Rickford promises progress in the Ring of Fire – by Ian Ross (Northern Ontario Business – January 24, 2018)

https://www.northernontariobusiness.com/

Indigenous communities to reap the rewards, benefits of natural resource development

Provincial cabinet minister Greg Rickford offered a stay-tuned response to the government’s plans to advance the construction of an access corridor to the Ring of Fire.

The minister of Energy, Northern Development and Mines, and Indigenous Affairs was in Sudbury to reaffirm the Ford government’s commitment to opening up the mineral deposits in the remote James Bay region.

In his Jan. 23 remarks at the Procurement, Employment, Partnerships Conference in Sudbury, Rickford referred to the James Bay mineral belt as a “region of prosperity” that’s been “complicated and overburdened with bureaucracy.”

As a former board member of Noront Resources, Rickford said with $20 million already invested in the region, the Ring of Fire has been an all-talk, no-action exercise with no shovels in the ground after a decade of discussion.

Prior to the start of last year’s provincial election, funding was released for a road study and environmental assessment of the first leg of a north-south access corridor up as far as Marten Falls First Nations, about 100 kilometres short of the mineral deposits.

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