Who we should trust in their stated intentions is an easy one. Whether one agrees with Glencore as a company or not, their motivation is naked and simple: profit and shareholder value. One can filter any statements and actions through that framework and understand what their motive is likely to be. Glencore sees future value in Teck, notably its coal resources, and so it wants to make it part of its global empire. End of story.
The government’s rhetoric is much less clear. Having spent the better part of their term bashing natural resources, particularly oil, the Liberals seem very belatedly coming to the realization that our energy does need to come from somewhere, and that somewhere will be electricity. The issue is that electrification requires minerals and minerals mean you need miners; not exactly the constituency most environmentalists tend to love. Open pit mines aren’t pretty and even underground mines must disrupt some of the surrounding area to work. That’s the reality of an extraction industry. The other stark and — for some — uncomfortable reality is that there is no electrification without miners. Anyone believing otherwise is an enviro-irrealist.
Teck Resources is a world leader in mining, specifically copper and zinc, as well as steelmaking coal, and so, perhaps, the government truly has come to suddenly value that home grown capability. However, losing a company headquartered in Canada also looks terrible politically. This is a muddy question, currently impossible to parse.