Canada Mining – North of 60 – Page 30

Glory to ghost; the 25-year NWT zinc town – by A.J. Roan (North of 60 Mining News – April 26, 2019)

April 26, 2019

https://www.miningnewsnorth.com/

Like many single-industry towns, once the well dries up, people seek greener pastures. However, the residents of a place many probably have never even heard of hold on to the remnants of their past. For them, it was an important and irreplaceable land, it was their home.

Pine Point, Northwest Territories, was a town located 10 kilometers (6 miles) inland from the south shore of Great Slave Lake and 87 kilometers (54 miles) east of Hay River. Cominco Ltd. (now Teck Resources Ltd.) explored the area around Pine Point as early as 1929 but it wouldn’t be for at least thirty years until development would begin and the plans for a settlement established. Production started in 1965.

Cominco built its own townsite which became known as Pine Point. It became a territorial settlement with private businesses and boasted a population of nearly 2,000 at its peak. By the mid-1980s depressed prices caused economic difficulties for the mine. Cominco shut down operations in the summer of 1987, although it continued to mill until the following spring.

Northerners aren’t ready to cash in on $1B Giant Mine cleanup, oversight board says – by Alex Brockman (CBC News North – April 24, 2019)

April 25, 2019

https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/north/

The $1-billion cleanup of Giant Mine will be one of the largest economic projects in the Northwest Territories, but northerners aren’t ready to take advantage of it, according to the latest report from the board overseeing the project.

The ongoing project could be a boon to northern contractors and workers, with $36.3 million spent in 2017-18 and $40.3 million in 2016-17 for care and maintenance work, such as tearing down buildings, repairing electrical equipment and keeping the site safe.

But only 20 per cent of the workers on those projects were from the North and only four per cent Indigenous, continuing downward trends from previous years, the Giant Mine Oversight Board reported in its 2018 annual report, released Tuesday.

Agnico bets on high grade gold as it digs in Canada’s remote north – by Nichola Saminather (Reuters U.S. – April 23, 2019)

April 25, 2019

https://www.reuters.com/

TORONTO (Reuters) – Agnico Eagle Mines is doubling down this year on Nunavut, Canada’s least developed territory, betting that the high-grade gold ores and slim competition there will offset the risks of digging in the remote location in the far north.

For miners desperate to shore up reserves, the choice is often between safer jurisdictions with inhospitable geographies and easier-to-reach ores in politically challenging locations. Investors have been rewarded for backing Agnico’s strategy.

The company’s shares have surged 71 percent over the past five years, trouncing the 0.3 percent gain in the benchmark S&P/TSX Global Gold Index. They believe the company is making the right move again, thanks to high-grade ores in Nunavut and Agnico’s 12 years’ experience in the Arctic territory.

CLIMATE CHANGE THREATENS ICE ROADS. SATELLITES COULD HELP – by Nick Stockton (Wired Magazine – April 18, 2019)

April 18, 2019

https://www.wired.com/

FOR A FEW months each winter, Canada’s Tibbitt to Contwoyto Winter Road is the world’s longest ice highway, a 300-plus-mile network of frozen lakes that connects lucrative diamond mines in Canada’s Northwest Territories to supplies from the nation’s not-quite-so-far north.

But warmer winters and earlier springs have shortened the road’s open season by up to two weeks over the past decade. The loss of the road for even such a short time is very expensive, because the only other way to reach these mines is by air.

Salvation may come from space. A Canadian researcher has demonstrated that radar emitted from satellites can peer through the ice, determining not just its thickness but also its quality. (Does it have a lot of bubbles?

EDITORIAL: Support mines that support Nunavummiut (Nunavut News – April 17, 2019)

April 18, 2019

Nunavut News

Whether you notice it or not in your daily life, all reports show a glittering economic forecast for Nunavut. Speaking at the Nunavut Mining Symposium, Bank of Canada governor Stephen Poloz noted that the territory is set for the strongest growth among all territories and provinces for 2019, at a rate of nine per cent.

“That’s pretty spectacular stuff,” Poloz said. “That’s not some fiction, that’s real.” Nunavut’s senior economist Francois Picotte piled on the good news, noting the territory will see very high growth for the next four years.

All of this is thanks to mining, which is becoming such an economic force in Nunavut that it will surpass even government in its weight in the territorial economy.

Grays Bay Road and Port gets going again – by Jane George (Nunatsiaq News – April 9, 2019)

April 10, 2019

https://nunatsiaq.com/

“We have just applied for funding from the federal government to make the project ‘shovel ready’”

Western Nunavut’s Grays Bay Road and Port Project is back: the Kitikmeot Inuit Association’s wholly-owned subsidiary, the Nunavut Resources Corp., has reapplied for money from the federal trade corridors program.

“We have just applied for funding from the federal government to make the project ‘shovel ready,” said Scott Northey, the NRC’s director and CEO, who spoke at last week’s Nunavut Mining Symposium in Iqaluit. To do that, they’ll need about $22-million to add to the roughly $7 million that Nunavut Tunngavik Inc. has committed to the project.

The $550-million Grays Bay project would involve the construction of a 227-kilometre all-weather road running from the site of the defunct Jericho mine, which is located at the northern end of the Tibbit-Contwoyto winter road, to a deep-sea port at Grays Bay on Coronation Gulf.

Northern spending pays off, MAC report shows – by Don Wall (Journal of Commerce – April 5, 2019)

April 5, 2019

Journal of Commerce

Toronto may be the global centre for mining finance but recent statistics on capital development spending in the sector illustrate that the three sparsely populated territories in Canada’s North are also notable heavyweights.

The most recent edition of Facts of Figures of the Canadian Mining Industry, published in March by the Mining Association of Canada (MAC), showed that the Yukon, Northwest Territories and Nunavut together received 22 per cent, or $570 million, of total 2017 Canadian spending on exploration and the territories also accounted for 13 per cent ($990 million) of total mine complex development expenditures in Canada.

Facts and Figures 2018, prepared by MAC’s vice-president for economic and northern affairs Brendan Marshall, offers ample evidence of the links between permitting certainty, investment climate and the prognosis for future spending on development — and thus how much work constructors hired to build mine infrastructure can look forward to.

‘Bit of a lark:’ Canadian miner files claim on disputed Arctic island – by Bob Weber (National Post – April 4, 2019)

April 5, 2019

https://nationalpost.com/

CANADIAN PRESS – A longtime mining geologist and developer has come up with his own solution to Canada’s long-running Arctic sovereignty dispute with Denmark.

John Robins has filed and been granted a mineral exploration claim under Canadian law to Hans Island — a remote pimple of rock between Ellesmere Island and Greenland that lies exactly on the international border.

“It was done on a bit of a lark,” said Robins, who’s involved with a number of Vancouver-based mining companies. “The reason I applied for it is more just to stir the pot a bit.”

De Beers dreams of building the diamond mine of the future in Nunavut – by John Thompson (Nunatsiaq News – April 4, 2019)

April 5, 2019

https://nunatsiaq.com/

De Beers Group envisions building a diamond mine on Baffin Island that’s relatively small, moveable and powered by clean energy. It may not even have a road running to it.

Tom Ormsby, De Beers Canada’s head of external and corporate affairs, offered the Nunavut Mining Symposium a glimpse of the company’s brainstorming during a talk on Wednesday, April 3.

In September 2018, De Beers acquired the Chidliak diamond property as part of its purchase of Peregrine Diamonds. The site is about 120 kilometres northeast of Iqaluit and about 200 kilometres south of Pangnirtung.

Why Canada’s diamond miners are on their knees – by Thomas Biesheuvel and Danielle Bochove (Bloomberg News – April 3, 2019)

April 4, 2019

https://www.bnnbloomberg.ca/

The story of how two prospectors, down to their last nickels, discovered diamonds in Canada’s frozen north is the stuff of legend. Back in 1982, Chuck Fipke and Stewart Blusson laid low in a pup tent by day while their competitor De Beers hauled 45-gallon drums of rock samples to a nearby outpost for transport to South Africa.

Using the long hours of summer sunlight north of the 65th parallel, the two searched for indicator minerals — bits of garnet, chromite or zircon often found with diamonds — while their opponent slept. Nine years later their treasure hunt culminated with the discovery of a carrot-shaped funnel of blue-grey kimberlite rock that would become Ekati — the first great diamond mine outside Southern Africa or Russia.

For all the drama associated with the discovery in Canada’s Northwest Territories — hacking through snow and ice taller than the average person, battling Arctic winds and temperatures of -50 degrees Celsius — what came next is proof that diamond mining in Canada is not for the faint of heart.

Panelists at Nunavut Mining Symposium want link to Canada’s road system – by Jane George (Nunatsiaq News – April 2, 2019)

April 3, 2019

https://nunatsiaq.com/

Governments of NWT and Nunavut and Inuit orgs united in call for North-South road connection

At the Nunavut Mining Symposium, now underway in Iqaluit, you don’t have to look far to find supporters of a road linking Nunavut to the Northwest Territories or Manitoba, to reduce the North’s dependence on marine transportation and satellite telecommunications.

At a Monday morning panel session called, “Maybe the resources are the road?,” the Northwest Territories’ industry minister, Wally Schumann, Nunavut’s transportation minister, David Akeeagok, and Kitikmeot Inuit Association President Stanley Anablak all made pitches for roads and how the federal government should come up with money to help make that happen.

Anablak, a promoter of the Grays Bay port and road project, which would aim to join the Arctic coast to mines in the western Kitikmeot and eventually the N.W.T., said that proposed project in western Nunavut finally has regained Nunavut government support.

Baffinland CEO makes a case for mine expansion – by Derek Neary (Nunavut News – March 31, 2019)

April 1, 2019

Nunavut News

A proposed railway and many more cargo ships are the major concerns Baffinland Iron Mines’ CEO Brian Penney is hearing about in relation to the miner’s phase two expansion proposal, which would increase shipping to 12 million tonnes per year.

Penney said there’s misconceptions that the railway would reduce jobs for Inuit. He said there are only three or four existing Inuit truck drivers who go back and forth on the tote road from the mine to the port. However, Inuit represent close to 40 per cent of truck drivers at the mine site and the number of trucks at Mary River will rise dramatically if phase two proceeds.

“Anyone that drives a truck is going to be trained on driving trains,” the CEO said. “Inuit employment is only going to grow at Baffinland under all scenarios… we’re going to continue to build skills within the communities, to build skills that will make the workforce of the future for Baffinland. And hopefully someday Baffinland will be run by Inuit, totally.”

New report gives thumbs up to Indigenous employment in Nunavut mines – by Hilary Bird (CBC News North – April 1, 2019)

April 1, 2019

https://www.cbc.ca/

Agnico Eagle Mining described as doing things right when it comes to training and retaining Indigenous workers

A new report from the Conference Board of Canada says employers looking to hire and keep northern Indigenous employees could learn from a Canadian gold mining company, Agnico Eagle Mines.

The study, Working Together: Indigenous Recruitment and Retention, was put together by researchers with the board’s centre for the North. Researchers interviewed dozens of corporations, public sector employers and Indigenous employees and found many employees often don’t apply for jobs because of a lack of education, life skills and housing support.

When it comes to Indigenous employment in mining, Nunavut is the front runner. Ninety-seven per cent of Nunavut residents who work in the industry in the territory are Indigenous. In the Northwest Territories, it’s 52 per cent.

Mining North Works ‘demystifies’ the industry – by Terry Dobbin (Nunavut News – March 31, 2019)

April 1, 2019

Nunavut News

This is a guest op-ed written by the NWT and Nunavut Chamber of Mines.

Mining is working for Nunavut, and the proof is in the pudding, as they say. Today we are seeing more and more Nunavummiut finding meaningful jobs in mining. We are seeing Nunavut mining business on the rise and more mining taxes and royalties flowing to public and Inuit governments than ever before.

But that doesn’t mean we can sit back and relax. More opportunities are available and we want Northerners to learn how to seize them. Our mines are looking for more Nunavummiut to take well-paying and interesting jobs. They’d like to do more business.

To help them achieve that – and to help people learn more about just how mining works for Nunavut and how they might become involved in it – the Chamber of Mines has launched a public awareness initiative named Mining North Works! A big goal of the Mining North Works program is to “demystify” mining. Another is to attract people into mining jobs.

‘We’re not getting it’: Liberals sprinkle $700 million in Arctic but a strategic plan remains elusive – by Naomi Powell and Gabriel Friedman (Financial Post – March 23, 2019)

March 25, 2019

https://business.financialpost.com/

The federal government needs to set a long-term strategy to truly unlock the economic potential of the region as Russia and China get a head-start

Finance Minister Bill Morneau’s pre-election budget took steps to tackle the gaping infrastructure deficit in Canada’s north, but offered no timeline for when a highly anticipated long-term development strategy for the region will be complete.

In his last budget before the fall election, Morneau earmarked $700 million for Northern and Arctic initiatives, including $18 million for a hydroelectricity project in the Northwest Territories, $75 million for economic development programming and $400 million over eight years for infrastructure projects in the sparsely populated area.

Though Tuesday’s budget also reaffirmed Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s 2016 commitment to co-develop an “Arctic and Northern Policy Framework” with local residents and stakeholders, it did not set a date for when it will be unveiled.