RE:What if Qc listens to one of its Guru: "Think Bing ostie" This is a very interesting post but let me just clear a few things up. I work in the battery industry so I have a strong handle on the industry.
While Electrovaya does make battery packs they do not make the cathode powder materials or electrolyte themselves (this is where the Li would be actually going). I wont go into too much details but batteries are very complex devices with many componenets that end up being sourced from various location. While Electrovaya makes the battery packs in TO, their material supply chain will involve China, Germany and others. One way or another, shipping the Li will be a must.
Li's role in battery: There are many stages to making batteries and many manufacturers involved, seldom are factories as veritcally intergrated as Tesla's gigafactory (in fact, i think it is a first). Li will go into making cathode powder and also electrolyte, but in the case of Lithium Hydroxide i believe the focus would be on cathodes so let's focus on that. Cathodes powder in industry is generally either LCO, NMC, LFP, LMO or NCA all of which contain lithium often around 5-10%. Big manufacurers of cathodes include L&F, Hunan Shanshan, Toda, UMICORE, and a few others. These companies do not make batteries, they make one compoenent of the battery. These would be the primary buyers of Li and then also fully vertically integrated companies (but these will be huge projects). The raw materials (sourced from various locations) go to the cell manufacuturer, the cells then go to battery pack manufacturer (like electrovaya) and often the Battery Management systems are also outsourced. In the case of electrovaya they actaully also make their own BMS and also have cells made by partners so they are quite the comapany but at this time they would not have need of raw lithium! Xalt and of course Johnson Mathey are also a very interesting company. JM has already an offspec agreement with NMX and while I do not know their whole supply chain I know they actually do make their own cathode powder (LFP) and also battery packs so they are a great customer.
Hydro Quebec is a gigantic Utility company. They do a lot of R&D on batteries and supercapacitors. But, to my knowledge they have no intention of producing batteries, they goal is to liscence their technology once developed. This makes sense because battery scale up and production is extremely difficult so it is safer to leave it to the experts (maybe). This does not mean HQ will not need energy storage batteries! I think they will. But, more likely it will be someone else building them and installing them and HQ will only be benefiting from the Li indirectly.
What I am getting at is, maybe don't focus so much locally. It's a global economy, 90% of battery production is still in China and they are the ones who caused the Li shortage. I think we will catch up to a degree but it seems like all american and canadian manufacturing ends up in China one way or another. And while you are right about it being a little tricky to ship Li due to it being a hazardous material, when you ship it by the container load by sea it is not that bad.
Just my thoughts.