Canadian/International Media Resource Articles – Page 189

Birth of a gold major [Osisko Mining] – Peter Koven (National Post – May 30, 2011)

June 1, 2011

The National Post is Canada’s second largest national paper. Peter Koven is the Post’s mining reporter. This article was originally published in the Financial Post on May 30, 2011. pkoven@nationalpost.com

By 2006, Osisko Mining Corp. knew it had a major gold discovery near the town of Malartic in northwest Quebec. But it also had a serious problem.

“Everything was fine and dandy with the drilling, except that when you were standing by the drill, you could throw a rock at the closest house,” chief executive Sean Roosen recalls.

Five years later, Osisko is hosting an opening ceremony for the Canadian Malartic gold mine on Monday. It will be the biggest gold mine in Canada once it reaches full production, with an estimated 625,000 ounces of gold output a year for the first five years. And as the project starts generating major cash flow, Osisko will enter the big leagues of Canada’s mining sector.

But getting here hasn’t been easy. Mr. Roosen remembers almost losing the company following the financial crisis in 2008. And there was that little matter of the town being in the way of the mine.

For resource value, reject the helicopter model [Vale/Voisey Bay] – by Jim Stanford (Globe and Mail – May 30, 2011)

May 31, 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.

Jim Stanford is an economist with the Canadian Auto Workers union.

Natural resources are increasingly central to Canada’s economic trajectory. Our challenge is to maximize the positive spinoffs from resource developments, while minimizing the economic and environmental costs. In that regard, imagine two extreme cases: one in which resource projects generate diversified and lasting benefits, and one in which they do not.

Consider the negative case first. Suppose a resource is discovered in a remote northern location. Using helicopters, a foreign-owned company flies in necessary capital equipment and supplies, even labour. The resource is transported to global markets, also using helicopters. The profits are exported to the foreign owner, and much of the spending on tools, supplies and specialized workers also leaves the country (since these have been imported). Canada’s GDP is boosted for a while (until the resource runs out), but much of that wealth never “touches down” here.

The opposite to this negative “helicopter” model is a strategy that maximizes Canadian participation in every phase of the development: exploration, investment, production, supply chain and transportation. This doesn’t happen automatically. It takes deliberate measures by the developer (prodded and assisted by government) to maximize lasting benefits to Canadians.

Why Maples’s bid is best fate for [Canadian] TMX – by David Olive (Toronto Star – May 28, 2011)

May 29, 2011

David Olive is a business columnist 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. dolive@thestar.ca

TMX accounts for nearly six of ten publicly traded mining firms worldwide. Last year,
they raised $17.8 billion in equity capital, about 60 per cent of the world mining total.
Close to 200 foreign resource firms have their principal listings on TMX exchanges,
though many lack Canadian assets. (David Olive – Toronto Star Business Columnist)

By 150-year-old tradition, TMX is in the business of nurturing its staggering 1,531 listed mining firms into global giants like Barrick Gold Corp. and Teck Resources Ltd.

If it succeeds, the rival bid for TMX Group Inc., owner of the Toronto Stock Exchange, will make history far beyond derailing a takeover offer for TMX made by London Stock Exchange PLC in February, supported by Royal Bank of Canada and Bank of Montreal.

The nine-member Maple Group Acquisition Corp., a consortium of four Canadian banks and five pension funds, seeks to further strengthen a TMX already regarded by investors worldwide as the “go-to” exchange for trading in resource firms, notably mining companies.

Current conventional wisdom has it that an urge to merge will result in a handful of global mega-exchanges.

[Toronto Star freelance] Journalist deported for investigating [Barrick] mine massacre – by Jocelyn Edwards (Toronto Star – May 29, 2011)

May 29, 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.

But local leaders accuse the company of complicity in the conduct of the police,
because it employs officers to provide mine security, and allege that African Barrick
is benefiting from it. (Jocelyn Edwards) “A community that has been intimidated is a
community that can’t demand its rights from the company.” (Tanzanian MP Tundu Lissu)

Reporter for the Star questioned in Tanzania as string of arrests follows deaths at Barrick site

KAMPALA, UGANDA—Given that I had been followed around the tiny town for two days by men in ’80s-style wraparound sunglasses, it wasn’t really a surprise to me when I finally got arrested last Thursday in northern Tanzania.

I had gone to the East African nation to investigate the deaths of five villagers gunned down at a mine in North Mara belonging to African Barrick, a subsidiary of Toronto-based mining giant Barrick Gold Corp. Barrick said the men killed by security forces — initial reports had pegged the death toll at seven — were “intruders.” Family members of the victims said the gold-laced stones the men routinely collected at the mine were their only means of survival.

Trucks of police in full riot gear patrolled the streets of Tarime, the town nearest the mine. The situation was tense and relatives of the deceased were huddled together in a compound.

Tuesday morning, I woke up and found the room next to mine empty. The environmental and human rights lawyer who had been staying there had been arrested, along with seven other people who had been guarding the bodies of the victims at the town mortuary.

[Goldcorp’s] Ian Telfer: ‘I’m more of an opportunist than a visionary’ – by Andy Hoffman (Globe and Mail – May 28, 2011)

May 28, 2011

Ian Telfer was a screw-up. The Canadian mining industry luminary didn’t exactly excel during his undergraduate days in university. He was too busy having fun.

So at 25, after doing some travelling and bouncing around at entry-level jobs for a few years, he was exceedingly grateful to have been accepted (at the absolute last moment with two days until classes) to the University of Ottawa’s MBA program.

“I was not cum laude,” he smirks with a creviced grin. So appreciative was Mr. Telfer, in fact, that he has since created a scholarship awarded annually to the program entrant with the lowest university marks.

Despite a playful and self-deprecating sense of humour, the unusual academic endowment isn’t just a lark. It tells you all you need to know about the 65-year-old’s sense of self and his perceived place among Canada’s corporate elite.

Battered [Sudbury] nickel regaining lustre – by Lisa Wright (Toronto Star – May 28, 2011)

May 28, 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. This article was originally published May 28, 2011.

Two little Sudbury-area miners reopen amid a resource rebound

If Bill Anderson had a nickel for every time someone asked him why he’s not in the gold mining business, he could open a nickel mine. After all, gold is synonymous with glamour and wealth while nickel, at least for Canadians, is synonymous with, well…Sudbury. Jokes aside, the lifelong geologist took all those cocktail party digs and opened a little nickel mine.

First Nickel Inc., which CEO Anderson co-founded, scooped up the old Lockerby mine in the Sudbury basin from former Canadian mining giant Falconbridge (now Xstrata Plc) in 2005.

And it seemed like the good times would never end as nickel prices soared to what Anderson calls “silly” levels of nearly $25 U.S. a pound, prompting foreign mining conglomerates Xstrata of Switzerland and Brazil’s Vale to take over historic Sudbury foes Falconbridge and Inco respectively for top dollar at what turned out to be the height of the market.

Cold War relic [in Northern Ontario] ‘Site 500’ gets costly cleanup – by Steve Ladurantaye (Globe and Mail – May 27, 2011)

May 27, 2011

Six decades after the radar operators gave up their search for Russian bombers streaking across the Northern Ontario sky, a massive cleanup effort will finally begin to erase a ghost town that was very briefly one of Canada’s most important military installations.

The town doesn’t even have a formal name – military documents simply refer to it as Site 500. It was the operations centre for the Ontario portion of the Mid Canada Line Radar installation, a network of 17 sites built as part of a national network in the 1950s to monitor the skies for foreign invaders.

Site 500 is now at the centre of the largest environmental remediation project ever undertaken in Ontario. Its scale is dwarfed only by the national cleanup of the Distant Early Warning radar line – a more northern string of radar installations that the federal government has already spent half a billion dollars cleaning.

The running out of resources myth – by Brian Lee Crowley (National Post – May 27, 2011)

May 27, 2011

The National Post is Canada’s second largest national paper. This article was originally published in the Financial Post on May 27, 2011.

Brian Lee Crowley is the managing director of the Macdonald-Laurier Institute, a national public policy think-tank based in Ottawa. www.macdonaldlaurier.ca

Markets and ingenuity will ensure supply

The premise behind the question “Are we running out of natural resources?” is terribly mistaken. There is indeed a finite quantity of fossil fuels and other resources in the Earth’s crust. But that does not mean that we will ever run out of them. In fact, human beings will likely cease using fossil fuels long before we have used them up, and this transition is independent of any policy designed to speed up the development of alternative energy sources.

Fears that we are running out of commodities are not new. In the 18th century, Thomas Malthus predicted that mass starvation would result from an inability of the food supply to adjust for rapid population growth. In the 1970s, the Club of Rome predicted massive shortages of natural resources due to overconsumption and overpopulation, with disastrous effects on human health and material well-being. In 1980, The Global 2000 Report to the President noted that: “If present trends continue, the world in 2000 will be more crowded, more polluted, less stable ecologically, and more vulnerable to disruption than the world we live in now.… ”

But the ecosystem hasn’t collapsed. We haven’t run out of oil. We are still successfully feeding ourselves. Our incomes are rising and our health status is improving around the globe. Why?

Bodies of men shot at Barrick mine stolen and dumped by police: families – by Jocelyn Edwards (Toronto Star – May 25, 2011)

May 25, 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. This article was originally published May 25, 2011.

Grim warning near African Barrick mine

TARIME, TANZANIA – It was on the side of a dirt road in northern Tanzania that relatives found a coffin containing the body of Emmanuel Magige on Tuesday morning.

The 27-year-old man was one of seven people killed and more than 12 injured on May 16 when villagers at African Barrick’s mine in northern Tanzania clashed with security forces.

Late Monday night, police stormed a mortuary in the small northern town of Tarime and removed bodies belonging to four of the dead in a bid to prevent a memorial planned at the mine for Tuesday, witnesses said. After finding the bodies of the victims forcibly returned to their villages, families instead held small burial services at their homes in the afternoon.

“It was inhuman. They did this like animals,” said Magige’s 20-year-old wife, Mary.

[Canada] Mining: Miracle on the St. Lawrence – by Brian Dunn (Canadian Business Magazine – May 9, 2011)

May 23, 2011

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

Sept-Îles is booming, and the numbers are there to prove it. The mining community of 30,000 on the north shore of the St. Lawrence River, some 960 kilometres from Montreal, added 5,200 new jobs last year, for an impressive 10.7% increase in employment, the best in Quebec. Based on its population, the 5,200 new jobs is equivalent to Montreal adding 105,000 new jobs, where only 30,000 were created last year.

A lot of the credit for this growth goes to Serge Lévesque, Sept-Îles mayor since November 2009. He knows the region lives or dies on the fortunes of the mining industry, having worked for both the Iron Ore Co. of Canada and Aluminerie Alouette Inc., a global aluminum industry leader.

In early April, Russian steelmaker OAO Severstal and its South African partner, Iron Mineral Beneficiation Services Pty. Ltd. (IMBS) announced they were conducting a feasibility study for the construction of a $1-billion iron-ore processing plant in Sept-Îles that could create up to 500 new jobs in the area.

India vies with China for influence in Africa – by Geoffrey York (Globe and Mail – May 23, 2011)

May 23, 2011

The latest global scramble for Africa, with China now in the lead, is escalating to new heights this week as India sends a planeload of gift-bearing political leaders to Africa in an effort to compete with Beijing’s fast-growing influence.

It would have been unthinkable a decade ago, but China and India are now emerging as key players in the African game, and both are boosting their presence so swiftly that they are becoming major competitors of the Western nations that traditionally dominated the continent.

Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, accompanied by dozens of business executives and cabinet ministers, is arriving in Ethiopia this week for an Africa-India summit on a scale rivalling China’s recent summits with African leaders.

A bridge between two worlds [Aboriginal Communities and Canada Mining Sector] – by Diane Jermyn (Globe and Mail – May 18, 2011)

May 19, 2011

Miners have started engaging the aboriginal communities on whose land they dig. But is it enough?

Leanne Bellegarde tries to connect communities. She’s a member of the Kawacatoose First Nation in Saskatchewan, a lawyer, and now, the director of aboriginal strategy for PotashCorp.

Native people are the youngest and fastest growing demographic in Saskatchewan. PotashCorp, a global potash producer in the province, projects it will need 800 new workers over the next two years, thanks to expansion and retirements.

But what should be an ideal match – people wanting jobs and a company needing workers – presents deep challenges. Many jobs at PotashCorp require Grade 12 or equivalency. Ms. Bellegarde says it’s difficult to find people who meet that bar in First Nations and Métis communities. And so the jobs often go to qualified outsiders, frustrating aboriginal people.

PotashCorp is one of many mining companies in Canada that realize engagement with native communities isn’t just a feel-good enterprise but an economic growth strategy. But while this engagement goes far deeper than in the past, some say it’s just the beginning of what’s truly needed.

Thanks, we’ll take that [Resource Nationalism] – by Brenda Bouw (Globe and Mail – May 18, 2011)

May 19, 2011

States looking to tax or even nationalize assets are threatening global mining interests

As Glencore International prepared its public listing, the world’s largest commodities trader warned the market that the Bolivian government was trying to wrestle more control of its mines.

The Bolivian government, under socialist President Evo Morales, is overturning mining and investment laws to increase state control over its economy. The government wants to renegotiate contracts with companies such as Switzerland-based Glencore and give state mining company Comibol a controlling role in joint ventures, forcing companies to return concessions, according to Bloomberg News.

Bolivia, which has also seized oil and gas assets since the current government took power in 2006, is just the latest in a growing list of nations revising laws to squeeze more profits from resource extraction within their borders during times of spiking commodities prices. Many are taking a larger grab through increased taxes and royalties.

Some are using more extreme measures, like nationalization or expropriation of assets.

Seven ‘intruders’ killed at African Barrick mine – Peter Koven (National Post – May 18, 2011)

May 18, 2011

When Barrick Gold Corp. spun its African properties into a new company last year, investors knew they were being sold high-risk assets that had their share of problems.

But they didn’t imagine this.

On Tuesday, African Barrick Gold PLC reported details of a horrifying incident at its North Mara mine in Tanzania. According to the company, about 800 “criminal intruders” armed with machetes, rocks and hammers broke into the mine site and tried to steal gold ore. The Tanzanian police were called in and were forced to open fire after being attacked by the intruders. Seven people were killed and another 12 injured.

“The police are making an investigation, so more details will come from them in the days and weeks to come,” a spokesman for London-based African Barrick said.