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Year: 2012

NEWS RELEASE: Vic Fedeli, Ontario MPP, Nipissing – FAR NORTH REPEAL ACT DEFEATED

March 22, 2012

QUEEN’S PARK – Nipissing MPP Vic Fedeli is extremely disappointed at defeat of Bill 44, the Far North Repeal Act, in the Ontario Legislature today.

The Private Members’ Bill put forward by PC Northern Development and Mines Critic Norm Miller (Parry Sound-Muskoka) would have removed the severe restrictions previously placed on development and exploration by the McGuinty government. However, Liberal and NDP members joined to defeat the Bill by a vote of 50-36 on Second Reading.

“I’m most upset that the NDP members across the North, many of whom have previously spoken out against the Far North Act in the past, decided to toe the party line instead of standing up for their constituents and voted against this,” Fedeli said.

“You really have to wonder how much influence these Northern members actually have in driving their party’s agenda.”

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NEWS RELEASE ONTARIO GOVERNMENT: Ontario Northland Transportation Commission

March 23, 2012 10:00 AM

Ontario has chosen to take a new approach to regional transportation in northeastern Ontario by winding down the Ontario Northland Transportation Commission (ONTC).

This decision will allow the government to protect investments in northerners’ health and education systems while balancing the budget by 2017-18.

Since 2003, the government has worked hard to make the ONTC viable by increasing funding by 274 per cent. However, demand for its services has stagnated. Also, the current subsidy on the Northlander train is $400 per passenger, and no longer affordable.   

■Government funding has increased from $28 million annually in 2003-04 to $103 million this year.
■Ridership has remained stagnant at about 320,000 rides a year.
■Sales revenues have declined from $140 million in 2005 to just over $100 million this year.
■Private buses serve most of the same communities.

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Canada’s North finally opens up – by Philip Cross (National Post – March 23, 2012)

The National Post is Canada’s second largest national paper.

Philip Cross is a research fellow at the C.D. Howe Institute and the former chief ­economic analyst at Statistics Canada.

Six of the 20 fastest-­growing areas are in ­northern regions

Recently, the CBC released a DVD set featuring all its televised work of Glenn Gould. One of the interesting non-musical items was his hour-long film called The Idea of North, a reminder of the recurring if intermittent Canadian infatuation with our Northern frontier. We seem to be in one of those moods these days, with annual photo-ops of Prime Minister Stephen Harper in the Arctic and an array of investments to increase our presence in the North. Will this latest spike of interest in the North fare better than past episodes?
 
History is littered with the wreckage of past plans to develop Canada’s North. Diefenbaker’s 1958 election platform envisioning a “Canada of the North” never amounted to much, and he was soon tossed out of office. Charles Hays ran a rail line to the northern tip of B.C.’s coast in 1905, earning Prince Rupert its derisive nickname of “Hays’ Orphan” for most of the 20th century (Hays did not have to endure these taunts, having gone down with the Titanic in 1912). The Mackenzie Valley pipeline has been stuck in the planning stages for decades.

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Pipeline ploy real gusher – by Kelly McParland (National Post – March 23, 2012)

The National Post is Canada’s second largest national paper.

Cynical as it may appear (and undoubtedly is), you can see why President Barack Obama’s decision to embrace the southern leg of TransCanada’s Keystone XL pipeline project – suddenly announcing on Thursday that he would fast-track approvals – sounded like a great idea within the White House.

You can also understand why his environmental “supporters” are spitting bullets. (I put “supporters” in quotes because environmentalists, like unions, only support you as long as you do exactly what they want.) And why they’re being joined by their arch-rivals in Big Oil.

In a way, it’s a great bit of politics. You have to admire the architecture, even if you don’t like the result (which almost no one appears to). It gives Mr. Obama a comeback for accusations hurled at him from all the various camps. And it traps the critics in their own positions.

The background goes like this: TransCanada Corp. wants to build a pipeline from the oil sands in Alberta that will carry crude to the Gulf Coast.

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Jean Charest, prospector – by Paul Wells (Macleans’s Magazine – March 21, 2012)

http://www2.macleans.ca/

It was a tweet yesterday from Andrew McIntosh at QMI that finally got me thinking about what Jean Charest’s government is up to in Quebec’s north. I’ll cut to the chase: basically he’s turning it into Alberta.
 
What Andrew noticed was that, while most of the reporters in Quebec City were safely tucked away in the provincial budget lockup, Charest’s former chief of staff announced he will become an executive at Canada Lithium, which means he’ll be spending a lot of time in Abitibi setting up a mine that will provide 12% of the world’s lithium and, in return, make everybody rich as thieves.
 
There’s not a whiff of scandal to this. It’s good to see former government people getting honest work. (And the guy involved has been out of government for five years.) But Stéphane Bertrand’s new line of work reflects where things are going in Quebec these days. The whole province — or at least its teetering Liberal government and its investment community — is going resource-crazy.
 
I had heard, vaguely, about Charest’s “Plan Nord,” which he seems to spend a lot of time talking about, and which I mostly took to mean “don’t look at the construction-industry corruption scandal.”

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Solid Gold reports progress in [Wahgoshig First Nation] dispute – by Ron Grech (Timmins Daily Press – March 23, 2012)

The Daily Press is the city of Timmins broadsheet newspaper.

Some headway is being made in efforts to resolve a conflict between Solid Gold Resources Corporation and Wahgoshig First Nation.

“The government has made certain offers, which I won’t go into at the moment, to accommodate the First Nation,” Darryl Stretch, president of Solid Gold, told The Daily Press Thursday. “The very fact that the government has made some offer of accommodation inspires me just a little, tiny bit. Because it’s always been our position that the government must stand between us and the (First Nation) government.”

Stretch said all along, regional First Nation leaders have been asserting their communities are led by an autonomous government.

If that is to be the case, Stretch added, “then I don’t quite understand why my government would be insisting I go and enter agreement with their government. It just doesn’t make sense.”

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Councillor pleads to keep biz in city [Sudbury industrial parks upgrades] – by Mike Whitehouse (Sudbury Star – March 23, 2012)

The Sudbury Star is the City of Greater Sudbury’s daily newspaper.

The city should borrow up to $60 million to carry out its industrial lands strategy, Ward 8 Coun. Fabio Belli says.

Addressing a group of irate businessmen in the Elisabella Street industrial area of New Sudbury, Belli said every possible solution should be on the table for the city to help local businesses expand and create jobs — including going into debt.

The group of a dozen irate property owners along Elisabella had gathered to mull a 50-50 cost-sharing proposal for improving services that would see many of them going into debt themselves.

The Elisabella and Lasalle Boulevard area is the first of seven industrial areas the city plans to upgrade, banking on growth in the construction and mining supply and service sectors. The area has more than 450 acres of land zoned M3, of which 250 acres are vacant.

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Ecuador Indians march against mining on their lands – by Gonzalo Solano (Globe and Mail – March 23, 2012)

The Globe and Mail is Canada’s national newspaper with the second largest broadsheet circulation in the country. It has enormous influence on Canada’s political and business elite.

QUITO— The Associated Press – The lands of the Shuar Indians in the Ecuadoran Amazon are rich in wildlife such as tapirs, toucans and red howler monkeys. They also hold treasures more coveted by outsiders: rich deposits of copper and other minerals that the government is eager to cash in on.
 
Projects to build open-pit mines that would rip into their forest-covered hills have spawned a protest movement that sets leaders of the ethnic group against the country’s popular president, Rafael Correa, who says development is essential to the future of this nation’s 14 million people.
 
More than 1,000 indigenous protesters reached Ecuador’s capital on Thursday after a two-week, 700-kilometre march from the Amazon to oppose plans for large-scale mining projects on their lands.

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TransCanada looks east as Gateway pipeline gets bogged down – by Nathan Vanderklippe and Shawn McCarthy (Globe and Mail – March 23, 2012)

The Globe and Mail is Canada’s national newspaper with the second largest broadsheet circulation in the country. It has enormous influence on Canada’s political and business elite.

CALGARY, OTTAWA— TransCanada Corp. is proposing a major shift in the way oil moves across Canada, urging the oil patch to consider a massive $5.6-billion new pipeline system that would carry large volumes of western crude to refineries in Ontario, Quebec and beyond.

The East Coast Pipeline Project, as TransCanada has dubbed it in presentations to energy companies, could do more than supply the east with fuels made from oil sands crude. It could serve as an alternative to Northern Gateway, the controversial West Coast export pipeline project from TransCanada competitor Enbridge Inc. that has faced a wall of opposition from first nations and environmental groups.

The TransCanada proposal would send 625,000 barrels a day across the country to Montreal, Quebec City and potentially Saint John, N.B., where Irving Oil Ltd. runs a large refinery. Tanker exports could then also take the crude to Europe or Asia.

The proposal is conceptual, and the company has not disclosed public details about a project that may never be built.

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[Northern Ontario] English River logging suspended during court battle – by Tanya Talaga (Toronto Star – March 23, 2012)

The Toronto Star, has the largest circulation in Canada. The paper has an enormous impact on federal and Ontario politics as well as shaping public opinion.

The Ontario government has agreed to suspend logging north of the English River in a territory five times the size of Toronto as an 11-year legal fight winds its way through the courts.

Last August, the Ontario Superior Court ruled the province does not have the power to take away treaty rights negotiated over 150 years ago by allowing industrial activity without the consent of Grassy Narrows First Nation. The decision is being appealed and is expected to be heard this fall.

But while all commercial logging cannot occur in the Grassy Narrows traditional area north of the river without the community’s consent, it can south of the river, said David Sone, a spokesperson for the environmental organization Earthroots.

“The people of Grassy Narrows and First Nations across the province have suffered for decades for decisions imposed on them and their land without their agreement,” Sone said.

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How Ottawa runs on oil – by Paul Wells (Maclean’s Magazine – March 23, 2012)

http://www2.macleans.ca/

Suddenly Western money and influence are driving everything that happens in the nation’s capital

In July 2006 Stephen Harper had been Prime Minister for half a year and it was time to deliver his first speech to a foreign business audience. He picked a friendly crowd, the Canada-U.K. Chamber of Commerce in London. He told them British investors were taking notice of “Canada’s emergence as a global energy powerhouse—the emerging ‘energy superpower’ our government intends to build.”
 
Canada, he said, was the world’s fifth-largest energy producer, ranking third in gas production and seventh in oil production. Canada was the world’s largest supplier of hydroelectric power and uranium. “But that’s just the beginning.”
 
There was “an ocean of oil-soaked sand” in northern Alberta, more than in any country except Saudi Arabia. Getting it out would be “an enterprise of epic proportions, akin to the building of the pyramids or China’s Great Wall. Only bigger.”

Fast forward to late last year. The future Harper described in London had become a reality. The oil sands were producing so much oil that the biggest challenge was simply to get the stuff to market.

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2012 Prospectors and Developers Association of Canada (PDAC) Award Winners Videos [ALL VIDEOS IN THIS SINGLE POSTING]

Bill Dennis Award for a Canadian discovery or prospecting success

(L to R) Scott Jobin-Bevans, outgoing PDAC President; Gerald Panneton, President and CEO of Detour Gold Corporation

http://www.pendaproductions.com/ This video was produced by PENDA Productions, a full service production company specializing in Corporate Communications with a focus on Corporate Responsibility.

This award, named for a former president of the association, honours individuals who have accomplished one or both of the following: made a significant mineral discovery; made an important contribution to the prospecting and/or exploration industry. The award may also be used to recognize an important mineral discovery in Canada.

Gerald Panneton, president and CEO of Detour Gold Corp., receives this award for his leadership of the team that has advanced the Detour Lake property in northern Ontario into a world-class, low-grade, high tonnage gold deposit. Panneton spearheaded the initial acquisition and subsequent evaluation of what is now determined to be Canada’s largest undeveloped gold deposit. Recognizing the potential of Detour Lake in 2006, Panneton commissioned a large-scale drilling and re-sampling program. By the end of 2010, the project had proven and probable open pit reserves of 14.9 M oz of gold. Detour Gold Corp. is now moving ahead with the development of the project. 

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[Ontario] First Nations seek power in development – by Brian MacLeod (Sudbury Star – March 22, 2012)

The Sudbury Star is the City of Greater Sudbury’s daily newspaper and Brian MacLeod is the managing editor. brian.macleod@sunmedia.ca

It was a brief release on the website of the Ministry of Northern Development and Mines. More telling, it was released on March 4 — a Sunday. It looks like the medium was the message. In this case, that message is trouble for the Liberals.

The release announced that 23,000 square kilometres of land in the northwestern corner of Ontario were being withdrawn from prospecting and mining to “give clarity to the province’s mineral exploration industry and avoid future disagreements over the land in question.”

That clarity was required after a showdown between the Kitchenuhmaykoosib Inninuwug (KI) First Nation and God’s Lake Resources, a junior exploration company. And KI won hands down.

Mines Minister Rick Bartolucci said KI “clearly isn’t ready to enter into an agreement … so we believe it was better for all concerned if we withdrew those lands.”

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Québec plans to pluck and invest in the golden goose of mining – by Dorothy Kosich (Mineweb.com – March 22, 2012)

www.mineweb.com

While soaring mining taxation will pluck a few more feathers off the mining golden goose, the Québec government plans to shoulder some risk in exchange for higher fiscal rewards.

RENO (MINEWEB) – As Minister of Finance Raymond Bachand presented his budget Tuesday, he observed, “Like all peoples who possess such [abundant natural] resources, Québecers want to maximum their benefits,” partially by collecting more than Cdn$4 billion in mining royalties over the next decade.
 
A new mining regime will help accomplish these goals through gross royalties collected on mining, forestry and water-power than will reach $1.2 billion in 2011-2012.
 
“During the 10 years that preceded the reform of the royalties regime, mining companies paid a total of $289 million in royalties to Québec. Over the next 10 years they will pay more than $4 billion. That is 14 times more,” Banchard observed.
 
To encourage more ore processing in the province, the provincial government will apply an investment tax credit to assets used to smelt or refine metals, and for hydrometallurgy, the minister announced.

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China eyes Canadian uranium mines – by Shirley Won (Globe and Mail – March 22, 2012)

The Globe and Mail is Canada’s national newspaper with the second largest broadsheet circulation in the country. It has enormous influence on Canada’s political and business elite.

Takeover activity is poised to heat up in the Canadian uranium sector as energy-hungry China hunts for feedstock to fuel its growing family of nuclear reactors.

The state-controlled China Daily recently reported that the country plans to buy more uranium mines abroad, and is looking in Canada. China also expects to import more uranium this year as its nuclear program resumes after being halted following Japan’s Fukushima nuclear disaster.

China has 15 reactors in operation and 25 under construction, and plans to build another 50. It imports nearly all its uranium from Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, Namibia and Australia.

“It comes as a surprise” that China is showing its hand by publicly targeting this country’s miners, which could boost the prices of potential acquisitions, said Versant Partners analyst Rob Chang.

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