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[Saskatchewan] Mining boom must include all – StarPhoenix Editorial (The [Saskatoon] StarPhoenix – December 3, 2011)

http://www.thestarphoenix.com/index.html

The problem with having a $50-billion windfall coming over the horizon is the danger it could mask the dark clouds that come with it.

This week Pierre Gratton, president and CEO of the Mining Association of Canada, told a Saskatoon business crowd that Saskatchewan is in for a massive capital expansion in its mining sector during the next 20 years. For those in this province who have waited more than a generation for Saskatchewan’s ship to come in, this expansion can’t be but good news.

But if Saskatchewan is to be able to take advantage of the opportunities coming its way, it has some pretty significant ducks it must still get in a row. Not the least of which is addressing First Nations’ concerns – not only in terms of allowing them a cut of the action but also coming to terms with treaty issues that have been woefully neglected by various governments for almost two centuries.

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[Mining] Groups oppose [Caribou] strategy – by Scott Larson (The [Saskatoon] StarPhoenix – December 2, 2011)

http://www.thestarphoenix.com/index.html

A proposed federal strategy to safeguard the habitat of the woodland caribou is causing concern in the mining industry. The Mining Association of Canada (MAC) and its provincial counterpart, the Saskatchewan Mining Association, have started a letter-writing campaign to express their opposition to the strategy developed by Environment Canada.

The federal government released the draft strategy in August and it is open for public comment until February. The mining associations say it will severely limit any further resource or infrastructure development in northern Saskatchewan.

MAC president and CEO Pierre Gratton said the strategy would create a system that would see caribou habitat that had 35 per cent of its area disturbed declared off limits to further development.

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[Saskatchewan] Mines poised for $50B boost – by Scott Larson (The [Saskatoon] StarPhoenix – December 2, 2011)

http://www.thestarphoenix.com/index.html

Continued growth expected

Saskatchewan is poised to see $50 billion in capital investment injected into the provincial mining industry during the next 20 years. Mining is a $7.1-billion industry in Saskatchewan and the province benefited from $3.1 billion in capital expenditures in 2010, the largest recipient of mining investment in Canada last year, said Pierre Gratton, president and CEO of the Mining Association of Canada (MAC)

Gratton was speaking at a luncheon put on by the Greater Saskatoon Chamber of Commerce, the Saskatchewan Chamber of Commerce and the North Saskatoon Business Association.

“Canada and Saskatchewan are blessed with a diverse abundance of natural resources that are in demand from growing global economies, positioning both province and country for continued long-term growth,” Gratton said. “However, our focus cannot solely rest on the economic benefits mining brings.

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Time to share [Saskatchewan] resource wealth – by Doug Cuthand (The [Saskatoon] StarPhoenix – October, 22, 2011)

http://www.thestarphoenix.com/index.html

Aboriginal and First Nations issues are largely absent from this provincial election campaign. So far the only issue that has raised any eyebrows is the commitment by the NDP to negotiate a resource revenue sharing arrangement with the First Nations. NDP Leader Dwain Lingenfelter was speaking to an audience on the Red Pheasant First Nation when he stated that it was an idea whose time has come.

Saskatchewan Party Leader Brad Wall categorically rejected sharing resource revenues with First Nations or any other group, stating that the province’s resources belonged to all Saskatchewan’s people.

Lingenfelter’s proposal was quickly absorbed into the campaign rhetoric, along with commitments from both sides for health care, education and so on. But resource revenue sharing is an issue that will not go away in Indian Country.

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For global workers, Saskatchewan beckons – by Claudia Cattaneo (National Post – December 3, 2011)

The National Post is Canada’s second largest national paper.

Saskatchewan’s popular Premier, Brad Wall, has a nice mission ahead of him — to lure to his province jobless workers from depressed places such as the United States and Ireland to support his booming economy.

While governments across the developed world are struggling with high unemployment, soaring debt and stalling output, Saskatchewan is expected to lead the country with GDP growth of 5.1% this year, according to the Conference Board of Canada.

Its unemployment rate was the lowest in Canada for most of the year. It rose to a still-tight 5.1% in November, from 3.7% in October. One job website, sask.jobs.ca, listed more than 9,500 job openings Friday. Thousands more jobs are on the way with billions of dollars in planned investment in the potash and energy sectors. Meanwhile, the provincial government expects a record surplus of $25-million this fiscal year, which would have been even better, $115-million, if not for the cost of severe summer flooding.

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Attawapiskat’s hardships could be helped by roads – by John Ivison (National Post – December 2, 2011)

The National Post is Canada’s second largest national paper.

Shawn Atleo says he wants to smash the status quo. The National Chief of the Assembly of First Nations has used the phrase in a number of interviews and likely repeated it in his meeting with the Prime Minister on Parliament Hill Thursday.

But while there’s little doubt he is distressed by the pictures coming out of the troubled Attawapiskat reserve in northern Ontario, he doesn’t really want to overturn the present state of affairs.

Rather, he and the country’s other chiefs, a delegation of whom will meet with Stephen Harper on Jan. 24, it was announced Thursday, would like the federal government to pony up some more money — without asking too many questions about what they intend to spend it on. The chiefs tie themselves in intellectual knots, arguing that the government has been asleep at the switch on Attawapiskat, while at the same time saying the feds have gone too far by instituting an “Ottawa knows best” regime.

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Mines Act changes signal B.C. ready to dig in against environmentalists – by Dirk Meissner (Winnipeg Free Press – November 20, 2011)

http://www.winnipegfreepress.com/

Hitch said Canada’s mining industry is regarded as the
most efficient and environmentally safe in the world,
but the B.C. government needs to do a better job
telling people how mining works and how it contributes
to the province. (Winnipeg Free Press)

The Canadian Press – VICTORIA – Premier Christy Clark is about to find out her plans to chip away at the mountain of bureaucracy facing mining developments in British Columbia won’t be an easy climb if environmental groups have any say in the matter.

Opening eight new mines is a key plank of Clark’s jobs strategy, the most important policy initiative she’s launched since becoming premier early this year, and last week, the Liberals introduced minor changes to the Mines Act.

The move has triggered an avalanche of protest from the Sierra Club of B.C. which accused the government of looking to clear the way for mining companies to bulldoze the province. Sierra Club president George Heyman said Clark’s Liberals are heading in the opposite direction of public opinion if they loosen regulations to open more mines.

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BHP to review Canadian diamond business – by Brenda Bouw (Globe and Mail – November 30, 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.

VANCOUVER— The mine that helped put Canada on the global diamond map could soon be for sale, put in play by the industry’s shifting economics and an inexorable drop in production.

The Ekati mine in the Northwest Territories, which is nearing the end of its life in 2019, is under review by mining giant BHP Billiton Ltd., which said Tuesday that it could quit the diamond mining business in Canada. BHP owns 80 per cent of Ekati, the country’s first diamond mine, and 51 per cent of the Chidliak project on Baffin Island.

It’s studying whether diamonds, which represent less than 2 per cent of its annual profit, should still be part of a business dominated by much larger industrial commodities such as iron ore, coal and base metals, and its foray into potash. Its strategy is to invest in bigger, long-term assets as it ramps up production to meet growing demand for metals, largely from China.

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NEWS RELEASE: Lack of government funding may force successful First Nations mining employment program to shut down

Vancouver, B.C. – (November 29, 2012) – Concern is rising in the British Columbia mining community that a successful program to train First Nations people for well paying mining jobs will be forced to shut down without the continuance of  Federal funding. If there is no commitment for funding by either the Federal or BC governments by December 1st, the BC Aboriginal Mine Training Association (BC AMTA) will begin the formal shutdown process. 

BC AMTA has candidates representing more than 120 Indian bands and currently has 60 employers in its network. To date, 222 Aboriginal people are working at well-paying mining jobs after going through the BC AMTA program. There are approximately 80 Aboriginal people including members of the Kamloops and Skeetschestn First Nations communities employed at the New Afton underground gold and copper mine under development 10 kilometers southwest of Kamloops. The mining operation is scheduled to begin production in July, 2012.

Two years ago, New Afton joined forces with the Association of Mineral Exploration BC and the Mining Association of BC and other companies to launch BC AMTA. 

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The Horrible Reputation of Canada’s Mining Sector – by Stan Sudol

Stan Sudol is a Toronto, Canada-based communications consultant, mining columnist and blogger. stan.sudol@republicofmining.com

Biggest commodity super-cycle in the history of mankind

The future of mining has never been brighter, yet its image among the general population seems to have plunged lower than the famous Kidd Creek mine in Timmins, Ontario – the world’s deepest base metal operation. The largest rural to urban migration in the history of mankind is taking place in China. It has been often said, that China needs to build two cities the size of Toronto, Canada and Sydney, Australia to accommodate that growth, every year! Analysts estimate that China’s middle class is expanding so rapidly that it will soon overtake the current U.S. population of 312 million.

In October, 2011, the world’s population had passed the seven billion mark. India, Brazil, Indonesia, Turkey and many other developing countries are following China and urbanizing and industrializing their economies. Mining experts feel that over the next 25 years, we will need to dig out of the ground as many minerals as consumed since the beginning of mankind.

One of the biggest concerns is a shortage of skilled workers. In the next decade half the mining workforce in Canada is eligible to retire and there are significant difficulties attracting and engaging the digital generation.
According to the Ottawa-based Mining Industry Human Resource Council’s 2011 hiring report, the industry will need to hire betwee 75,280 to 141,540 new workers in Canada depending on the state of the global economy by 2021. Similar labour shortage issues exisit in other western mining jurisdicitions like Australia and the United States.

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Mining industry faces labour crunch, volatility, high costs: Deloitte – by Lauren Krugel (Canadian Business Magazine – November 27, 2011)

Founded in 1928, Canadian Business is the longest-publishing business magazine in Canada.

To view the report, please visit http://www.deloitte.com/ca/mining-trends

The Canadian Press – The global mining industry is facing a severe labour squeeze, which means companies must be creative in finding enough talent to run their operations, says a report released Sunday by a major professional services firm.

Deloitte Touche Tohmatsu Ltd. said there simply are not enough workers to power the huge growth expected in the mining sector — capital expenditures this year are estimated to be US$113 billion, 50 per cent higher than 2010 — and firms must look at unconventional ways to fill the gap, like doing more work remotely.

“Given the acute shortage of key talent, delivering on all these projects may be near impossible,” said the report, called Tracking the Trends 2012. Glenn Ives, Deloitte Canada’s Americas mining leader, said demographics are at the heart of the problem.

“There is a 20-year gap in the mining industry. If you think about it, mining was not that great an industry to join in the 80s and the 90s, and so there weren’t a lot of new graduates joining the mining industry in that time frame,” he said in an interview.

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Rio Tinto hiring hundreds of workers in Canada because of modernization projects – by Ross Marowits, The Canadian Press (Winnipeg Free Press – September 27, 2011)

 

http://www.winnipegfreepress.com/

MONTREAL – A couple of years after it laid off 14,000 workers around the world, global mining giant Rio Tinto has launched a mini hiring spree in Canada, mainly due to its modernization projects.

The Anglo-Australian company is actively searching to hire more than 210 workers for mining and manufacturing in alumina, aluminum, iron ore, diamonds and titanium dioxide.

“We launched the campaign to help our ongoing recruitment efforts for our modernization and expansion projects,” Rio Tinto spokesman Bryan Tucker said in an email. Rio Tinto employs more than 13,000 people at 35 sites in Canada.

The company has turned to Facebook and YouTube, posting a four-minute promotional video showing operations such as the Diavik Diamond Mine, Iron Ore Company of Canada, Rio Tinto, Fer et Titane, and Rio Tinto Alcan.

 

Daniel Jaeb is an Underground Miner at Diavik Diamond Mine in the Northwest Territories. Local, northern and Aboriginal, he received training and certification in underground mining through the North’s Mine Training Society. He enjoys the many pastimes that come with living in Canada’s North.

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Sydney Tar Ponds to get a facelift – by Emily Jackson (Toronto Star – November 25, 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

Sydney, N.S., will soon boast its own version of Central Park, with one small caveat — it will be built on top of a former hazardous waste site. The park will mark the final phase in the $400 million cleanup of the Sydney Tar Ponds, pools of toxic waste caused by more than 100 years of runoff from a steel plant.

Controversies surrounding the cleanup will linger for years, but all parties involved seem excited to move on from the toxic mess and finally transform the space into something positive. “At the end, the community was tired of fighting about the actual cleanup mechanism,” said Cape Breton Regional Municipality Mayor John Morgan.

The polluted sludge was mixed with cement, covered with an “impermeable” cap, and then buried under the soil where the park will be built. While people argued if this was the best way to remediate the waste (many wanted it to be burned), there has been very little bickering over what to do with the land once it’s actually clean, Morgan explained.

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TEAMSTERS CANADA NEWS RELEASE: McGuinty government urged to kill plans to ship ‘Ring of Fire’ refinery work to China

Canada NewsWire

U.S. multinational Cliffs Natural Resources says it will seek exemption to Ontario Mining Act to ship raw chromite overseas, but Teamsters wants the government to tell foreigners that if you ‘mine it here, then refine it here or keep it in the ground’

OTTAWA, Nov. 25, 2011 /CNW/ – Queen’s Park will squander huge potential benefits of the so-called “Ring of Fire” mining discovery in the James Bay lowlands if it allows the lion’s share of raw materials to be siphoned off and sent to China for refining, says the head of Teamsters Canada Rail Conference Maintenance of Way Employees.

“A senior executive of Cliffs Natural Resources told CBC news this week that it plans to ship much of the raw chromite to Asia for refining and will seek an exemption to the Ontario Mining Act because the law prevents materials mined in Ontario being refined outside Canada,” says William Brehl, president of the union representing maintenance workers on several short line railways in Northern Ontario that may carry Ring of Fire minerals.

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Canadian asbestos production suspended – by Andy Blatchford (Globe and Mail – November 25, 2011)

Montreal— The Canadian Press – Canada’s once-mighty asbestos sector has ground to a halt for the first time in 130 years, as production of the controversial fibre has stalled in both of the country’s mines.

A shutdown this month marked a historic milestone for the Canadian asbestos industry, which at one time dominated world production and led to the construction of entire towns in Canada. Proponents of the industry insist it’s way too early write the obituary on Canadian asbestos; they’re hoping to start digging again as soon as the spring.

But for now, amid all the noisy political debates and a dramatic anti-asbestos news conference Thursday on Parliament Hill, Canadian production has quietly and suddenly stopped.

Work halted earlier this month at the Lac d’amiante du Canada operation in Thetford Mines, Que., which followed a production stoppage at Jeffrey Mine in Asbestos, about 90 kilometres away. The future of both mines is unclear.

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