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Québec holds Canada's densest critical-mineral rush (the James Bay lithium boom plus graphite and rare earths) over a live map of 241,000 active claims. It is also where the land-claim early-warning that Saskatchewan couldn't show comes back: some of that strategic ground sits inside Innu and Atikamekw comprehensive land claims still in active negotiation. Québec publishes claim holders (with ownership %), so foreign positions are legible; it publishes no claim dates, so newly-registered claims are detected by diffing the register over time.
241k
Active mineral claims
427
Claims in active land claims
2
Land claims in negotiation
3
Foreign majors on register
A lithium explorer holds 423 claims inside an Innu land claim that is one stage from settlement.
Brunswick Exploration holds 423 lithium claims inside the Regroupement Petapan comprehensive land claim (Mashteuiatsh, Essipit and Nutashkuan Innu), which has reached an Agreement-in-Principle: the most advanced stage before a final treaty. A further 4 fall inside the Atikamekw claim. If land inside the claim area is selected and transferred as part of a settlement, the window for review of foreign-owned mineral interests on it narrows. Detected by precise point-in-polygon, not a bounding box.
SIGÉOM (titres miniers actifs) + CIRNAC ATRIS →Mineral tenure & land claims: Québec
James Bay active mineral claims and land claims in negotiation. Click a feature for detail.
Layers
Party
Federal ridings from the 2023 representation order. More layers in progress.
Québec active mineral claims (blue) with land claims still in negotiation outlined (dashed gold), the Petapan and Atikamekw areas. The James Bay lithium cluster sits to the northwest. Source: SIGÉOM (CC-BY) + CIRNAC ATRIS.
Detected by precise point-in-polygon against the active (in-negotiation) claim boundaries, not a bounding box. A holder is a sourced fact; the land-claim stage comes from CIRNAC ATRIS.
Large foreign positions across Québec, by active claims held. Present in the province, but (unlike Brunswick above) sitting outside the claims still in negotiation.
Swiss commodities major; long-standing Québec base-metals and smelting presence.
UK–Australian major (Rio Tinto Fer et Titane, Sorel-Tracy).
Japanese conglomerate.
Québec's marquee James Bay lithium (Patriot Battery Metals, Winsome, Sayona, Nemaska) and the large foreign holders above are active in Québec but sit outside the two claims still in negotiation, largely on Cree land already settled under the James Bay & Northern Québec Agreement (1975). The tool reports this rather than manufacturing overlap. Across provinces the pattern holds: the convergence signal is strongest where land is still being negotiated (British Columbia province-wide; these two Québec claims) and correctly quiet where it is already settled.
James Bay & Northern Québec Agreement (1975) · settledNo Chinese lithium company holds Québec claims under its own name: Ganfeng, Sinomine, Zhejiang and peers were all absent from the register. That is an entity-resolution gap, not an all-clear: foreign ownership is typically held through a Québec-registered subsidiary under an unrelated name. On November 2, 2022, Canada used the Investment Canada Act to order three Chinese-linked investors (Sinomine (Hong Kong) Rare Metals Resources, Chengze Lithium International, and Zangge Mining Investment) to divest their stakes in three Canadian critical-minerals juniors (Power Metals Corp, Lithium Chile Inc., Ultra Lithium Inc.) under a national-security review.
Sources
Gouvernement du Québec: Géologie Québec / GESTIM (CC-BY 4.0).