Opening mines faster in Ontario will add soft power leverage over Trump: minister [Video]

The man tapped to lead an overhaul of Ontario’s potentially lucrative mining sector says critical minerals buried across the north represent vital “soft power leverage” against the United States.

During a recent cabinet reshuffle, Ontario Premier Doug Ford added responsibility for mines to the portfolio of his existing energy minister.

Stephen Lecce, who was trusted by the premier to lead on the complicated education file for years before moving to energy, has now been told to overhaul Ontario’s mining system at speed.

His mandate sits at the heart of Ford’s economic plan.

“The premier and our government recognize is that we have a critical generational opportunity to scale up with a greater sense of ambition our plan to accelerate getting resources out of the ground to processed and to being exported to new markets,” Lecce said in an interview on Focus Ontario.

In recent years, Ford has hung his economic development strategy …