America and China have tapped the brakes on a spiralling tariff war. But there are other points of fierce competition between these two nations that haven’t abated — including the race for rare earth metals. In late March, U.S. President Donald Trump signed an executive order to fast-track the mining of critical minerals in a new frontier, the deep sea, a move intended to give America a competitive edge over China.

And in an odd twist, it’s a Vancouver-based corporation, The Metals Company, that’s been lobbying power brokers in Washington to bypass multilateral United Nations conventions and set a unilateral pathway for commercial mining of deep sea minerals. The company has announced its U.S. subsidiary will apply for a U.S. mining permit to harvest mineral nodules lying 5,000 metres deep in the Clarion-Clipperton zone of the Pacific Ocean.

Officials at the International Seabed Authority — the UN-backed regulator responsible for setting the rules for deep sea mining in international waters — aren’t happy. Trump’s decision to revive a 1980-era U.S. mining law that predates the 1982 United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS), a convention the U.S. has not signed or ratified, flies in the face of how the UN prefers to see things done.

With the stage set for a showdown between Trump’s executive order and UN conventions, I’m curious to find out what Gerard Barron, the CEO of The Metals Company, has to say.

Gerard’s in Sydney, Australia, when we connect. The public company’s first quarter results for 2025 have just been released; The Metals Company shares jumped nearly 83 per cent in April, and the stock is up 180 per cent in 2025. To say Gerard is bullish would be an understatement. With a trillion dollars worth of metals sitting on the seabed floor in their licence areas, Gerard declares, the company should be worth far more than a couple of billion, Canadian.

The son of Aussie dairy farmers, Gerard is now a jet-setting entrepreneur splitting his time between London and Dubai, and more recently spending a lot of time lobbying in Washington, D.C., and some time at corporate offices in Toronto. Sporting a black T-shirt and frequently running a hand through his thick hair as he speaks, candidly and confidently, it’s not difficult to imagine why this deep sea mining pioneer has been dubbed “the Elon Musk of Australia.” Gerard bristles at the comparison: “There is no equivalent to Elon Musk.” But he does confirm the company’s vice-chair, Steve Jurvetson, is well connected to Musk.

It’s an enterprising move for a Vancouver-based mining company to figure out how to work with Trump and fast-track the commercial harvesting of minerals from the ocean floor, I observe, particularly given Canada declared a moratorium on deep sea mining in 2023.

“The previous (Canadian) government did put in place a moratorium,” Gerard acknowledges, “and let me maybe give a bit of background on how moratoriums come about; generally, they’re driven by NGOs.”

For decades, this scrappy deep sea miner has squared off against environmentalists, who argue the ocean ecosystem is too fragile for commercial mining. Gerard’s counter-argument: electric vehicles and renewable energy aren’t possible without these critical minerals, and we can extract them in the deep sea with less environmental impact than land-based mining. He hasn’t convinced all naysayers. In 2023, Greenpeace activists boarded The Metals Company’s vessel while it was conducting research.

Across the globe, green movements influence governments’ positions on deep sea mining, Gerard complains: “Germany and France went from being vocally very supportive to all of a sudden flipping their position to, ‘Oh, we need to slow this down… we need to understand more.’ The tactic was very much to kill it.”

Using swarm techniques, green advocates bombard politicians, Gerard explains, “and all of a sudden, we saw the Canadian government, driven by some pressure from ministers, weak-willed ministers, say, ‘We think we should join this moratorium position,’ yet the bureaucrats who have the file were freaking out. They know you can’t do that. We’re meant to be abiding by the rules of UNCLOS here.”

The International Seabed Authority has been working on finalizing a deep sea mining code for years, yet commercialization is not sanctioned. “We’ve been part of the international intergovernmental organization since 2011,” Gerard laments. “There were a set of rules we were working to. There were a set of obligations that we understood everyone was going to uphold. And we went ahead and spent more money on environmental research,” he says, “…then the process started to be overtaken by the NGO movement.”

Deep sea mining is not for the faint of heart; I’ve had credible scientists tell me they know more about what it would take to mine the moon than the seabed floor. Gerard shrugs; he’s not slowing down, he’s excited to see the commercialization process speed up, and believes Trump’s unilateral action could well be the push needed to prompt more sensible voices within UNCLOS to stop dragging their feet and finalize the mining rules. “When I say more sensible voices,” he clarifies, “I mean voices like Canada and Australia and China, for sure.”

“President Xi has publicly said, we (China) want to dominate deep earth, deep space, deep ocean,” Gerard reports. And he thinks China will still work with the International Seabed Authority — “they’ll be seen as a good international citizen,” he chuckles. “It’s always funny when China are now calling America into question over this move,” he snickers, “…China, the great adherer to international law.” I can’t help but wince; the prospect of China buffing its international reputation in all this wrangling is ironic.

The Metals Company has hitched its fate to Trump’s re-industrialization campaign. Gerard expects there will be a “bit of flapping of the wings” by UNCLOS member countries and NGOs. But, he grins, “one of the beauties of having America behind you … we’ll have our vessel flagged to America. So we’ll have the support of Americans.”

The competition for critical minerals — to fuel the green transition — is fierce and will pry open new frontiers to mining including not only the deep sea, but quite possibly, northern Ontario’s Ring of Fire, if Ontario Premier Doug Ford gets his way. As Gerard anticipates, these forays will undoubtedly incite more flapping of the wings. But what seemed impossible a year ago is now feasible.

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OTTAWA — The federal government says its new online system for collecting import duties is a step forward for business because it streamlines the entire process.

But for Marsha Sikma, a flower farmer in southwestern Ontario who imports thousands of dollars’ worth of peony bulbs every year, the Canada Border Services Agency’s new system has so far mostly just streamlined her frustration.

Sikma, owner of MGS Florals Inc., about 25 kilometres south of Woodstock, Ont., says the government’s old, mostly paper-based system seemed to work fine, with her import broker taking care of most of the red tape. The new online system, CBSA’s Assessment and Revenue Management (CARM) has left her trying to sort through a 10-page memo in her new portal and an import tax bill of $2,494.27.

CARM had been optional since being launched in October, but is now mandatory for importers as of May 20.

These are headaches you don’t need when you’re trying to run a 17-acre farm and managing a seasonal staff of up to 16. The most frustrating part, she says, was trying to get through to somebody on the phone without the system hanging up.

“It just seems very difficult to get through to the right person,” said Sikma. “As a small business, we don’t have time to deal with that type of thing.”

Despite those apparent frustrations, that type of online thing is exactly what all levels of government should be doing more of, technology industry officials and digital government advocates say. Investments in electronic government, artificial intelligence (AI) and other digital services can improve the efficiency and accessibility of everything from disaster response and fraud detection to voting and obtaining licences, permits and benefits, they say.

But better services are only part of it. More digital should also mean savings for taxpayers at all levels of government, as Prime Minister Mark Carney argued during the election.

On Wednesday, Carney

released a single mandate letter

for all his ministers and specifically mentioned using AI “at scale” to help make the government more efficient.

“Government itself must become much more productive by deploying AI at scale, by focusing on results over spending, and by using scarce tax dollars to catalyze multiples of private investment,”

the letter reads

.

Viet Vu, the manager of economic research at the Dais, a Toronto-based think tank within Toronto Metropolitan University (TMU), said investments in digital services could save Ottawa between 10 and 15 per cent — or between about $50 billion and $75 billion a year — on all federal government’s expenses. Provincial and municipal governments could also reap a windfall if the digital investments are savvy.

“Absolutely, there’s the potential for savings,” said Vu.

Those savings could be particularly important after years of debt accumulation and government expansion, particularly at the federal level. Carney has made it clear that he intends to make cuts — or at least trim the rate of expenditure growth — and eventually reduce the deficit.

Carney isn’t putting specific numbers yet on costs or possible savings, but he seems to agree that investments in digital government are needed. During his first press conference after the recent federal election, the new prime minister said Ottawa will invest in technology to boost productivity as part of the effort to balance the operating or day-to-day budget over the next three years.

And then last week, Carney sent another strong signal in his interest in more digital or e-government by appointing new Toronto MP and former broadcaster Evan Solomon as Canada’s first cabinet minister specifically responsible for artificial intelligence and digital innovation.

The task won’t be easy. Transforming the digital side of an organization with 367,772 employees and dozens of separate electronic sign-in points will not occur overnight. And for Solomon, a rookie MP and politician, being handed the steering wheel in the midst of an AI revolution may be particularly daunting.

Vu, from the Toronto think tank, said the new cabinet faces three significant challenges in turning things around at the federal level: attracting top AI talent to work in government when the private sector market for their services is very strong; changing the internal digital culture in government so that it’s user-focused; and improving Canadians’ digital access.

Canada’s track record on making good use of e-government tools is mixed, trending more towards poor in recent years.

An international leader in e-government during the early days of the internet, the federal government in particular excelled both in its internal use of the Internet and making its existing information available online. Ottawa was also quick to launch a portal that gathered the requests of citizens, businesses and even non-Canadians.

But progress has apparently slowed dramatically in recent years, perhaps in part from the fallout from new-tech scandals involving the Phoenix pay system and, more recently, the ArriveCan app.

While Accenture no longer conducts its e-government study, a report last year from Canada’s auditor general noted that two-thirds of the IT systems within federal departments were in poor health, including some that are responsible for important services such as employment insurance.

In the most recent United Nations e-government development index, widely viewed as the most comprehensive scorecard of its kind, Canada fell to 47th place globally in 2024, from third in 2010.

“We used to be very good,” said Vu.

According to a 2023 report from the Dais, the TMU think tank, less than one-quarter of federal government services are available online end-to-end, while a meagre 61 per cent of them meet the government’s own digital services standards.

Ottawa was seen as doing very well under pressure in providing online information and services during the pandemic. But Vu said the federal government should do better in providing decisions, applications and other information online and making logins and authentication easier and more secure.

Janice Horne, federal account leader with EY’s government and public sector operation, said the federal government’s online performance could improve dramatically if the entire system started with a single digital “front door” for each citizen.

A report last year by the auditor general found that the federal government uses up to 90 separate sign-in portals managed by individual departments and agencies.

E-government specialists say it doesn’t have to be that way.

In 2023, British Columbia launched a new, comprehensive digital plan and residents now access most provincial data and services — from student loan applications to health care — through a single portal, using their BC Services Card.

If the focus is on easy entry and use, EY’s Horne says, e-government and AI have the potential to transform public service work and the workplace. “I think it’s all very possible.”

The federal government says it’s already taken steps in using AI in productive ways:

The Department of Immigration, Refugee and Citizenship uses AI-based models to triage applications for temporary or permanent residence. Those models have already been used to improve the processing time and help officers focus on more complex cases for more than 7 million applications.

Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada’s AgPal helps farmers and agri-businesses find information about more than 400 federal, provincial, and municipal programs and services, along with market intelligence and research.

Shared Services Canada is experimenting with a multilingual conversational chatbot, CANChat, to support drafting, editing, researching, summarizing, and information and data management and analysis.

Transport Canada’s Pre-load Air Cargo Targeting (PACT) program uses AI to screen air shipments before takeoff to flag those that could contain concealed threats. The department says it’s led to a tenfold increase in the number of shipments screened per hour and increased coverage from six percent to 100 percent of both passenger and cargo flights.

CBSA’s new online tax collection system (CARM), which Sikma found frustrating, is another step towards digitizing government.

Mike Leahy, a director general in the department’s commercial and trade branch, said the new system is more efficient because, among other things, it allows import taxes to be calculated electronically and immediately, creates an ongoing file for more than 157,000 Canadian businesses, and can more easily be amended to deal with errors or policy changes.

Leahy said the new system is working well, although he acknowledged that the changeover has not been as easy for smaller businesses, such as Sikma’s flower farm.

CARM replaced a 35-year-old, mostly paper-based system just in time to deal with Donald Trump’s erratic trade policies. “The clock was ticking,” said Leahy of the old system.

Corinne Pohlmann, executive vice-president for advocacy for the Canadian Federation of Independent Business (CFIB), says governments should take advantage of AI and other digital tools to do things better but should also try to do more with less.

Pohlmann said the new online import system may not be a step forward for small business owners. The new online system requires importers to put up bonds or use their credit cards if they want immediate release of their goods, unlike the old system, while the forms are now longer and more onerous, she added.

Many small businesses, such as restaurants, manufacturers or flower farms, don’t have more time or money for paperwork, whether it’s electronic or not. “Just because something is digitized doesn’t mean that it’s less onerous,” Pohlmann said.

So where to from here?

For Solomon, the new AI minister, and Mélanie Joly, the new industry minister, and others involved in setting up Canada’s plan for AI, e-government and other digital change, the destination may appear clearer than the path forward.

And with change comes challenges. Governments will also need to deal with a host of tricky matters, such as security and privacy concerns, online hate and apps and other services affiliated with state-owned enterprises based in China and elsewhere.

The potential benefits of more e-government and AI services are tempting, but it’s unclear how tolerant Canadians will be if the negatives from digital change start to pile up. The main negative will likely include job losses as some coders, factory workers, call centre workers and others could be replaced.

In the case of Sikma and many small business owners, the gains will need to clearly outweigh the costs.

“It’s just kind of a headache,” the frustrated Ontario flower farmer said of CBSA’s new importing system. “It’s just another thing.”

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Canadian investment pioneer James O’Donnell died on May 20 at the age of 88 after a battle with dementia. He was the chairman and founder of the O’Donnell Investment Management Corporation, headquartered in Toronto.

O’Donnell’s financial career spanned several decades. He was a president of Mackenzie Financial, spending two decades at the firm, now known as Mackenzie Investments, before striking out on his own and launching O’Donnell Group Funds in 1995.

While O’Donnell developed a reputation as a pioneering force across Canadian finance, his daughter Megan O’Connell fondly remembers her father’s gift for storytelling, generosity and “great sense of humour.”

“He was just a good person. He was a great dad; amazing grandfather. His family was extremely important to him. We were lucky to have him,” O’Connell told National Post on Friday morning. O’Connell struggled to pick one word that encapsulated her father’s values.

“Kind is always one that I think, and just extremely generous. I think those are the ones that stick closest. There are so many words I could just list off,” she said. “A family man through and through.”

During his time at Mackenzie, O’Donnell is credited with

introducing

the concept of Deferred Sales Charge, which incentivized long-term investing. Compared with most mutual funds at the time, which operated on front-loaded commissions charged at the beginning, O’Donnell’s innovation rewarded investors who kept their money in the market longer. In June 2022, the mechanism was

banned

by Canadian investment authorities due to concerns that it created a conflict of interest between mutual fund sellers and investors, particularly that the latter might suffer if they were forced to liquidate their position prematurely.

Investment mogul Michael Lee-Chin was mentored by O’Donnell in the 1980s when he was climbing up the rungs of the Canadian finance world himself. He took a chance on the budding Mackenzie Financial when O’Donnell worked there,

reportedly

borrowing hundreds of thousands of dollars and investing it in the company to get in on the action. Lee-Chin’s bet paid off, netting him multiples of his original investment. It became one of several successful ventures that defined Lee-Chin’s illustrious career and a billion-dollar net worth.

“That was the basis for me starting a mutual fund by the name of the AIC Advantage Fund,” Lee-Chin told National Post on Friday. The Jamaican-Canadian magnate called O’Donnell “very influential in my career,” and remembered them working closely together to close business deals in Hamilton when he was in his early thirties. “Jim’s personality was (that) he loves people. He was fun to be around. He was humble, grounded, excited. And he just loved people.”

O’Connell was particularly proud of her father’s legacy, best defined, she felt, by the charitable initiatives he championed throughout his life. O’Donnell was a long-time supporter of the Special Olympics and the Ontario Handicapped Skiing Program. His philanthropic work dovetailed with his love of cars and fast things. He leveraged his seat on the Board of Trustees of the Toronto Molson Indy Fest with the O’Donnell Challenge for Charity initiative, which raised funds to support over

three dozen

 Canadian youth and rehabilitation charities across the country.

Former president and Postmedia Network CEO Paul Godfrey crossed paths with O’Donnell when he helped out with IndyCar, at one point

securing

provincial and municipal subsidies to keep Toronto on the race calendar.

“He was always a man of the world who presented himself in a quiet way, but a very effective way, and in winning people over,” he said. “I can tell you that you could always count on him,” he added. “He would work on things until he would get it completed.”

O’Donnell was

inducted

into the Canadian Motorsport Hall of Fame in 2009.

He was born on Feb. 27, 1937, and raised in the Toronto neighbourhood of Leaside. He is survived by his wife of more than 60 years, Sandra, three daughters — Shannon, Megan and Erin — as well as seven grandchildren — Aidan, Brooke, Kian, Jamison, Kiefer, Finleigh and Declan. A celebration of life reflecting on O’Donnell’s legacy will be held at a later date.

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