Canadian Media Resource Articles – Page 523

Residential schools, reserves and Canada’s crime against humanity – by Doug Saunders (Globe and Mail – June 6, 2015)

June 8, 2015

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.

The first thing worth knowing, in understanding the specific nature of the crime Canada stands accused of, is how recent it all really was.

Keep in mind that, until 1960, no First Nations were permitted to vote in a Canadian election. In other words, they had a legal status not of citizens but much more like that of wildlife. They could not, for much of the 20th century, leave the confines of a reserve without permission from a government agent. Indigenous Canadians often could not run businesses, borrow money, own property, or, in the case of Inuit from the 1940s to the 1970s, even have a name.

And at the centre of all this, the practice of seizing aboriginal children permanently and usually unwillingly from their parents, placing them in state custody, and subjecting them to the forced labour and isolation of residential “schools” – the subject of this week’s monumental Truth and Reconciliation Commission report – reached its peak at the very end of the 1950s and continued in significant numbers through the 1970s (the last residential school didn’t close until 1996).

Almost a third of aboriginal Canadians – 150,000 people – were raised, without access to their families, in these institutions (which were by any normal definition not educational but penal).

Montana takes action on mine waste after B.C. dam failure – by Gordon Hoekstra (Vancouver Sun – June 7, 2015)

June 8, 2015

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

New laws spearheaded by industry after Mount Polley dam failure

The pollution caused by last summer’s dam failure at the Imperial Metals’ Mount Polley and the recommendations from an expert panel this January are having effects in the United States.

Six weeks ago, Montana changed its laws in response to the B.C. mine disaster, entrenching in statutes design standards for mine waste-storage facilities, qualifications for engineers and requirements for independent review panels.

The law changes were spearheaded by industry through the Montana Mining Association and sponsored by Republican state Senator Chas Vincent.

In B.C., the mining industry has been cautious in its response to the expert panel recommendations, which included the call for the independent review panels made up of senior geotechnical engineers. And while the B.C. Liberal government says changes are coming, it has said a review of provincial laws could take at least a year.

First Nations series: Staking claims in the B.C. economy – by Gordon Hoekstra and Larry Pynn (Vancouver Sun – June 4, 2015)

June 5, 2015

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

Court victories have driven monumental shift in economic opportunities and goals

When the Tahltan agreed in a 2011 referendum to support the Northwest Transmission Line that now runs north from Terrace, they knew their lives would change forever.

The 344-kilometre power line would open up a vast, relatively untouched region of northwestern B.C. to hydroelectric projects and large-scale mines. A century before, in 1910, the Tahltan had declared they were the sovereign owners of a vast area three times the size of Vancouver Island.

And although they are vehement about protecting the region they call the “sacred headwaters” – at the confluence of the salmon-rich Skeena, Stikine and Nass rivers – they are now also keen to be active participants in the provincial economy.

“Government and industry understand that the First Nations people need to benefit when these things are built,” says Tahltan Central Council president Chad Day. “But with the Tahltan, it actually makes a lot of business sense to partner with us because we have the capacity, we have the work ethic, we have the experience.”

Truth, reconciliation and resources for First Nations – by Peter Forster (National Post – June 5, 2015)

June 5, 2015

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

Does this week’s voluminous executive summary of a report-in-progress from the Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) point to a “way forward” for indigenous people, or merely stoke grievance, that most potentially self-destructive of political weapons?

Nobody would deny the wrongs of residential schools, but according to Wab Kinew, associate vice-president of indigenous affairs at the University of Winnipeg, and an “honourary witness” to the TRC, failure to pursue the TRC’s elaborate laundry list of 94 recommendations would lead to “more uncertainty for the resource industry.” That sounds like a threat. But who is being threatened if not his own people, for many of whom resource development offers the best hope for regaining self reliance and respect?

The use of the term “cultural genocide” by the report’s authors and many sympathetic observers is inflammatory. Indeed, analogies to the Final Solution are likely to provoke distaste rather than sympathy among that vast majority of Canadians who had nothing to do with this aspect of Canadian history which, we might remember, was the retrospectively shameful norm, not the exception, in the colonial era.

What was involved in the residential schools was not genocide, it was well-intended “acculturation” to the very different kinds of knowledge and skills necessary to thrive in a fast-evolving modern society. Many aboriginal parents were eager for their children to have such education. Its residential form was dictated by small, often extremely remote, communities and nomadic lifestyles.

UBS suing Western Potash over Chinese investment (Regina Leader-Post – June 3, 2015)

June 5, 2015

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

Western Potash Corp. has confirmed that UBS Securities Canada Inc. has filed a lawsuit against the company before the Ontario Superior Court of Justice, the Vancouver-based junior mining company said in a press release Wednesday.

UBS is “claiming fees, disbursements and damages in connection with a strategic investment in the company by China BlueChemical Ltd., and GUOXIN International Investment Corp. Ltd., through a wholly owned subsidiary, CBC (Canada) Holding Corp., which closed in June 2013,” the release said.

The company believes that the “UBS lawsuit is unfounded and entirely without merit, and intends to vigorously defend itself against the lawsuit,’’ said Patricio Varas, president and CEO of Western Potash.

Two years ago, Western Potash Corp. announced the closing of a $32-million investment by China Blue Chemical Ltd., and Benewood Holdings Corp. through a joint venture company, CBC (Canada) Holding Corp. (CBCHC), for a 20 per cent ownership stake in Western, which is traded on the TSX under the symbol WPX.

Worth its salt: Poland’s Wieliczka Mine is no substitute for Doritos, but it is pretty cool – by Ron Csillag (National Post – June 1, 2015)

June 5, 2015

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

There aren’t many tourist attractions where you are encouraged to lick the walls. But a salt mine isn’t your typical visitor stop.

If you’re like me and are nearly overcome by a salt craving each afternoon that can only be satisfied with a Costco-sized bag of Doritos, the offer to sample the structure is tempting — until you consider that the reason the dark grey rock salt walls have been polished to a high gloss is decades of touching and rubbing.

Breathing deeply, on the other hand, can only be beneficial. A couple of hours in the air here are supposed to equal a week at the seaside.

And next time you make a dreary crack after lunch about having “to get back to the salt mines,” keep in mind what actual miners accomplished at the Wieliczka Salt Mine, 20 minutes outside the Polish city of Krakow, a thoroughly charming place that went unscathed in the Second World War and today blends Gothic, Renaissance and Baroque architecture with swank shops, an unmistakably Roman Catholic sensibility and some really great food.

The world’s only salt mine designated a UNESCO World Heritage Site, Wieliczka draws upward of one million tourists a year, and for good reason. Poland’s history is not exactly light fare, so this place is a welcome respite (despite being a place where, you know, workers toiled in dank, brutal conditions).

First Nations series: Nak’azdli getting cut of resource wealth in traditional territory – by Gordon Hoekstra (Vancouver Sun – June 3, 2015)

June 4, 2015

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

Government, industry reaching out to forge economic benefit deals in the North

It’s a ghostly scene on the Nak’azdli reserve with a cold fog hanging in the March morning air.

Along the Stuart Lake Highway that cuts through the middle of this First Nation community, there is a steady stream of industrial traffic: Huge, mudspattered pickups, flatdeck trailers loaded with heavy equipment, logging trucks with their trailers bunked on the way to pick up logs deep in the forest, and semitrailers carrying supplies or wood chips.

The rattling, incessant traffic is testimony to the resourcebased economy in the Northern Interior. In the past, the First Nations in the area had to fight to get a piece of the action. In 1994, two railway bridges were burned down north of Fort St. James after a First Nations blockade was removed by the RCMP.

The arson was an unusually extreme event – meant to stop the movement of logs by rail – but First Nations often turned to blockades during the ’80s and ’90s to protest timber leaving their traditional territories, which, as they saw it, brought no benefit to their communities.

Exploration: Lundin: Supersizing nickel-copper discovery at Eagle – by Kip Keen (Mineweb.com – June 4, 2015)

June 4, 2015

http://www.mineweb.com/

Lundin Mining sinks claws into near-mine nickel copper discovery at Eagle.

Patience and deep wedge-drilling is paying off for Lundin Mining at its Eagle nickel-copper mine in Michigan, US, which recently went into production.

Back in 2013, Lundin bought the near-production project from Rio Tinto for $325 million. It was a project in flux that was not existentially important for Rio Tinto as a small- to medium-sized nickel-copper deposit.

Still, it was half-built and comprised a nickel-copper reserve that would, for Lundin, diversify it far more seriously into the nickel sphere, something it has lacked.

Reserves at the time (and still) were 5.2mt @ 2.93% Ni and 2.49% Cu, with strong gold, PGM and cobalt kickers. On top of the purchase cost Lundin spent about $400 million to get the mine up and running. It shipped first ore mid-last year.

Now, without recent drilling success, the mine stands on its own two feet. It is to produce some 17,000 tonnes of nickel and 17,000 tonnes copper a year over an eight-year life of mine with average C1 cash costs around $2.55/lb nickel, according to Lundin estimates.

First Nations’ report calls for ‘super fund’ to cover mine disasters – by Dirk Meissner – Canadian Press/CTV News Vancouver Island – June 3, 2015)

June 5, 2015June 4, 2015

http://vancouverisland.ctvnews.ca/

VICTORIA – A mining organization representing British Columbia’s First Nations says companies should bankroll an emergency fund to cover the cost of potential mine disasters similar to last summer’s Mount Polley tailings dam collapse.

However, an industry spokeswoman says mine owners are already required by law to pay disaster and cleanup costs.

The B.C. First Nations Energy and Mining Council released a report Wednesday saying mining operations threaten more than 230 northern aboriginal and non-aboriginal communities and even the drinking water in Prince George, Terrace and Smithers.

Thirty-five tailings ponds at 26 mines and in 48 watersheds could also impact nearly 8,700 kilometres of fish-bearing waters, said the report by the North Vancouver-based council.

Dave Porter, the council’s chief executive officer, said First Nations analyzed and surveyed mine tailings ponds following last year’s Mount Polley mine disaster near Likely, in central B.C.

Porter said the report calls for improved emergency measures, which should involve companies funding a response team during a mining catastrophe.

Terry MacGibbon eyes Nunavut gold riches with TMAC Resources IPO – by Peter Koven (National Post – June 3, 2015)

June 4, 2015

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

TORONTO — Terry MacGibbon is trying to do something that Canada’s battered mining sector hasn’t seen in a long time – a major initial public offering.

Then comes an even trickier proposition: building a remote gold project in the far North that a senior producer gave up on. “It fits right into our wheelhouse,” MacGibbon, 68, said in an interview.

The well-known mining entrepreneur announced plans this week to take TMAC Resources Inc. public. The Toronto-based company, which bears his initials, launched a preliminary prospectus for a $105-million IPO on the Toronto Stock Exchange. It could be worth up to $121 million if demand is strong enough.

There hasn’t been a mining IPO on the TSX since late 2012, according to Bloomberg. Investors have turned away from junior mining plays in droves due to stagnant commodity prices and the fact that other sectors are performing much better. But MacGibbon, TMAC’s executive chairman, has a solid track record and a strong following on Bay Street.

After three decades at Inco Ltd., he left in 1997 and formed FNX Mining Company Inc., a highly successful Sudbury mining firm.

After two years of turmoil, only one company’s left standing in Ontario’s Ring of Fire Share – by John Michael McGrath (The Inside Agenda Blog – June 3, 2015)

June 4, 2015

http://theagenda.tvo.org/

The Ring of Fire is Ontario’s biggest mineral discovery in a century. Strong competition among mining companies for a piece of it would seem inevitable.

Today, however, only one junior mining firm controls almost all of it.

“Essentially, we are the Ring of Fire,” Noront CEO Al Coutts says. “Essentially, in every major discovery in the Ring of Fire we have either 100 per cent or majority control.”

Coutts is exaggerating, but not by much. While a number of other companies looking to exploit the riches of the Ring of Fire, such as KWG, MacDonald, and Black Widow, Noront has rapidly become the largest company in the area, and remains the closest to actually opening an operating mine.

It wasn’t supposed to be like this. The Ring of Fire, located about 500 kilometres northeast of Thunder Bay, has substantial economic potential, with estimates of $50 billion worth of chromite, platinum, palladium, copper, and nickel to be extracted.

B.C. First Nations mining council report raises tailings dam safety concerns – by Gordon Hoekstra (Vancouver Sun – June 3, 2015)

June 3, 2015

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

Nearly three dozen mine-waste storage facilities could affect 33 First Nation communities

A report that shows a widespread fallout zone for mine-waste storage facilities in northern and central B.C. has led to a call for more protection of watersheds, assurance that communities receive long-term benefits, and creation of a cleanup fund.

The survey being released today was commissioned by the B.C. First Nations Energy and Mining Council in the wake of Imperial Metals’ Mount Polley mine-waste dam failure last year.

The breach released millions of cubic metres of finely ground rock containing potentially toxic metals, called tailings, into the Quesnel Lake watershed, resulting in heightened concerns over dam safety and the long-term effects on aquatic life.

The new report — Uncertainty Upstream: Potential Threats from Tailings Facility Failures in Northern British Columbia — found 35 mine-waste storage facilities at 26 active and closed mine could affect 33 First Nations communities if there is a breach.

Canada’s residential schools cultural genocide, Truth and Reconciliation commission says – by Joanna Smith (Toronto Star – June 3, 2015)

June 3, 2015

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.

A damning report culminates a six-year examination of Canada’s residential schools that oversaw the ill-treatment of aboriginal children for more than a century.

OTTAWA—The Truth and Reconciliation Commission urges all Canadians to rise to the enormous challenge of righting the wrongs committed by residential schools, even if it takes generations to reverse the ongoing effects of cultural genocide.

“We have described for you a mountain. We have shown you a path to the top. We call upon you to do the climbing,” Justice Murray Sinclair, chair of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, told a packed ballroom in a downtown Ottawa hotel Tuesday.

The exhortation came on an emotionally charged day that saw the commission release a heart-wrenching and damning 381-page summary of its final report detailing the history and legacy of residential schools — largely operated by churches and funded by the Canadian government — that saw 150,000 First Nations, Métis and Inuit children come through their doors for more than a century.

Northern Ontario’s next boom must come from within – by Livio Di Matteo (Waterloo Region Record/Troy Media – June 3, 2015)

June 3, 2015

http://www.therecord.com/waterlooregion/

Livio Di Matteo is professor of economics at Lakehead University in Thunder Bay.

Ontario’s north has experienced slower economic growth than the rest of the province for decades. Its shrinking economic role within Ontario — rooted as it was in natural resource extraction and processing — is a constant economic and political issue that has vexed politicians and community economic leaders for nearly 50 years.

The crisis in the forestry sector and its more capital-intensive production methods have also led to reduced northern employment. Whereas in 2003 there were 373,000 jobs in northern Ontario, by 2013 the number had decline five per cent to 355,000. Even the favourable unemployment rates in major northern urban centres are illusory, given that they reflect a shrinking labour force.

Compare that to Ontario as a whole, which saw employment grow 11 per cent over the same period despite the manufacturing malaise.

One response from northern Ontario to the employment decline has been to rely more on government. But public administration, health and social assistance, and education together already make up nearly 30 per cent of employment in northern Ontario, compared to 24 per cent in the province as a whole.

Aureus Mining starts gold production in Liberia in shadow of Ebola crisis – by Eric Reguly (Globe and Mail – June 2, 2015)

June 2, 2015

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.

Aureus Mining Inc. has survived the Ebola crisis to produce its first gold in Liberia, the West African country that had no gold mine until the Canadian company arrived.

Aureus, which trades on the Toronto Stock Exchange and on London’s AIM market, poured the first gold from its New Liberty open pit mine in Liberia’s northwest Friday evening. The $172-million (U.S.) mining project will be in full production in the autumn, when it will become one of the desperately poor country’s largest private employers.

David Reading, 59, the company’s Canadian-trained, British chief executive officer, said he was worried at one point that the Ebola crisis would doom the company’s Liberia plans. Liberia was one of the countries hit hardest by Ebola last year, with 10,666 reported cases and 4,806 deaths by the end of February, according to the World Health Organization (WHO).

“You go through sleepless nights as management,” Mr. Reading said. “If we stop everything, the company would go bankrupt. But if we keep going and we lose someone, we’d never forgive ourselves.”