Aboriginal and Inuit Mining and Oil/Gas – Page 227

MINING WATCH NEWS RELEASE: Diamonds and Development: Attawapiskat and the Victor Diamond Mine

November 5, 2015January 4, 2012

http://www.miningwatch.ca/

Thursday, December 15, 2011

In the last two weeks there has been an intense media storm around the current housing crisis in Attawapiskat, a remote Cree community on the coast of James Bay. The crisis is occurring in the context of many long-standing issues that are certainly not unique to Attawapiskat. Hopefully, the current attention will provide some immediate relief for the situation in Attawapiskat but also help drive an eventual resolution to the root issues that are causing the current crisis.

One element of the story that’s getting some attention and is of particular interest to MiningWatch is the fact that the community is ‘host’ to DeBeers’ Victor diamond mine, located 90 km west of the community, upstream on the Attawapiskat River, within the traditional territory of the Omushkego Cree. The juxtaposition is stark: a diamond mine producing millions of dollars of a sparkling luxury item, next to the poverty and infrastructure deficits in Attawapiskat. It has led people to ask us: if there are millions of dollars of diamonds being taken from their traditional territory, why aren’t the conditions in the community improving?

After Attawapiskat, what? – by Jim Foulds (Toronto Star – December 29, 2011)

November 5, 2015January 3, 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.

Jim Foulds is a freelance writer in Thunder Bay. He was the MPP for Port Arthur from 1971 to 1987.

When Canadians first saw the news about Attawapiskat they knew that no matter who is at fault, nobody in Canada should be using a plastic bucket for a toilet and have to dump it outside on a regular basis. Nobody should be calling a shack with mould on the walls home. And nobody in Ontario should be paying $23.50 for six apples and four small bottles of juice.

With little evidence, Prime Minister Stephen Harper charged that the funds that the federal government had transferred to the reserve over several years had been mismanaged. With no consultation he put the band under third party management.

(Earlier this year several flooded towns along the Assiniboine River called for provincial and federal help. Think how the municipalities would have reacted if, immediately after asking for aid, they had been placed under third party management.)

The Harper message to Attawapiskat was clear. Blame the victims; discredit the messenger; and sow doubt in the minds of Canadians.

Will Quebec’s Plan Nord boost its cachet as a jurisdiction of choice? – by Alisha Hiyate (Mining Markets – December 2011)

January 3, 2012

http://www.miningmarkets.ca/

It’s probably safe to say that no one is happier about Plan Nord — Quebec’s 25-year plan to stimulate investment in the province’s vast northern reaches — than André Gaumond.

The founder, president and CEO of project generator Virginia Mines (VGQ-T) has been preaching the gospel of northern Quebec’s mineral potential for more than a decade, well before the provincial government unveiled its official Plan Nord policy this May.

“We’ve been selling or promoting the ‘Plan Nord’ for 15 years, travelling everywhere, talking with investors and the investment community and telling them that this. . . area has a huge potential,” Gaumond says. “We will find many mines, many deposits there: It is the future of the mining industry in Canada. This is what we’ve been telling people for years and years.”

Under Plan Nord, the Quebec government will spend $2.1 billion over the next five years to make Quebec north of the 49th parallel — an area that accounts for 72% of the province’s landmass — more accessible for exploration and development.

This teacher is on a mission to educate first nations – by Kate Hammer (Globe and Mail – January 3, 2012)

January 3, 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.

Every Wednesday, after her day job teaching inmates of a Northern Ontario prison, Michelle Durant-Dudley climbed into her silver Subaru and drove 70 kilometres along a winding highway that was more dense with moose traffic than cars.

Waiting for her on a tiny reserve halfway between Lake Huron and James Bay was a group of mothers, fathers, grandparents, pregnant teens and residential school survivors who shared a piece of unfinished business: their high-school diplomas.

Ms. Durant-Dudley started those Wednesday drives in 2009. Since then, thanks to her efforts and the opening of a nearby mine, residents of Wahgoshig First Nation have been breaking out of the cycle of poverty and poor education that blights many aboriginal communities.

Close to $3-billion began streaming into the area around Wahgoshig in 2010, with the construction of a gold mine and a cluster of dams along the lower Mattagami River opening up hundreds jobs, some of which paid $29 an hour. But for many locals, the requirement of a Grade 12 education put those jobs out of reach.

First Nations have final word on Ring of Fire, says ex-minister – by Ian Ross (Northern Ontario Business – December, 2011)

December 30, 2011

Established in 1980, Northern Ontario Business provides Canadians and international investors with relevant, current and insightful editorial content and business news information about Ontario’s vibrant and resource-rich North. Ian Ross is the editor of Northern Ontario Business ianross@nob.on.ca.

Laying the groundwork

A former provincial energy minister-turned-consultant said First Nations will have the ultimate say on how the Ring of Fire mineral developments will unfold, and that includes the location of a proposed ferrochrome smelter.

George Smitherman is pitching for the furnaces to be located in the northwestern Ontario municipality of Greenstone, and the village of Exton, which is already designated as a future ore transloading junction.

Cliffs Natural Resources has maintained Sudbury is the frontrunner among four Northern Ontario communities to land the processing plant, and its 400-plus jobs, but only if provincial power rates are competitive with neighbouring jurisdictions. The international miner is expected to name the site for the plant sometime this year.

“If the company persists in seeing the decision narrowly on the basis of power, then this has great project risk.”

Drilling for discovery [Northwestern Ontario’s mining sector] – by Maureen Arges Nadin (Thunder Bay Chronicle-Journal – December 28, 2011)

January 11, 2012December 28, 2011

The Thunder Bay Chronicle-Journal is the daily newspaper of Northwestern Ontario.

Maureen Arges Nadin is a contributor to The Chronicle-Journal.

Every grade school student in Ontario learns that mining is one of the major industries of Northwestern Ontario. But beyond getting a good grade in social studies, most of us never give it more than a passing thought or fully appreciate its importance to the economy and culture of this region.

The mining industry is a strong and rock-solid presence in this area and regularly hums with activity. But most of that activity flies under the radar of every-day folks, who may not have a direct involvement with the industry.

But developments in the provocatively named Ring of Fire have awakened a new-found interest in the mining sector. People are paying attention, and inspired by the promise of renewed activity and jobs, they are looking to enhance their knowledge of mining in Northwestern Ontario.

Thunder Bay has a strong connection to the mining sector, and since the Hemlo gold discoveries in the 1980s, it has served as the regional service hub for the exploration and mining sectors.

The Victor Mine: Description of De Beers Canada’s Success – by Canadian Business Ethics Research Network (CBERN)

November 5, 2015December 23, 2011

Canadian Business Ethics Research Network (CBERN)

The Canadian Business Ethics Research Network (CBERN) aims to promote knowledge-sharing and partnerships within the field of business ethics and across private, governmental, voluntary and academic sectors. CBERN also aims to support work from inception to dissemination, from graduate student research and fellowship opportunities to promoting the projects of established professionals. http://www.cbern.ca/home/

The Victor Mine: Description of De Beers Canada’s Success

• The following sections provide insight into the strategy pursued by De Beers and important facts about the Victor project and nearby communities, while providing additional context to the agreements between the company and communities.

In contrast to the conflict-ridden and failed development of exploration claims by Platinex, the recent development and opening of the Victor diamond mine by De Beers Canada has been heralded as “a shining example of responsible development in northern Ontario” (DBC, 2006). Although it has taken years of hard work, De Beers has successfully engaged with nearby First Nations to garner their acceptance and even support of mining operations at Victor.

This acceptance is best exemplified by the signing of three Impact and Benefit Agreements (IBAs) with the First Nations along Ontario’s James Bay coast. In order to better understand the relationship between the company and communities, the following sections provide insight into the strategy pursued by De Beers and important facts about the Victor project and nearby communities, while providing additional context to the agreements between the company and communities.

Ten questions for Jerry Asp [Aboriginal people and mining] – by Gail Jansen (Mining and Exploration – November, 2011)

December 19, 2011

http://www.miningandexploration.ca/

This year’s winner of the Skookum Jim award talks about Aboriginal Peoples and mining.

For more than 40 years, Jerry Asp has been working toward improving the quality of life for Aboriginal Peoples, using the mining industry as the driving force. He is a founder of the Tahltan Nation Development Corporation (TNDC), one of the largest native-owned-and-operated heavy construction companies in Canada. He helped set up both the National Indian Businessman’s Association and the Canadian Aboriginals Minerals Association and he is now president of C3 Alliance Corporation.

All of this makes Asp arguably the pre-eminent expert on aboriginal and mining relations. It’s an expertise he has been called upon to share around the world and one for which he has won numerous awards and accolades, most notably this past year when he was named recipient of the prestigious Skookum Jim Award from the Prospectors and Developers Association of Canada.

Mining and Exploration magazine asked Asp to comment on his award and his lifetime of service to the mining industry.

Northern reserves have been separated from their resources – by Stephen Hume (Vancouver Sun – December 16, 2011)

December 16, 2011

The Vancouver Sun, a broadsheet daily paper first published in 1912, has the largest circulation in the province of British Columbia.

A dominant motif in the Canadian discourse regarding first nations is that reserve communities, particularly those in remote areas, are economically unviable.

People should move from communities such as Attawapiskat to where they can get a job and become economically self-reliant like the rest of us, the argument commonly goes.

Attawapiskat is now the object of blame-casting by a federal government that is itself responsible for capacity-building, financial oversight and adequate funding of infrastructure and services in first-nations communities. Canada assumed this responsibility when it unilaterally appropriated lands formerly occupied by the inhabitants of many such communities.

Let’s be clear about what reserves are. They are a government invention. Reserves were created by government to concentrate, for administrative purposes, peoples who roamed those landscapes and exploited their resources.

Transport Infrastructure and Ontario’s North: Floating New Ideas – by Livio Di Matteo (December 15, 2011)

December 15, 2011

Livio Di Matteo is Professor of Economics at Lakehead University in Thunder Bay, Ontario. Visit his new Economics Blog “Northern Economist” at http://ldimatte.shawwebspace.ca/

One of the persistent themes in Northern Ontario economic history is transportation and access. From the days of the fur trade, to the arrival of the railroad and later on the onset of modern highways and air travel, transportation has been essential to accessing natural resources and getting them out to market. Yet, Northern Ontario’s transport network has borne the marks of being tailored to economic resource exploitation rather than linking together people. The network has been designed to move resources and goods out of the region rather than facilitate travel and communication within the region. This has been a factor in the regional divisions within a vast and sparsely populated region.

A new report by the Conference Board of Canada titled Northern Assets: Transportation Infrastructure in Remote Communities highlights the challenges of northern Canadian transportation in general and particularly the new changes being wrought by climate change such as permafrost degradation. While the report focuses on a case study of Churchill, Manitoba, many of the issues also apply to remote rural resource communities in Northern Ontario particularly with respect to the dawn of resource exploitation in the Ring of Fire.

According the report, transportation infrastructure is more expensive to build and maintain in Canada’s North and climate change is disrupting existing rail and winter-road links.

Rethinking the future of Ontario’s north – by Janet Sumner and Anna Baggio (Toronto Star – December 7, 2011)

November 5, 2015December 15, 2011

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.

Janet Sumner is executive director and Anna Baggio is conservation land use planning director for CPAWS-Wildlands League, based in Ontario.

Like many other Canadians, we’ve been searching our souls in response to the housing crisis in Attawapiskat, home to the Muskego Cree First Nation. We have visited Attawapiskat several times. We’ve stayed at the Kataquapit Inn and enjoyed the community’s hospitality, including a traditional feast of caribou and lake sturgeon. Our work to conserve Ontario’s northern boreal forest has been enriched by the insights of the elders and other members of the community.

That is why the people of Attawapiskat are very much in our hearts today. While a donation to the Red Cross is always a good idea, we believe Canada needs to do far more to fix the problems bedevilling Attawapiskat and many other northern First Nations communities.

It’s time for a fundamental rethink of the relationship between major industrial players in the north, our governments and affected First Nations communities.

We first became involved with Attawapiskat when the environmental assessment of the nearby De Beers Victor Diamond Mine was underway nearly seven years ago.

Ottawa proposes first nations property ownership – by Bill Curry (Globe and Mail – December 15, 2011)

December 15, 2011

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.

OTTAWA— Conservative MPs are proposing a fundamental change to Canada’s reserve system, advocating legislation that would allow natives to own private property within the communal land of reserves.

The change – recommended Wednesday in a Conservative-led prebudget report by the House of Commons finance committee – would mark a dramatic shift for individuals living on reserve. It would make it easier to accumulate wealth and to use homes as collateral when seeking bank loans to start businesses.

But the notion is likely to face stiff opposition: The Assembly of First Nations has already bristled over earlier hints that the government was planning a move in this direction.

The proposal arrives as federal aboriginal policy is coming under close scrutiny. Graphic images of poverty in Attawapiskat have cast the spotlight on shameful conditions in dozens of reserves across the country.