TIMMINS – Timmins Mayor Steve Black says he’s disappointed the Ontario New Democrats have a candidate running in a Southern Ontario riding who has repeatedly questioned the economic importance of the Ring of Fire.
“It’s disappointing to hear that someone may not believe in the value of that project when it’s all most of Northern Ontario has been talking about economically for the past 10 years,” said Black, while attending the opening of Yvan Génier’s campaign office in Timmins Friday. Génier is the Timmins riding candidate for the Progressive Conservatives — the same party Black ran for in 2014.
The NDP candidate Black made reference to is Ramsey Hart, who is running in Lanark-Frontenac and Kingston. Hart used to work for Mining Watch Canada, a non-profit group that describes its mission as ensuring that mineral development worldwide is “consistent with the goals of sustainable communities and ecological health.”
“If you go back and you look him (Hart) up, he’s questioned what the Ring of Fire means economically or if it’s economically viable many times over the past few years,” said Black.
“I can say there’s nothing that’s more economically critical to see moved ahead from a development standpoint for Northern Ontario than the Ring of Fire … We talk about economic viability; I can’t think of a more economically viable thing than having an extra 350 jobs in our community guaranteed for 100 years.”
Black noted, “Timmins is obviously still one of the communities competing for the ferrochrome processing facility for Noront and it would be great to have someone fighting inside the government to ensure that project comes to Timmins.”
During the Northern provincial leaders debate held in Parry Sound Friday’s, Progressive Conservative leader Doug Ford targeted the NDP for having what Ford described as an anti-mining “extremist” running for the NDP in Kingston.
For the rest of this article: http://www.timminspress.com/2018/05/12/ndp-comes-under-fire-for-anti-mining-candidate