Mining and quarrying (except oil and gas)

The pre-screen called coal a structurally declining commodity, and that is only half right, which matters for the cut. Thermal coal is ending — Ottawa remains committed to phasing out unabated coal-fired power by 2030 — but 67% of the 42.6 million tonnes Canada mined in 2024 was metallurgical coal, and the country exported 36 million tonnes worth C$9.7B, C$8.9B of it metallurgical [A]. Steelmaking coal out of the Elk Valley is a first-rate export business. The cut is the ticket price. In July 2024 Glencore paid US$6.9B in cash for 77% of Teck's steelmaking coal unit [A] and the seller was exiting a profitable business, not a failing one. That is the only door into this industry: buying existing permitted production, at a scale measured in billions, from the few owners who have it. The shape of the business count says the same thing. There are 29 establishments in the country and ten of them employ 200 or more people; the US average is about 80 employees per establishment. Nothing here is small, a new mine needs rail and tidewater as well as a pit, and the greenfield permit is a multi-year federal-provincial review with a live chance of refusal. Mining software for this sector is screened separately.

Most of this group by count is sand, gravel and crushed stone; the rest — potash, salt, diamonds, gypsum — is nine-figure mining that was not examined. The record at Ready-Mix Concrete & Aggregates argued from structure that the permit is the business. This one tests that with a price series, and the test holds. Vulcan Materials shipped 226.8 million tons in 2025 at a freight-adjusted US$21.98 a ton, up 4%, and kept US$11.33 of that as cash gross profit, up 7% [A]. A commodity that holds a better-than-50% cash margin and raises price through a soft construction year is not behaving like a commodity; it is behaving like a local franchise rationed by licence. Ontario shows the rationing: 3,565 licences on private land produced 167.9 million tonnes in 2023, down 3.2% [A] — yet only 348 Ontario establishments are classified to this code, so a large share of those licences evidently sit inside road builders and concrete producers who mine for their own jobs. That is the entrant's problem from both ends. A new licence means years of rezoning, hearings and appeals with no revenue; an existing one is bid for by Vulcan-type consolidators and by the local paving contractor who needs the stone more than any financial buyer does. 53% of the 1,028 establishments have fewer than ten employees, and they are mostly families who got their licence decades ago.