By Stephen Hendrie
Imagine going to a conference with 32,000 people in attendance. That’s more than two times the Inuit population of Nunavik. It would be easy to get lost among the crowd. Bobby Deer, a board member of the Nunavik Mining Exploration Fund (NMEF) has been attending the Prospectors and Developers Association of Canada (PDAC) conference every year since 1998. He’s a veteran of the event and says, “if you don’t know where you’re going, you’re running around like a rabbit and talking to people that don’t really affect you.”
He was manning the small NMEF display, located within the massive Government of Quebec booth at the 2026 edition of the PDAC conference held at the Metro Toronto Convention Centre from March 1-4, 2026. Helping him out with questions from attendees were Geneviève Charland-Arcand, Executive Director of the Nunaliit Association, and NMEF Technical Director and Geologist Cynthia Brin D’Amour Côté.
Bobby explained PDAC in a nutshell, “It’s a conference that’s organized for all the world to be at, for mineral exploration, or related mining services. We are here representing Nunavik. It’s a collaboration with Quebec’s Ministry of Natural Resources and Forests.”
Members of the Nayumivik Landholding Corporation were also at PDAC, notably Michael Gordon, and Willie Gadbois, from Kuujjuaq. Makivvik’s new Director of Mining Activity in Nunavik Qauyisaq Etitiq was also present with Alex Tukkiapik, Assistant Director.
PDAC is an important venue to get the pulse of what’s happening with the mining industry within the Nunavik region, Quebec, Canada, and at the international level. The convention set a record in 2026 with more than 1,300 exhibitors – the largest in its history. The mining industry contributed $156 billion to the Canadian economy in 2024. It’s an industry that employs more than 725,000 people across the country, and Nunavik has a small piece of that pie.
In a press release summing up the 2026 conference, PDAC President Karen Rees stated, “Governments and the public are recognizing more clearly how essential minerals are to economic growth, electrification, defence and modern technologies… In a more complex global environment, a strong mineral sector is fundamental to Canada’s economic prosperity, supply-chain security and sovereignty.”
Truly, in our modern world, almost everyone has a cell phone now. The phone contains rare earth elements (REE), and the soft-ware applications in the phone now include “Artificial Intelligence” (AI) to assist humans with mundane tasks, or answer questions in a split second. Bottom line, both the physical phone and the AI inside it are more reliant on those rare earth elements.
Add to that the global transformation from fossil fuels to electric vehicles, and a whole other sector of minerals is being sought after to make electric batteries. China controls 80-90 per cent of the world’s Rare Earth market. As you can guess, with the location of some of these minerals in sensitive areas, it ultimately gets political.
It certainly did in Nunavik. CBC TV’s The Fifth Estate show illustrated that in spades with its episode broadcast on March 27, 2026. The show highlighted the prospective Strange Lake mine in Nunavik, near Kangiqsualujjuaq that would mine REE, build a road to the Labrador coast, and ship the minerals around the coast to a processing centre in Sept Iles. Owned by Torngat Metals, the Strange Lake Mine has extensive deposits of both heavy (dysprosium and terbium) and light rare earth elements (neodymium and praseodymium). It could potentially change the geopolitical power structure over the control of precious Rare Earth minerals.
The Torngat Metals website estimates 1,000 workers will be involved during the construction phase, with 200 jobs created during the production phase, estimated at 30-plus years. They’re targeting 2030 as a start date.
Makivvik responded to The Fifth Estate broadcast with a press release stressing that any development would not take place without Makivvik being a party to development, and the Inuit in Kangiqsualujjuaq having their say in the project.
“There is no pathway for development in Nunavik that bypasses Inuit rights or Inuit decision-making,” stated President Pita Aatami. “The moratorium on mining development imposed by Makivvik in July 2023 remains in place, and no project can be advanced while required steps are incomplete and treaty obligations are fulfilled.”
Meanwhile, following the PDAC conference, there’s a lot of activity in Nunavik, with plenty of field work planned for the summer of 2026. NMEF described a list of over a dozen mining projects with ongoing activities and helped with the creation of a custom map for this article featuring minerals in Nunavik, providing a snapshot of the minerals landscape in 2026. The map was created with publicly available information from the government of Quebec’s online mineral database.
Following the PDAC event, NMEF was busy organizing a conference of their own – the “Nunavik Mining Workshop” (NMW) – planned for Kuujjuaq from May 20-22, 2026. It was set to bring together representatives from Makivvik, KRG, the Landholding Corporations, and representatives from the mines operating and in development in Nunavik. The NMW website lists at least nine mining companies as sponsors of the event.
Bobby Deer says the NMEF has a role to play in advancing mining in Nunavik. “What will happen in Nunavik in the next 15-20 years will have an effect on people, and especially the land, and the wildlife.”
FURTHER BROWSING
Here are some key links referred to in the article to explore further.
Nunavik Minerals Exploration Fund
https://nmef.ca/
Nunavik Mining Workshop – May 2026
https://nunavikminingworkshop.ca/
Quebec’s public mining database (SIGÉOM)
https://sigeom.mines.gouv.qc.ca/
Prospectors and Developers Association of Canada (PDAC)
https://pdac.ca/
Torngat Metals
https://torngatmetals.com/
Oceanic Iron Ore Corp.
https://oceanicironore.com/
The Fifth Estate
https://www.cbc.ca/news/fifthestate
