Canadian/International Media Resource Articles – Page 188

For South Africa’s sickened gold miners, a long wait for justice – by Geoffrey York (Globe and Mail – June 20, 2011)

June 20, 2011

The Globe and Mail is Canada’s national newspaper with the second largest broadsheet circulation in the country. It has enormous impact and influence on Canada’s political and business elite as well as the rest of the country’s print, radio and television media.

Apartheid’s Legacy

JOHANNESBURG – His breathing is laboured, his chest is tight, and he is too weak to work in his garden any more. At the age of 63, former mine worker Wilson Mafolwana wonders if he’ll still be alive when justice is done.

He is among the millions of migrant workers who toiled in South Africa’s gold mines in the apartheid era, building the world’s biggest gold industry – and often sacrificing their health in the process. Breathing clouds of dust, usually without ventilation masks, tens of thousands of miners contracted silicosis and tuberculosis, and many are now dying.

Mr. Mafolwana and 17 other ex-miners with silicosis have launched a test case against the South African unit of Anglo American, one of the world’s biggest mining companies, to seek compensation for their illnesses. But the case has dragged on for seven years, with no decision expected until next year at the earliest. While the company fights the lawsuit with all its legal and financial resources, four of the 18 former miners have died. Others grow sicker every day.

Papua New Guinea [Ramu nickel laterite project] and China’s New Empire – by Geoffrey York (Globe and Mail – January 3, 2009)

June 16, 2011

MADANG, Papua New Guinea

When Chinese engineers landed in Papua New Guinea in 2006 to inspect their latest mineral acquisition, they faced an arduous journey through the tropical wilderness. They drove over crumbling roads to the Ramu River, then found natives with dugout canoes to paddle them upstream. Next, they hired another team of locals with machetes to slash a rough trail for eight hours through the steamy jungle, dodging poisonous snakes and malaria-carrying mosquitoes.

“It was terrible,” recalls Wang Chun, the chief engineer. “You couldn’t breathe.”

Today, less than three years later, a series of small Chinatowns has emerged in the jungle — complete with Chinese food, Chinese satellite television channels and crews of Chinese migrant labourers living in cheap dormitory huts. Where once was wilderness, you find the workers of China Metallurgical Group Corp., toiling seven days a week and chattering about their families back home in Beijing and Sichuan.

It hasn’t been easy. The state-owned mining company has dealt with violent clashes with local landowners, striking workers, attacks from the media and unfriendly police who arrested more than 200 Chinese technicians on charges of illegally entering the country.

Asbestos back in the spotlight – by Fe de Leon and Sarah Miller (Toronto Star – June 14, 2011)

June 15, 2011

The Toronto Star, which has the largest broadsheet circulation in Canada, has an enormous impact on Canada’s federal and provincial politics as well as shaping public opinion.

Fe de Leon and Sarah Miller are researchers with the Canadian Environmental Law Association.

Over the next few weeks, Canada has two important opportunities to reduce its contributions to the mining and export of chrysotile asbestos.

First, Canada’s international reputation will again be under the microscope when countries convene in Geneva June 20 to consider adding chrysotile asbestos to Annex III of the Rotterdam Convention. The convention was designed to facilitate information exchange on hazardous chemicals among countries. Canada’s position at these meetings is being monitored closely because it is one of a few remaining countries that continue to mine and export chrysotile.

Second, efforts by investors to reopen the Jeffrey mine in the town of Asbestos, Que., are in the works. Chrysotile from the Jeffrey mine is expected to be exported to numerous countries, mainly developing countries. Investors are relying on this global demand as they wait for confirmation by July 1 to determine if they are able to secure their investments. With secured investments, the companies expect to save 350 jobs at the mine.

Surging costs delay Sherritt [Madagascar Ambatovy nickel] project – by Brenda Bouw (Globe and Mail – June 15, 2011)

June 15, 2011

The Globe and Mail is Canada’s national newspaper with the second largest broadsheet circulation in the country. It has enormous impact and influence on Canada’s political and business elite as well as the rest of the country’s print, radio and television media. Brenda Bouw is the Globe’s mining reporter.

Sherritt International Corp. is the latest in growing list of mining companies to report double-digit cost increases and project delays resulting from surging prices for energy and raw materials.

Toronto-based Sherritt said the total cost of its 40-per-cent owned Ambatovy nickel-cobalt project in Madagascar is expected to rise 16 per cent to $5.5-billion (U.S.). Production, set to begin this summer, is now delayed until the first quarter of next year.

“We find this embarrassing and painful,” Sherritt chief executive officer Ian Delaney told investors on a conference call Tuesday. Sherritt’s stock fell 6 per cent on the Toronto Stock Exchange on Tuesday, its lowest level since last summer.

Rising costs are becoming a huge hurdle for miners as they rush to boost production and capitalize on global demand and metal prices while they remain strong.

Gold bug Rob McEwen sees silver lining in proposed mining merger – by Lisa Wright (Toronto Star – June 15, 2011)

June 15, 2011

Lisa Wright is a business reporter with the Toronto Star, which has the largest circulation in Canada. The paper has an enormous impact on Canada’s federal and provincial politics as well as shaping public opinion.

Gold investment maverick Rob McEwen sees a sterling future for silver with the proposed merger of his firms US Gold Corp. and Minera Andes Inc. that would form a mid-sized player amid a red hot metals market. The combination “would be transformative, creating a dynamic, new precious metal company,” said McEwen, who is chief executive of both companies.

The deal is valued at $608 million. His personal investment in the combined firm, which will be called McEwen Mining Inc., would be about $345 million and catapult his junior explorers to mid-tier status with a market cap of $1.4 billion.

The announcement comes amid a soaring price environment for precious metals. Gold broke a new record last month of $1,541 (U.S.) an ounce and silver climbed to 30-year highs of $48.70 (U.S.) in April before a recent correction that shaved 20 per cent off the silver price.

[Sudbury Basin’s] ‘Victoria’s secret’ has eyes popping in Canada’s mining industry – by Lisa Wright (Toronto Star – June 14, 2011)

June 14, 2011June 14, 2011

“After almost 130 years of mining activity, it’s amazing that we keep finding
such significant and rich deposits like the Victoria mine,” says mining industry
consultant and Sudbury native Stan Sudol. “The Sudbury basin has not given up
all her geological secrets—not by a long shot,” adds Sudol, who writes the
popular RepublicOfMining.com blog.

Michael Winship laughs when he thinks of the racy nickname his colleagues gave to a grubby nickel deposit with 110-year-old working roots in the Sudbury basin.

Though the new chief operating officer of Quadra FNX Mining Ltd. has spent more than 30 years in the metals game, you don’t have to have his globe-trotting resume to know that mine sites aren’t the least bit sexy or glamorous environments to set foot in.

But considering the jaw-dropping find that the Toronto firm’s geologists recently made just a kilometre from the previously-mined Victoria site — and which they quietly felt for some time could turn into something spectacular — the cheeky ‘Victoria’s secret’ moniker fits just fine. “We’ve got one of the richest deposits in Sudbury in the last few decades,” the affable Winship says in an interview.

The best investment in the world [Great Lakes-St. Lawrence Region] – by Matthew Mendelsohn and John Austin (National Post – June 13, 2011)

June 13, 2011

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

Matthew Mendelsohn is the director of the Mowat Centre at the University of Toronto. John Austin is the nonresident senior fellow, Metropolitan Policy Program at Washington, D.C.’s Brookings Institution. To learn more, visit www.greatlakessummit.org.

Regions are becoming more important because capital and talent tend to cluster
geographically so that employers have easy access to potential partners and
employees. Clusters emerge in regions that possess natural, cultural and place-
defining attributes that make them attractive places to live and work. They also
emerge near centres of public and private research and education.
(Matthew Mendelsohn and John Austin)

In the first in a five-part series ahead of the Mowat Centre and Brookings Institution Summit on the Future of the Great Lakes-St. Lawrence region, starting next week in Windsor and Detroit, two experts argue that with proper governance, the Great Lakes region could be the success story of the century ahead.

Regions will be just as important as nation-states in ensuring the wellbeing of communities in the coming decades. The Great Lakes-St. Lawrence region – made up of the eight states and two provinces (Quebec and Ontario) that surround these great waters – has everything necessary to succeed in this new world.

Regions are becoming more important because capital and talent tend to cluster geographically so that employers have easy access to potential partners and employees. Clusters emerge in regions that possess natural, cultural and place-defining attributes that make them attractive places to live and work. They also emerge near centres of public and private research and education.

Our world needs more Peter Munks – by Margaret Wente (Globe and Mail – June 11, 2011)

June 11, 2011

Some parts of the world are nastier than Canada. Peter Munk should know. He came from one.

Mr. Munk is the founder and chairman of Barrick Gold Corp., the world’s largest gold miner. From the day he landed in Toronto from war-torn Europe, he has loved this country with a passion. “I arrived in this place not speaking the language, not knowing a dog,” he says. He was 18 – an alien, a foreigner, a Jew in a funny-looking suit. In Europe, people were living in the ruins, like rats.

The young refugee presented himself at Lawrence Park Collegiate, where nobody had seen a foreigner before. He expected to be shunned. Instead, the principal took him to a sun-filled classroom, where, unbelievably, boys and girls studied together. At lunchtime, everybody streamed into the cafeteria, where a trestle table groaned with meat, bread and milk. “The amount of food in that place could have fed any city in Europe for a whole day,” he recalls. Kids began asking him home, where their parents invited him to raid the fridge.

For Mr. Munk, this generosity became a metaphor for Canada. “People here don’t ask about your origins,” he says, “only about your destiny.”

Today, the company that he founded is embroiled in controversy, and Mr. Munk himself has come under vicious attack. Billionaires and mining giants will never be exempt from criticism, nor should they be. But these attacks are so toxic, they demand a response.

An Ontario gold rush – by Christina Blizzard (Toronto Sun – June 10, 2011)

June 10, 2011

Christina Blizzard is the Queen’s Park columnist for the Toronto Sun, the city’s daily tabloid newspaper. christina.blizzard@sunmedia.ca

Remember a couple of years ago, Premier Dalton McGuinty said this province
could no longer count on “pulling stuff out of the ground” for jobs? All goes to
show just how wrong he was. And how out of touch, not just with northern Ontario,
but with the economy. (Christina Blizzard – June 10, 2011)

Mining companies spending billions here in search of riches. So why did Dalton McGuinty blow them off?

Skyrocketing world gold prices are providing a boost to this province’s northern economy, as mining companies look to old mines in search of the precious metal.

Detour Lake gold mine, near Cochrane, will be the largest gold mine in Canada when it starts production in 2013. Based on today’s spot gold price, it will generate more than $1 billion a year for 21 years, says Detour Gold President and CEO Gerald Panneton.

And while the price of gold, like all resources, fluctuates, he says gold’s been around for 6,000 years and it’s here to stay. “People have tried to push it away and then get rid of it, but it always came back,” Panneton said in an interview.

Gold is tough to replace and is the most versatile, malleable element you can find. “If you try to accumulate value in silver or copper or zinc, you’ll need a huge warehouse,” he said.

Macho, risk-taking miners make industry less safe, consultant warns – by Lisa Wright (Toronto Star – June 9, 2011)

June 9, 2011

There’s been a lot of debate lately about the Toronto couple trying to raise a so-called “genderless” baby by not revealing the child’s sex. But what about genderless miners?

Mines would be safer places to work if men weren’t constantly pressured to be one of the boys, says Dean Laplonge, an offbeat mining industry consultant who advises companies on how masculinity affects the gritty business of mineral extraction.

Laplonge, who has his PhD in cultural studies and lives in Australia — which, like Canada, is heavy on resources — argues that the safety goals of mining companies are fundamentally at odds with the cultural demands faced by men to be “macho risk takers.”

“Peer pressure (on men at mine sites) ensures safety is only for sissies,” says Laplonge, 41, a director of the international communications consultancy Factive who is visiting Toronto.

Tanzania weighs ‘super-profit’ tax on miners – by Brenda Bouw (Globe and Mail – June 9, 2011)

June 9, 2011June 9, 2011

Tanzania is eyeing a “super-profit tax” on miners to help pay for a development program in the East African country, the latest in a growing list of governments trying to grab more money from the resource sector amid rising commodity prices.

While the Tanzanian government hasn’t confirmed that it is weighing such a plan, reports say the new tax could be similar to one proposed last year in Australia.

“Considering the increasing trend in mineral prices, it is optimal to introduce a super-profit tax on the windfall earnings from the mineral sector,” state government documents viewed by Reuters.

Bloomberg reported the comments come from the country’s planning commission, which the Tanzanian government website describes as a think-tank under the President’s office that advises on economic issues.

In an African mine, the lust for gold sparks a deadly clash – Geoffrey York (Globe and Mail – June 8, 2011)

June 9, 2011June 9, 2011

NORTH MARA, TANZANIA

The morning of May 16 began like many others. Carrying hammers and rucksacks, hundreds of Tanzanian villagers trudged to the mountain of waste rock at dawn expecting to make another illicit deal with the heavily armed police who protect it.

Two hours later, at least five villagers were dead and many others wounded – gunned down by police at the gold mine owned by a subsidiary of Barrick Gold Corporation of Toronto.
The shooting, the latest in a series of deadly incidents at the mine over the past several years, raises troubling questions about Barrick’s security agreement with a notoriously corrupt police force that routinely extracts bribes from the villagers who enter the North Mara mine to scavenge for traces of gold.

It also provokes questions about Barrick’s decision to keep operating in the anarchic conditions around its mining site, where violent confrontations are common, allegations of police abuses are frequent and deaths are inevitable.

During a five-day visit to the North Mara Mine and the surrounding villages, The Globe and Mail witnessed an atmosphere of conflict and intimidation. Interviews with injured survivors of the May 16 shootings and other witnesses suggest that most of the villagers were unarmed or carrying only stones when they were shot. The witnesses, along with the local police commander, have contradicted the company’s assertion that hundreds of people attacked the police with machetes, hammers and rocks.

Canada mines discontent among the poor of Africa – Linda McQuaig (Toronto Star – June 7, 2011)

June 9, 2011June 7, 2011

The Toronto Star, which has the largest circulation in Canada, has an enormous impact on Canada’s federal and provincial politics as well as shaping public opinion. lmcquaig@sympatico.ca

While Canadians may think of ourselves as best known for owning the Olympic podium, among Africans we may actually be better known — and not particularly liked — for owning their natural resources.

Once beloved on the continent, Canada is no longer so fondly regarded in Africa.

The new, less enthusiastic view of Canada was vividly illustrated last month when more than 1,500 desperately poor Tanzanian villagers picked up machetes, rocks and hammers and stormed the mining compound of Canadian-owned African Barrick Gold.

The uprising — leading to the shooting deaths of seven of the villagers by police and security forces at the mine — is a startling reminder that theories widely held in the West about the benefits of foreign investment for the developing world are not always shared by people on the receiving end.