TORONTO — Northern leaders are cheering a federal funding announcement for a long-awaited all-weather road into the heart of Canada’s mineral-rich Arctic. “This is a significant first step,” said Wally Schumann, minister of industry and infrastructure in the Northwest Territories.
The $5.1 million outlined at a mining conference in Toronto is a small fraction of the total cost that is expected to exceed $1 billion.
But Schumann said the money will pay for planning and development of the first part of the road, which could be under construction within five years. “It’s one of the richest regions in North America,” he said.
CALGARY, Alberta, Feb. 28, 2019 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) — Saskatchewan is the world’s third most attractive jurisdiction for mining investment, while Ontario fades in the eyes of mining investors amid increased regulatory uncertainty and concerns about disputed land claims, finds the latest Annual Survey of Mining Companies released today by the Fraser Institute, an independent, non-partisan Canadian public policy think-tank.
“The mining survey—now in its 21st year—is the most comprehensive report card on government policy decisions that either attract or scare away mining investors from around the world,” said Kenneth Green, resident scholar and chair of the Fraser Institute’s energy and environmental studies and co-author of the report.
This year’s survey of mining executives ranks 83 jurisdictions around the world based on their geologic attractiveness for minerals and metals and the extent that government policies encourage or deter exploration and investment.
As Nunavut approaches the 20th anniversary of its creation, the territory has tabled a mostly stand-pat budget that plans modest spending increases to fight some of its social problems.
“We look ahead to the next 20 years and beyond with anticipation, hope, motivation and great respect to the people, traditions and innovation that brought us to this point,” Finance Minister George Hickes told the territorial legislature Wednesday.
His budget forecasts a tiny deficit of $12-million on revenues of about $2.2-billion – about 90 per cent of which will come from federal transfers. That makes it the territory’s third red-ink budget in a row.
If passed, act will replace mirrored federal legislation
The Northwest Territories government says more accountability on negotiations between industry and Indigenous governments is a hallmark of its long-awaited Mineral Resources Act, which was tabled in the legislature Monday.
If passed, companies will be required to sign a benefit agreement with affected Indigenous groups before companies can proceed with any major mining projects.
The act replaces mirrored federal legislation the territorial government has been using since it started managing its own land and resources after devolution in 2014.
Wind turbines and compressed air energy storage to displace diesel at Raglan and Hope Bay
The federal government is investing $4.2 million in two renewable energy projects in Quebec and Nunavut to reduce reliance on fossil fuels at mines in Canada’s north.
Both projects will be managed by Tugliq Energy Corporation, a renewable energy company focused on remote regions.
The projects will be funded through Natural Resources Canada’s Energy Innovation Program, said Paul Lefebvre, the parliamentary secretary to Canada’s Minister of Natural Resources, at the Association for Mineral Exploration British Columbia’s (AME) Roundup conference in Vancouver on Monday.
6 out of 7 N.W.T. cabinet ministers will be attending the 4-day conference
Dozens of leaders from across the North are in Vancouver this week for one of the country’s largest mineral development conferences. The Association for Mineral Exploration’s 2019 Mineral Roundup begins Monday.
Six out of the seven Northwest Territories cabinet ministers will be attending the four-day conference, as well as several of their staff members.
Forty leaders from the territory’s Indigenous groups will also be in attendance. N.W.T. MLA Cory Vanthuyne will also be attending as the chair of the legislature’s Standing Committee on Economic Development and Environment.
Environmental group says money could be better spent helping communities off the power grid
A company that’s trying to revive mining in the Yellowknife area is optimistic about funding for the Taltson hydroelectric system — the biggest infrastructure project in the Northwest Territories.
“We’re obviously happy to see somebody starting to pay attention to power in the North,” said Joe Campbell, the executive chairman of TerraX Minerals.
The company is exploring 776 square kilometres of land in and around the city. It’s part of the historic Yellowknife greenstone belt that gave rise to the two gold mines — Con and Giant — and supported the city for more than 50 years.
he proposed combination of Newmont Mining Corp. and Goldcorp Inc. has raised questions about the future of the companies’ gold assets in the Yukon and investments in other junior mining companies across Canada’s North.
Two of the gold projects in the proposed Newmont Goldcorp pipeline are found in the Yukon – Plateau, a large property being explored by Newmont, and Coffee, a project that is nearing the mine development stage.
Knowing that the combined gold miner plans to shed some of its assets, it is currently unclear whether these projects will fit into the larger company’s pipeline or be put up for sale as part of the effort to slim down.
Terry Dobbin is the Nunavut general manager for the NW.T. and Nunavut Chamber of Mines.
“We need healthy exploration today to find the mines that will carry on the jobs and benefits”
They say that history repeats itself, and that’s not a good thing if it’s negative. Some of us are afraid that’s where we are headed. Let me explain.
Mining in the Northwest Territories has been a tremendous success story, with four diamond mines over the past 20 years generating 58,000 person years of employment, $20 billion in spending, training of seven per cent of the total workforce, significantly reduced social assistance payments, significant IBA [impact and benefit agreement] payments, and billions paid in a pile of taxes and royalties to governments to help them look after their residents.
However, in 2007 the N.W.T. began to lose focus on keeping mineral exploration strong. Exploration is the very work that is needed to find new mines and their great benefits. Since 2007, the N.W.T. has missed out on at least $1.4 billion in lost investment.
This is not going to be a column about the manufactured consumption of diamonds. But it is going to be a column about the manufacture — the cutting and polishing — of diamonds.
The news from Tiffany & Co. of a diamond provenance initiative is welcome. Steps the company has taken as of this week — providing geographic sourcing information for individual diamonds — will be ramped up in 2020 when the New York jewelry house begins sharing the “craftsmanship journey,” as in, where those stones were turned into princess-cut bedazzlers. Do you want your diamond to be ethically sourced? Of course you do.
Some may think, brightly: Tiffany-blue ring boxes, Marilyn Monroe, Audrey Hepburn. Others may think, insightfully: conflict diamonds, blood diamonds, child labour. I think, simply: Northwest Territories, squandered economic opportunity, a sprinkling of fraud. They’re all connected. Human rights abuses abroad bleed as deeply through the mining of diamonds as those kimberlite pipes that plunge beneath the Arctic surface.
The Canadian Mining Hall of Fame was conceived by the late Maurice R. Brown, former editor and publisher of The Northern Miner, as a way to recognize and honour the legendary mine finders and builders of a great Canadian industry. The Hall was established in 1988. For more information about the extraordinary individuals who have been inducted into the Hall of Fame, please go to their home website: http://mininghalloffame.ca/
The discovery of placer gold in the Klondike set off one of the world’s greatest gold rushes and forever changed the history of Yukon and Canada. Historic accounts of the landmark event recognized the contribution of Canadian prospector Robert Henderson and the bonanza gold strike made by American adventurer George Carmack, his wife Kate (Shaaw Tlaa) and her Tagish First Nation relatives, brother Skookum Jim Mason (Keish) and nephew Dawson Charlie (Kaa Goox). The day of discovery was August 17, 1896.
In July of 1896, George and Kate Carmack, along with Skookum Jim Mason and Dawson Charlie, were camped at the junction of the Yukon and Klondike Rivers. Henderson visited their fish camp and told Carmack of some promising “colours” he had found panning in Gold Bottom Creek. Henderson invited Carmack, a part-time prospector, to try his luck in the region, but made it known that he did not want natives staking claims.
http://www.pendaproductions.com/ This video was produced by PENDA Productions, a full service production company specializing in Corporate Communications with a focus on Corporate Responsibility.
(LtoR) Louise Grondin, Agnico-Eagle is presenting the award to Zena McLean (great grand niece of Kate Carmack) at the Mining Hall of Fame dinner on January 10. Keith Houghton Photography.
Carmack and his team later visited Henderson’s showing, but left unimpressed. During the brief visit, Henderson again offended Carmack’s Indigenous partners. His prejudices would ultimately cost him a fortune. The Carmack team returned to their camp via Rabbit Creek, a tributary of the Klondike River where the fi rst large gold nugget was then found.
WHITEHORSE—An Indigenous woman is being inducted into the Canadian Mining Hall of Fame for the first time. Kate Carmack of Yukon will be recognized as one of the handful of prospectors whose discovery of placer gold set off what the Hall of Fame describes as “one of the world’s greatest gold rushes” in the Klondike more than a century ago.
In 1999, the organization recognized four men who were known as the Klondike Discoverers by inducting them into the Hall of Fame for locating the site where the gold was found on Rabbit River in 1896.
But the president of Yukon Women in Mining says many stories also say Carmack may actually have found the first gold nugget while fishing with her family. Anne Turner said Carmack was “missed” in the first round of recognition but it’s “really exciting” that she is finally being honoured.
Shaaw Tláa – also known as Kate Carmack – was an often overlooked but essential part of the prospecting group that kicked off the historic Klondike Gold Rush. Carmack was the rumoured discoverer of the first nugget of Yukon gold and became, for a time, the wealthiest Indigenous woman in America, but was nearly forgotten by the industry she had a central role in launching.
Carmack was nominated to the Canadian Mining Hall of Fame (CMHF) in October, almost two decades after the four male members of her prospecting party that made the discovery were recognized.
The induction, which places her on equal footing with the other four and acknowledges her as “instrumental” to the expedition’s success, comes as researchers aim to correct a trend of underrepresentation of the contributions of Indigenous women to Canada’s mining history.
Mining chatter in the Yukon these days is all about the yellow metal. It’s been that way for at least 10 years, according to geologist Mike Burke, who spent more than 20 years working for the Yukon Geological Survey before moving to the private sector.
“People were having a hard time in 2008, and then along came Kinross and bought Underworld Resources. That started an area play,” Burke recalls. Now headlines echo the shift toward the Yukon’s second gold rush. Victoria Gold (TSXV: VIT) is hurriedly building Eagle, the biggest gold mine in the history of the territory.
Goldcorp (TSX: G; NYSE: GG), fresh on the heels of a recent agreement with the Tr’ondek Hwech’in First Nation, is seeking to wrap up permitting this year at the 5 million oz. Coffee gold project, which should reach commercial production by 2021, in the White Gold district.
‘Without investment the mining industry will die,’ says chamber of mines president
The City of Yellowknife was given a grim update on the state of the territory’s mining industry during a Governance and Priorities Committee meeting on Monday afternoon. Tom Hoefer, executive director of the NWT & Nunavut Chamber of Mines, says the future looks bleak.
“The minerals industry in the North is not healthy at this time and that will have effects on the city,” said Hoefer. “This is the time when the industry is maturing… they [the city] can actually help sustain the industry.”
Specifically, that help would come in the form of lobbying the territorial government for lower power costs. Companies that once established mines in the Northwest Territories are pulling out of the area, said Hoefer. He cited high power costs and unsettled land claims as the main reasons for this.
