Canadian Digital Core Library
Canada holds one of the largest drill core libraries in the world. The CDCL is designed to make it digitized, AI-ready, and accessible to the entire sector through one shared national platform.
01 - THE OPPORTUNITY
A national strategic asset.
Global demand for critical minerals is accelerating. Critical minerals are essential to electric vehicles, clean energy infrastructure, advanced manufacturing, and defence systems.
Canada holds significant mineral deposits, established mining expertise, and the technology to develop new projects. Canada’s geological data, however, remains mostly in analog form, siloed across federal and provincial repositories with no unified national inventory.
Unlocking Canada’s geoscience data accelerates mineral discovery, shortens exploration timelines, and strengthens Canada’s position in global critical minerals supply chains.
02 - THE INITIATIVE
One open platform.
The Canadian Digital Core Library aims to create a common AI-ready geological dataset by digitizing Canada’s physical drill core using advanced scanning technologies and integrating existing digital data from government and industry.
The open Canadian Digital Core Library platform will give the entire sector — from major producers and junior explorers to academics and government — a shared foundation for mineral discovery.
03 - THE CASE FOR CANADA
A proven approach.
Comparable initiatives in other countries like Finland, United Kingdom, and Norway demonstrate that converting national geoscience archives into open, standards-based digital assets produce meaningful competitiveness and economic benefits.
An independent economic assessment of Australia's AuScope infrastructure program, conducted by Lateral Economics in 2016, estimated a net benefit of approximately A$3.7 billion in net present value terms against an economic cost of approximately A$261 million — a return of approximately A$15 in benefit for every A$1 invested.
A seperate 2023 analysis by Deloitte Access Economics found that government-funded precompetitive geoscience data and analysis supported approximately A$76 billion in economic value and around 80,000 full-time equivalent jobs in the Australian economy in 2021–22.
04 - THE COLLABORATION
Nation-building project.
Canada holds significant critical mineral deposits, established mining expertise, and the technology to do this work. The CDCL is the infrastructure to connect those assets intentionally and generate national impact.
On March 2, 2026, the Government of Canada, Creative Destruction Lab, Laurentian University, and six leading global mining companies signed a non-binding Declaration of Intent to establish the CDCL.
Read — Latest CDCL News
Download — Phase 0: Final Report
Download the technical and strategic detail behind the CDCL: platform architecture, international precedents, the economic case, and the implementation design developed by founding collaborators during Phase 0. The document that informed the phase 1 proposal to the Government of Canada.