Canada's Public Miners Hold C$241 Billion Abroad

In the seven days to October 12, 2026, The Maple Markets covered a copper mine in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, four drill holes in Chile, a drill permission in Peru, two dozen uranium pipes in Arizona, a nuclear framework signed with South Korea, and a Nevada gold deposit bought from Newmont. It also covered iron ore in Nunavik, a step-out target in Nova Scotia, soil gas in Nova Scotia, a nickel restart in Sudbury and a phosphate permit in Quebec. Every one of those companies files its disclosure under Canadian securities law. Rather fewer of them own anything in Canada.

Natural Resources Canada put a number on that split in January 2026. Canadian public mining companies held C$352.6 billion of mining assets at the end of 2024, up 4.1 per cent from C$338.8 billion in 2023. Of that total, the department reported C$240.6 billion outside Canada and C$112.0 billion inside it. Two thirds of the asset base of the Canadian mining sector is not in Canada.

Toronto is a financing venue before it is a mining district

The two facts fit together once the exchange is read as a capital market rather than as a map.

TMX Group reports that roughly 40 per cent of the world's public mining companies are listed on the Toronto Stock Exchange and the TSX Venture Exchange, with 54 new mining listings added during 2025, on data the exchange states as at December 31, 2025. Over the five years to that date, according to the same TMX profile, mining companies on the two exchanges completed more than 6,400 financings, which the exchange reports as 32 per cent of global mining equity capital raised and 45 per cent of the number of public mining financings completed anywhere. TMX publishes the dollar totals behind those shares without a currency label, so they are left out here.

Those shares are the mechanism. A mining company needs money long before it needs a mine, and the place it goes for the money is the place that has brokers who will underwrite an exploration program, institutions that will buy one, and a disclosure standard that lets a buyer compare two deposits written up by different geologists. Canada built all three around a domestic resource industry and then kept selling the service after the domestic deposits stopped being the main event. A company incorporated in British Columbia with its only asset in Peru is not an anomaly in that system. It is the ordinary customer.

Natural Resources Canada counts owners, not geography

The C$240.6 billion figure needs its definition read carefully, because the survey is built around ownership rather than location.

Natural Resources Canada defines Canadian Mining Assets as the non-current mining-related assets of public companies headquartered in Canada and not under foreign control: mineral properties, deferred exploration expenses, royalties, and investments in non-Canadian mining companies, in each case where the asset can be tied to a geographic place. Non-current means an asset the company expects to hold for more than a year, which in mining is nearly everything that matters. All amounts are in Canadian dollars, and the 2024 values are drawn from the financial reports nearest December 31, 2024. The 2024 figures carry a preliminary flag.

Two consequences follow. A mine in Chile owned by a Vancouver company counts toward Canada's total; a mine in Ontario owned by a company headquartered in Denver does not. And because the values are stated in Canadian dollars while much of the underlying asset base is carried in US dollars, a move in the exchange rate changes the reported Canadian-dollar total without anything changing underground.

The direction of travel inside the series is the clearer signal. Between 2023 and 2024 the value held in Canada fell by C$4.3 billion, from C$116.3 billion to C$112.0 billion, a decline of 3.7 per cent. Over the same year the value held abroad rose by C$18.1 billion, from C$222.4 billion to C$240.6 billion, a rise of 8.2 per cent. Canada's share of the assets its own public miners own slipped from 34.3 per cent to 31.8 per cent in a single reporting year.

Five countries hold more than half of the money abroad

The foreign total is not spread evenly across the 95 foreign countries where Canadian public miners reported assets in 2024.

Values and company counts are from Natural Resources Canada's country table for 2023 and 2024 (preliminary), published January 2026. The value per company column is division, not a reported figure; company counts are not additive across countries because one company can report assets in several.

Those top five countries hold C$133.9 billion between them, about 56 per cent of everything Canadian public miners own outside Canada. By region, the same table reports South America at C$84.8 billion, Africa at C$45.9 billion across 106 companies, Asia at C$9.4 billion, Europe at C$7.3 billion and Oceania at C$6.0 billion.

Zambia and Mexico hold the same money through very different numbers of companies

The last column of that table carries the information a sector total hides.

Zambia and Mexico are statistically indistinguishable by value in the 2024 table: the department reported C$12.965 billion and C$12.963 billion respectively. Zambia's share is held by 7 companies and Mexico's by 114. The Democratic Republic of the Congo holds C$9.1 billion across 6 companies, an average of about C$1.52 billion each, which is ten times the United States average of about C$152 million across 320 companies.

A Canadian mining index, or any broad basket of Canadian-listed miners, therefore carries its country exposures with wildly different numbers of intermediaries. A change of mining law in Mexico reaches the Canadian market through a hundred small positions and is diluted on the way. A change of mining law in Zambia or the Congo reaches it through a handful of large ones, where a single company's problem is most of the country exposure. Both arrive as a line in a Canadian-dollar statement; only one of them is spread thin.

A Canadian listing governs the disclosure, not the permit

Our colleague wrote on October 3, 2026 that a foreign state reaches a Canadian-listed issuer through a permit, a concession or a treaty rather than through the exchange, and on October 11 that Canadian mine approvals turn on consent agreements reached before construction. The asset survey adds the magnitude: for two thirds of the sector's assets, the state doing the reaching is not Canada.

What the Canadian listing does control is the paperwork. A company listed in Toronto reports its foreign deposit under National Instrument 43-101, which sets who may sign off on a mineral estimate and what has to be measured before an estimate may be published, and under National Instrument 51-102, which sets what must be disclosed and when. The exchange's own rulebook governs financings, halts and bulletins. That is a real benefit and a precisely bounded one. It standardises the document; it does not standardise the jurisdiction the document describes. Expropriation risk, royalty changes, court rulings, arbitration and permitting delay sit with the host state, and no Canadian rule reaches them.

Where the table goes blank

Natural Resources Canada suppresses Panama in its country table. The 2023 and 2024 cells both read "x", which the publication defines as confidential, and the table reports four companies holding assets there in each year. Publishing a value across four companies would disclose individual company information.

The suppression is a methodological rule rather than an anomaly, and it is a limit on what the data can answer. The most concentrated country positions in the Canadian mining sector are precisely the ones the official statistics cannot publish, because concentration and confidentiality are the same fact seen from two sides. For Panama, the public record stops at four companies and no number.

The week's coverage ran domestic and foreign in roughly equal measure, which is the more accurate version of the split. Hopes Advance, Silver Hill, Sudbury and the Saguenay are Canadian ground owned by Canadian companies. Kamoa-Kakula, Pinyon Plain and the Chilean holes are not. Natural Resources Canada's survey reports the second group as roughly twice the size of the first and growing faster. What the survey cannot report is whether the Canadian disclosure standard travels as well as the Canadian capital does.

Transparency note. This is an independent due-diligence analysis and editorial opinion piece produced by The Maple Markets editorial desk. It is not sponsored, promoted or commissioned, and no compensation of any kind has been received from any issuer, government body or organisation named in this article, or any party acting on their behalf. The analysis is based on public disclosure available as of the publish date; every figure is attributed to its primary source. The Maple Markets and its authors may hold positions in securities mentioned; nothing here is a recommendation to buy, sell or hold any security, and readers should not treat it as investment advice. Past disclosure does not guarantee future results. Policies: Editorial Standards · Financial Disclaimer.