Canadian Media Resource Articles – Page 418

Tech companies pledge to keep kids out of the cobalt mines that power your smartphone – by Peter Whoriskey and Todd C. FRankel (Toronto Star – December 22, 2016)

December 22, 2016

https://www.thestar.com/

WASHINGTON POST – Separate groups of the world’s leading technology companies are launching two initiatives to curb “the worst forms of child labour” and other abusive practices in the supply chain for cobalt, a key ingredient in lithium-ion batteries that power smartphones, laptops and electric cars.

About 60 per cent of the world’s cobalt originates in the Congo, where hand-dug mines rife with dangers attract legions of poorly-equipped, “artisanal” miners who work for as little as $2 a day

Apple, HP, Samsung SDI, and Sony have joined an effort, known as the Responsible Cobalt Initiative. It is being led by a Chinese business group, the Chinese Chamber of Commerce for Metals, Minerals & Chemicals, and supported by the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), according to the group.

Beware of desperate politicians seeking ‘environmental legacies’ – by Kevin Libin (Financial Post – December 22, 2016)

December 22, 2016

http://business.financialpost.com/

Here’s to wishing all Canada’s provincial and federal leaders much success, prosperity and terrific polling numbers for 2017. Let us hope they all sail comfortably through the new year on high approval numbers from their voters. Because as Canadians — and now Americans — are learning, there is little more dangerous than a political leader with nothing to lose.

On Tuesday, after eight years of stifling U.S. economic growth, Barack Obama announced yet another round of rules to restrict oil and gas, this time ordering vast expanses of the Arctic and Atlantic seaboard “indefinitely off limits” to new offshore oil and gas exploration.

The reasoning was supposedly “the important, irreplaceable values of … Arctic waters for Indigenous, Alaska Native and local communities’ subsistence and cultures, wildlife and wildlife habitat, and scientific research (and) the vulnerability of these ecosystems to an oil spill,” according to a White House statement.

Faced with soaring energy bills, Ontario businesses demand ‘love’ from Queen’s Park – by Chris Selley (National Post – December 21, 2016)

December 22, 2016

http://news.nationalpost.com/

TORONTO — The Ontario Liberals’ electricity price nightmare has plenty of human faces: middle-class parents, gainfully employed, struggling to pay for an essential utility. The opposition attack ads in 2018 will practically write themselves: Ontarians have endured a more-than-70-per-cent rate hike over a decade, driven mostly by production costs that were the direct result of Liberal decisions.

Through 2014, auditor general Bonnie Lysyk found last year, the system extracted $37 billion extra from Ontarians’ pockets. The nightmare might soon have a more recognizable corporate face. A group of small-to-medium-sized businesses calling itself the Coalition of Concerned Manufacturers of Ontario invited reporters on a tour of Leland Industries’ fasteners plant in Scarborough on Tuesday.

There were the good-paying blue-collar jobs. And here was a group of employers saying Ontario’s electric bills, and its forthcoming cap-and-trade system, were pushing them toward the brink.

Trump win ignites hope for stalled Alaska copper, gold mine – by Nicle Mordant(Reuters – December 21, 2016)

December 21, 2016

http://www.reuters.com/

VANCOUVER – A small Canadian miner is confident Donald Trump’s U.S. presidential win will let it proceed with an application for a copper and gold mine in Alaska that has been stalled almost three years by environmental regulators aiming to protect the world’s biggest sockeye salmon fishery.

Ronald Thiessen, chief executive officer and president of Northern Dynasty Minerals Ltd, said he expected the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency to announce in the first quarter of 2017 that it will let the application process proceed for the controversial project. He said the company has held discussions with Trump’s transition team, including Myron Ebell, who heads the EPA transition.

Shares in Northern Dynasty, which owns the massive Pebble deposit in southwest Alaska’s Bristol Bay region, have more than doubled since the U.S. election on Nov. 8. The shares surged 23 percent on Nov. 9 alone.

114 workers safe after underground fire at Sask. potash mine (CBC News Saskatoon – December 20, 2016)

December 21, 2016

http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/saskatoon/

More than 100 workers at PotashCorp’s Allan mine are safe this morning after a fire underground. Yesterday afternoon, at around 3:30 p.m. CST, a fire started in a front-end loader in the mine. Nearby workers quickly put the fire out, but the area had already filled with smoke.

After fire alarms were triggered, all 114 workers underground at the time were sent to shelters while the smoke was cleared. “Fortunately, they got the fire out quickly,” said PotashCorp spokesperson Randy Burton. “It can become serious depending on the amount of smoke generated.”

Emergency response teams were sent out to vent the area and check on the safety of the workers. No one was hurt, although one worker was treated at the scene for smoke inhalation.

How federal politicians sheltered asbestos industry – by Jennifer Wells (Toronto Star – December 21, 2016)

December 21, 2016

https://www.thestar.com/

Has the phrase “better late than never” ever stood on a weaker truss than the Government of Canada’s decades-late decision to ban the manufacture, use, import and export of asbestos?

Successive federal governments — Liberal and Conservative — provided political shelter to companies mining chrysotile asbestos in Quebec, going so far as to fund the Chrysotile Institute whose purpose was to defend aggressively this particular type of asbestos as distinctly less hazardous than other forms of the magic mineral.

(A paper published in the Canadian Medical Association Journal in 2008 called this argument “redolent of the tobacco industry’s playbook on light cigarettes.”) Occasionally, a politician would step out of line, only to be yanked back into asbestos-supporting formation.

Canada, U.S. announce ban on offshore oil, gas licenses in Arctic – by Dan Healing (Toronto Star – December 21, 2016)

December 21, 2016

https://www.thestar.com/

CANADIAN PRESS – CALGARY—The federal government announced Tuesday plans to ban offshore oil and gas licensing in the Arctic, citing the need to protect the environment from future energy development, but the move was largely dismissed by industry observers as a weak gesture that won’t harm their interests.

The measure was part of a joint announcement with the U.S., which designated the bulk of its federally controlled waters in the Arctic Ocean and certain areas in the Atlantic Ocean as indefinitely off-limits to future oil and gas leasing.

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said Canada’s ban is intended to ensure a sustainable Arctic economy, preserve the region’s ecosystem and prevent future risks associated with offshore oil and gas activity — goals that earned applause from environmental groups such as Greenpeace and the World Wildlife Fund.

Ottawa cools to Ring of Fire’s potential – by Rachelle Younglai (Globe and Mail – December 21, 2016)

December 21, 2016

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/

Ottawa has been throwing cold water on the Ring of Fire, a mineral deposit in Northern Ontario that was once thought to be worth more than $60-billion.

Since the federal Liberal Party came to power last year, the government has stonewalled requests to pay for infrastructure, lowered expectations for development and slashed its valuation for the deposit, according to internal Department of Natural Resources documents obtained by The Globe and Mail.

The skepticism among federal ranks has proven to be another barrier to mining the 5,000-square-kilometre crescent of mostly chromite in the boggy James Bay lowlands and boreal forest. Development of the Ring was already facing significant challenges: No permanent road access, no power, environmental concerns, a prolonged commodities slump and scores of unresolved issues with the nine First Nations groups that live in the region.

Amazon chooses Montreal for its Canadian data centre operations due to cheaper hydro costs than Ontario – by Vito Pilieci (National Post – December 20, 2016)

December 21, 2016

http://news.nationalpost.com/

Internet giant Amazon Web Services has opened a cluster of data centres near Montreal due to the ready availability and cost of hydro-electric power in Quebec.

The company, which is notoriously secretive about its data centres, said there are now at least two data centres just outside Montreal to offer web-based services to the “Canada Region.” Canada joins 15 other regions around the globe from which Amazon is running data services on behalf of clients.

Teresa Carlson, vice-president of public sector with Amazon Web Services, said the cost and availability of hydro-electric power is ultimately what made Amazon choose Quebec as its Canadian home. “We picked the area that we did because of the hydro power,” said Carlson. “We did find them (Quebec) to be very business friendly.”

It’s time to expose the lie that expensive green energy won’t hurt Canada’s prosperity – by Philip Cross (Financial Post – December 20, 2016)

December 20, 2016

http://business.financialpost.com/

It is naïve or wilfully misleading to pretend there is an overall
economic benefit from higher energy costs. There is no possible
way of putting a positive economic spin on the doubling of electricity
prices in Ontario since 2002. It is a drain on household budgets and
a burden to the competitiveness of businesses.

We heard it repeated ad nauseum in the ongoing debates over Canada’s climate-change policy, this hackneyed catchphrase that our society does not have to choose between clean energy and economic growth. This makes it sound as if there are no economic risks in our choice of energy sources. Nothing could be farther from the truth.

The exploitation of energy is fundamental to economic growth. Ruth Sandwell, in her recent book Powering Up Canada, divides human economic development into two eras according to their principal sources of energy. The first was based on inefficient organic sources of energy, mostly plants and animals as well as wood, that produced a low standard of living for most of human history.

Ontario business owners say high electricity rates are a threat to their survival – by Showwei Chu (Globe and Mail – December 20, 2016)

December 20, 2016

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/

Independent business group says energy prices are the number one issue for members

Tor Krueger has big plans for Udder Way Artisan Cheese Co., which sells handmade goat cheese in Stoney Creek, Ont. But crushing hydro bills are hurting the artisan cheese maker’s plans to modernize his facility so he can get federal certification and sell his cheeses across the country.

“After payroll, hydro is consistently one of my top three operating expenses,” Mr. Krueger said. Hydro One charges him upward of $2,000 a month, and “I don’t have any equipment in here that I would say is drawing a lot of power.”

Other small and medium-sized businesses (SMBs) in Ontario, such as restaurants Berkeley North of Hamilton and Fred’s Not Here of Toronto, are struggling to pay their hefty hydro bills. “That right now is the No. 1 issue for our members,” says Plamen Petkov of the Canadian Federation of Independent Business (CFIB), which has 42,000 members in Ontario.

Revolution-era New York mine could produce hydro power – by Andrew Topf (Mining.com – December 19, 2016)

December 20, 2016

http://www.mining.com/

Mine in Mineville, 100 miles from Albany, contributed iron for one of the first naval battles of the Revolutionary War

Flooding a mine is a closure strategy that mining companies often use as part of a rehabilitation plan usually decided at the beginning of a mine’s operating life.

Once the tunnels are flooded, the mine and its workings become submerged, not just in a physical sense but in the minds of the public, who then regard that mine as finished, and the lake that fills the former pit probably assigned a recreational use.

An abandoned mine in New York state seemed to be destined to a similar, ignominious fate, but for a group of engineers who saw the historically-significant iron ore mine serving a more useful purpose.

Mining heavyweight Glencore could leave Sudbury in 5 years, says VP (CBC News Sudbury – December 19, 2016)

December 19, 2016

http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/sudbury/

Company’s vice-president seeking $1.4 B from investors to continue deep mining operations in Sudbury

Glencore’s vice-president Peter Xavier says unless the company can raise $1.4 billion from investors, the life of its mining operations in Sudbury will end in 2021.

But in the face of “disruptive changes” from Asian exports — which Xavier estimates supply between one-third and a quarter of the world’s nickel — the company is trying to extend its presence by opening two new deep mining projects in the area.

And to mine deeper, the company needs to raise money. “The challenge for us in our future operations are at depth so you can imagine finding the time to find to develop, the challenge economically to bring those to a positive business case are getting more difficult,” Xavier said.

Asbestos, Que., a town left pondering its name in wake of proposed ban – by Ingrid Peritz (Globe and Mail – December 17, 2016)

December 19, 2016

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/

MONTREAL — To Canadians and much of the world, the word “asbestos” is synonymous with poison and a slow, painful death. But to 7,000 people in southern Quebec, the word is the name of their home. Now they are struggling over whether to turn their backs on it.

Ottawa’s announcement this week that it would ban the fibre has revived a debate in Asbestos about changing the town’s name, a symbolic gesture that would, in effect, wipe the product and the word off the map.

“To improve the economy, I’m ready to analyze all proposals, including changing the name,” the mayor of Asbestos, Hugues Grimard, said in an interview on Friday. “People are talking about it. I’m not closed to it.”

Death, extortion stalk workers at Canadian mine in Colombia – by James Bargent (Toronto Star – December 17, 2016)

December 19, 2016

https://www.thestar.com/

SEGOVIA, COLOMBIA—It is nine in the evening and there is a knock on the door of Andres Bedoya’s house. He opens to find a skinny teenager. The youth raises a revolver to Bedoya’s head and fires.

Bedoya had no enemies, no debts and no links to the armed groups that plague this part of northern Colombia. His only crime was to work in the mines of Canadian mining giant Gran Colombia Gold.

Bedoya was the first to die in a terror campaign waged in Segovia late last year by Colombia’s most powerful criminal group, a paramilitary mafia known as the Urabenos. Their target was the riches produced in Gran Colombia’s mines. But it was ordinary miners who paid the price in blood.