, and transport networks don’t appear by accident, they appear when someone, somewhere, knows they’ll get paid for building them.

If the War Grains Board created the infrastructure for Canada’s agricultural century, the critical-minerals policy could lay the groundwork for its industrial one.

The Business That Grows Between the Lines

Every major federal procurement program creates its own orbit. Once Ottawa starts buying, industry doesn’t just expand outward, it builds downward, laying foundations of logistics, compliance, and supply security that outlast the policy itself.

Stockpiling minerals will need far more than warehouses and shovels. It will need:

• Verification systems to certify origin, quality, and ESG compliance, the backbone of future export markets.

• Material-science firms to refine and reconstitute lower-grade inputs into usable forms.

• Software companies building the digital “ledgers” that track minerals from pit to policy, the lifecycles of equipment and the flow of HR needs.

• Security and insurance specialists capable of protecting billions in stored national assets.

• Specialized construction firms to build the storage, testing, and handling infrastructure.

• Training institutions to supply the technicians who can manage it all.

Each of these isn’t a side effect, it’s a new market forming in real time.

The Multipliers of Policy

If you follow history, the pattern is clear.

The War Grains program didn’t just help farmers, it created Canada’s agricultural logistics and export-finance systems. Wartime housing didn’t just build homes, it gave rise to building codes, prefabrication, and the modern mortgage industry.

Now, critical-mineral stockpiling could do the same for resource logistics, industrial software, and clean-tech processing.

Governments create certainty. Certainty draws capital. And capital builds everything else.

So while the headlines focus on what minerals are being bought, the real growth will come from those who figure out how to move, measure, insure, and reuse them.

The Next Layer

There’s a good chance that, in a few decades, we’ll look back and realize that the companies that grew fastest weren’t the miners or refiners, they were the ones who handled the in-between.

The firms that digitized trade flows.
The builders who standardized mineral storage.
The environmental monitors who turned compliance into a product.
The engineers who found ways to reprocess tailings for a second round of value.

Policy creates the spark. Adjacent industry carries the flame.

The Bottom Line

Each time Canada has treated a resource as a national priority, it’s built something enduring around it.

The War Grains Board didn’t just feed a war, it built an economy.
The Wartime Housing Corporation didn’t just house workers, it became CMHC, the backbone of Canadian homebuilding and finance.

If this critical-minerals policy is our modern “War Grains” moment, then maybe the next logical step is to ask a different question:

If we could build an entire economy around feeding the world, could we build another around housing it?

Because as history has shown, when Canada puts its full weight behind a national project, we don’t just stockpile, we build.

Because every time Canada commits to a national project, it tends to build more than it bargained for.

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It’s head down week for me around these parts, I’ve been working on a tool that streamlines communication for Investor Relations and Communications staff. Just as I see the businesses in the middle being front and center for growth in the coming few years, as will those who bridge the gap between the moves of the Company and the Investors who back them.

Be kind to your IR team, they’re the key to your future! Matter of fact… why don’t you go take them a donut and coffee right now. Tell them Lee sent you.

Have a good week all,
-Lee