January 15, 2014 – Page 2 – Republic of Mining

Osisko bid leaves Quebec with much to lose – by Sophie Coustineau (Globe and Mail – January 15, 2014)

January 15, 2014

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.

MONTREAL — Like a big rock that fell in a puddle of grimy slush, Goldcorp Inc.’s takeover offer for Osisko Mining Corp. has splashed Quebec Inc. in the face.

With the prospective loss of head office jobs and consultant work, hostile takeovers are never greeted like a cup of warm cocoa. But there is even more unease this time around.

Osisko is more than your regular mid-tier producer. It is Quebec’s biggest gold producer and the province’s best-known mining company – for some good and not so good reasons.

Its main gig is the Canadian Malartic gold mine, the country’s biggest open-pit mine that was dug smack in the middle of a small town in the northwestern Quebec region of Abitibi. The designing of this mine gave a new meaning to the “not in my backyard” knee-jerk reaction.

Celebrity activism often oily (Winnipeg Free Press – January 15, 2014)

January 15, 2014

http://www.winnipegfreepress.com/

Alberta’s oilsands are an ugly blight, a scar on the land and the single biggest emitter of greenhouse gases in Canada. The mining operations to extract the thick bitumen that is converted into crude oil has also been linked to the exploitation of aboriginals, environmental hazards, the death of wildlife and even cancer.

That’s one side of the story, although many of the facts are disputed. On the flip side, Alberta’s oil lands contain the third-largest reserves of oil in the world, after Saudi Arabia and Venezuela, some 170 billion barrels buried in the sand. More than 10 per cent of Alberta’s workforce, including nearly 2,000 aboriginals, are directly employed in the oil and gas extraction sector.

Royalties from the oilsands alone were worth $3.56 billion last year. The benefits are spread across Canada, particularly Ontario, where some 500 firms have provided services, technologies and products worth billions of dollars, supporting thousands of jobs.

Aboriginal companies earned more than $6 billion supporting the oil industry from 2002 to 2011.

These are just a few of the good-news stories, which, like the negative narratives, are also subject to debate and interpretation. Opponents of the oilsands, for example, point to the cyclical nature of the oil industry and say Alberta’s race to riches could drag down all of Canada when the boom collapses, as it always does.

Chilean miners in bitter dispute over rescue movie rights – by Jonathan Franklin (The Guardian – November 8, 2013)

January 15, 2014

http://www.theguardian.com/uk

As filming begins on Hollywood movie telling story of dramatic rescue, some miners claim they were tricked out of royalties

When 33 Chilean miners were hauled to the surface after 69 days trapped in a collapsed copper mine in 2010, more than a billion people around the world tuned in to watch as the rescue was broadcast live on television.

It was inevitable, then, that the dramatic story would be made into a movie. But just weeks before filming is set to begin for a multimillion dollar Hollywood film starring Antonio Banderas and Martin Sheen, the miners are locked in a bitter legal dispute over the contract in which they signed away their life rights.

Several of the men, including Luis Urzúa, who was foreman of the group at the time of the mine collapse, claim they were tricked out of royalties by lawyers and abandoned by the Chilean justice system.

“We have to fix our affairs with the lawyers and with the [movie] producer that is in the United States. With the march of time, we have had various complications with respect to our life story,” said Urzúa,. “I don’t think we are going to make a movie and then later realise we feel bad [because] our rights were infringed.”