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Robert B. Gibson is a professor of Environment and Resource Studies at the University of Waterloo.
None of the major party leaders in Ontario has assessed the overall opportunities and risks of developing the province’s Ring of Fire.
Last week in the Ontario election campaign, the three major party leaders fell over each other competing for the mining booster award — the ribbon for being the most enthusiastic expediter and/or public funder of Ring of Fire development.
There was plenty of loose talk of superfast approvals and heaps of taxpayer funding for mine-enticing infrastructure, and plenty of starry-eyed anticipation of huge provincial revenue.
But no one has a plan. No one has assessed the overall opportunities and risks of Ring of Fire development. No one has prepared a considered vision of the desirable future for the region or how to get us there. And so far, none of the booster ribbon contestants has promised to try.
Ore bodies are inevitably depleted. They bring lasting benefits only if the mines, associated projects and revenues are used to build foundations for sustainable livelihoods after the mining ends. That does not happen automatically. Lasting benefits depend on far-sighted effort from the outset.
The potential Ring of Fire developments include several mines, plus transportation and power projects and maybe some mineral processing. While each project will bring opportunities and risks, the overall effects — on communities, ecosystems, local and regional economies — will come from all of these projects together. The challenge is to anticipate the interacting cumulative effects and weigh the options for enhancing the gains and avoiding the perils.
Enhancing the gains involves finding the best ways to capture and extend the transient benefits (revenues, jobs, training) from multiple mines. It entails designing and locating the roads, rails and power facilities to serve multiple purposes over the long term, and using the various opportunities to build skills, develop renewable resources and diversify local and regional economies.
Avoiding the perils requires learning from past mining booms. Too many of them left legacies of economic and social bust, unsuitable transportation and power infrastructure, ecological scarring and residual contamination requiring care in perpetuity. And special risks attend development in the Ring of Fire, a region of aboriginal communities in undisturbed and irreplaceable boreal forest.
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