Antimony in Canada: challenges and opportunities in resources, markets, and sustainability
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Antimony (Sb) has been classified as a critical mineral by Canada and many other countries, with demand expected to increase in the coming years. As most countries depend on a small number of suppliers, concerns about Sb availability have been heightened by potential disruptions in the supply chain. For Canada, this situation presents both challenges and opportunities. Between 1998 and 2023, Canada was the ninth-largest producer of Sb from mines globally; however, its historically significant Sb deposits no longer contribute substantially to the global supply. This paper explores the distribution of Sb occurrences and Sb-bearing tailings in Canada, classifying them as primary or secondary commodities. In this study, “primary” refers to deposits where Sb was the main commodity extracted, while “secondary” refers to deposits where Sb was documented as a secondary commodity or reported as a by-product. Analyses of geological survey datasets and deposit density modeling show that Nova Scotia, Yukon, British Columbia, and New Brunswick have the highest potential for Sb exploration. Furthermore, there are significant opportunities for resource recovery from Sb-bearing tailings in British Columbia, Newfoundland and Labrador, Nova Scotia, New Brunswick, Quebec, Northwest Territories, and Yukon. These findings highlight the need for further exploration and reprocessing to maximize Canada’s Sb resource potential. Here, reprocessing refers to the application of mineral processing and metallurgical techniques to recover Sb from mine wastes, an approach that, although technologically feasible, has not yet been widely implemented in Canada. By diversifying production sources and enhancing recycling efforts, Canada can ensure the steady availability of this critical mineral, support global supply chain stability, and facilitate the transition to clean energy technologies.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.001 | 0.002 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.003 | 0.008 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.006 | 0.002 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.006 | 0.002 |
| Open science | 0.001 | 0.002 |
| Research integrity | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.006 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".