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Canadian Media Resource Articles

Massive B.C. gold mine near Alaska border gets environmental approval – by Terri Theodore (Canadian Press/Vancouver Province – December 20, 2014)

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

VANCOUVER — The federal government approved the environmental assessment application on Friday for the massive KSM gold and copper mine in northwestern British Columbia near the Alaska border.

The mine, which is owned by Seabridge Gold Inc. (TSX:SEA), is considered the largest undeveloped gold reserve in the world and also has copper, silver and molybdenum deposits.

The project would be just 35 kilometres from the Alaska border, and in August the state took the rare step of asking the Canadian government for involvement in the approval process over concerns for its rivers and fish.

But the Canadian Environmental Assessment Agency concluded in its report that the KSM project isn’t likely to cause significant adverse environmental effects.

Seabridge CEO Rudi Fronk said the company was confident it would receive the approval because it has spent six years and $200 million working with government, local First Nations and the state of Alaska. The company conducted 40 working group sessions with federal and provincial regulators, First Nations and American regulators, he said.

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BC chief inspector of mines amends Mt Polley Act to enable repairs to start – by Henry Lazenby (MiningWeekly.com – December 19, 2014)

http://www.miningweekly.com/page/americas-home

TORONTO (miningweekly.com) – The chief inspector of mines for British Columbia, Al Hoffman, has approved an amendment to the Mount Polley Mine Corporation Mines Act permit to allow the company to start repairs of the breach in its tailings storage facility dam.

The repair work was part of the long-term remediation plan for the area impacted by the August Mount Polley breach, the provincial Ministry of Energy and Mines said. The work at the tailings storage facility would help ensure that the increased water flow from melting snow (also known as spring freshet or spring breakup) will not result in further environmental or human health impacts.

The amendment to the mine’s permit only authorises the company to undertake the approved breach repair work and set out a number of conditions that would have to be followed by Imperial Metals subsidiary Mount Polley Mining Corporation. The amendment does not allow the mine to restart its ore-processing operations.

The Cariboo Mine Development Review Committee, which included technical representatives from the provincial government, Williams Lake Indian Band, Xat’sull First Nation, Cariboo Regional District, Community of Likely, and the Department of Fisheries and Oceans Canada had reviewed the Mines Act permit amendment application and geotechnical design for the breach repair.

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Tax hike, copper prices force Barrick to shutter Zambian mine – by Rachelle Younglai (Globe and Mail – December 19, 2014)

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.

Barrick Gold Corp. said it will suspend operations at its Zambian copper mine and record an impairment charge after the African country’s government more than tripled its mining royalties.

The suspension is the latest setback for Barrick, which borrowed heavily to acquire the Lumwana mine in 2011, when copper prices were soaring.

The royalty on open pit mining in Zambia will jump to 20 per cent from the current 6 per cent, under a new law that will go into effect Jan.1.

“The introduction of this royalty has left us with no choice but to initiate the process of suspending operations at Lumwana,” Barrick’s co-president Kelvin Dushnisky said in a statement.

Barrick, which employs 4,000 workers at Lumwana, said it would start cutting jobs in March after giving the Zambian government the mandatory two-months notice. The mine will be idled by the middle of the year.

It is unknown whether Barrick will be able to renegotiate rates with the government before it shutters the mine.

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‘There will be some blood’: Will Canada’s oilpatch be able to withstand the price onslaught? – by Yadullah Hussain (National Post – December 19, 2014)

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

There will be bloodletting and pain as the impact of low oil prices reverberates through the Canadian oilpatch, but the industry is entering the downturn from a position of strength, according to analysts.

“There will be some blood on the streets, but if companies can keep their cash to debt ratios down below three times or in some cases four times at least they are not facing a bankruptcy-type position,” said Jeremy Kaliel, executive director, institutional equity research at CIBC World Markets Inc.

The dramatic decline in oil prices has caught the industry off guard, leaving companies scrambling to cut capital expenditures and dividends and redrawing their 2015 plans.

The U.S. oil and gas industry is already feeling the heat as much of the shale boom was fuelled by a diet of cheap debt that looked affordable at US$100 per barrel. With U.S. crude now edging towards US$55, investors have fled.

“Some of these companies have up to 75% of their market cap wiped out,” said Rick Chamberlain, managing director at Houston-based Berkeley Research Group. “The ones that leveraged didn’t make the right financial decisions.”

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Canada needs to defend its own security interests in the Pacific, instead of relying on Americans – by Matthew Fisher (National Post – December 19, 2014)

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

The great ditherer, U.S. President Barack Obama, has finally begun his vaunted Asian pivot.

More top-of-the-line American fighter jets are to be based in the western Arctic, Hawaii and Asia. Submarines and surface warships, including an aircraft carrier, are being permanently repositioned right now from the Atlantic to the Pacific.

Australia, Japan, South Korea and half a dozen other Australasian countries have been spooked by Beijing’s territorial claims to just about all of the South China Sea and much of the East China Sea, and by its determination to project power and national prestige into the Pacific by building a vast fleet of new warships, including an aircraft carrier and scores of diesel-electric and nuclear submarines that can be armed with long-range cruise missiles.

The Harper government has not been shy about telling Canadians that they are citizens of a Pacific nation. Yet its response to China’s military priorities, which much of the world considers to be the overriding security dilemma of the 21st century, has been virtually non-existent aside from slightly enhancing the country’s slim contribution to U.S.-led military games in the Pacific.

Security there is not being discussed at any level by the government or by the opposition, although it is a subject of considerable and growing concern to Canada’s admirals and generals. Nor has Canada purchased anything for the military because of security tensions over its western horizon.

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Natural Resources Minister Greg Rickford says Ring of Fire oversight body needs overhaul – by Peter Koven (National Post – December 19, 2014)

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

TORONTO – The Ontario government wants Ottawa to pony up $1 billion for the massive “Ring of Fire” mineral belt, but the federal natural resources minister is warning that key structural challenges still need to be overcome.

Foremost among these is the fact Ontario has stacked the four board seats of the Ring of Fire’s development corporation with nothing but provincial bureaucrats. They are responsible for overseeing infrastructure development in the region.

“We’ve got a problem with that,” Greg Rickford said in an interview. “That’s not a responsible way to deal with taxpayers’ money.”

The Ring of Fire, named after the famous Johnny Cash song, is a vast but very remote mineral belt located in Ontario’s James Bay Lowlands. The region is thought to hold about $60-billion worth of metals, but the federal and provincial governments need to overcome enormous infrastructure challenges to draw investment from the mining sector, especially in an environment of falling commodity prices.

Queen’s Park committed $1 billion to building infrastructure, and has waged a very public campaign asking Ottawa to match it through the federal Building Canada infrastructure fund.

“Your commitment to providing matching federal funding is key to strengthening investor confidence for development of the [Ring],” Ontario mining minister Michael Gravelle said last week in a letter to Mr. Rickford.

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Northwestern Ont. transmission line may threaten caribou habitat (CBC News Thunder Bay – December 16, 2014)

http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/thunder-bay

A new report says caribou in Ontario’s boreal forest are facing increasing man-made threats — and specifically points out a proposed transmission line running between Dryden, Ignace and Pickle Lake.

Anna Baggio of the Canadian Parks and Wilderness Society’s Wildlands League said the route would disturb prime caribou habitat.

“Let’s not place permanent infrastructure in these really hammered southern caribou ranges,” she said. “And if you have to build some of this infrastructure — if it’s an absolute imperative — then at least situate it along an existing highway.”

Baggio said the province needs to do a better job of living up to its commitment to protect woodland caribou. “If we can protect woodland caribou habitat, then we can protect the habitat of a whole other suite of species,” she said.

“If we don’t do a good job on Boreal caribou, it’s sort of like a canary in the coal mine for us … It shows us that our practices and our intentions in the Boreal forest are not where they need to be.”

Baggio said the notion of ploughing “a transmission line through some of the best remaining intact caribou habitat … is perplexing.

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Activist launches boardroom battle over fees to mining financier – by Jacquie McNish (Globe and Mail – December 17, 2014)

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.

Globe-trotting junior mining financier Stan Bharti has been targeted by a shareholder activist in a boardroom battle that could test the limits of compensation at money-losing companies.

Mr. Bharti, through his private, family-owned Toronto company Forbes & Manhattan, manages a large portfolio of publicly listed resource startups with mostly undeveloped properties in such remote corners as Kurdistan, Ethiopia and Mongolia. Mr. Bharti and a close-knit group of executives and directors have pocketed millions of dollars in consulting fees, bonuses and other payments at a time when a number of companies managed by Forbes & Manhattan have suffered declining financial health and stock performance.

His roster of advisers and directors includes retired Canadian major-general Lewis MacKenzie, former federal cabinet minister Pierre Pettigrew and Canada’s former ambassador to Iran, Ken Taylor. Mr. Bharti’s most prominent adviser, CNN talk show host Larry King, described himself in a Forbes & Manhattan promotional video as a global ambassador. “I provide the contacts, Stan does the close,” he said. which “equals success.”

In recent years, Mr. Bharti and his family have hosted lavish investor conferences at exclusive resorts, in Mexico and Brazil, featuring vodka-cooling ice sculptures and high-profile businessmen such as Eike Batista and Jim Rogers.

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Why Talisman Energy Inc is the first — but not last — victim of the oil price slump – by Claudia Cattaneo (National Post – December 17, 2014)

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

Senior oil and gas producer Talisman Energy Inc. became the first Canadian oil patch company to surrender to the global oil price crash Tuesday, when it announced its sale to Spain’s Repsol SA for US$8.3 billion in cash after a long campaign to re-focus its global business.

There will be more.

With share prices at garage-sale levels, the whole Canadian energy sector is vulnerable to being picked on by anyone with a war chest, expectations of an oil price recovery or better ideas on how to create value.

“The likelihood for high-profile M&A transactions is almost a guarantee,” said Sonny Mottahed, CEO and managing partner of Black Spruce Merchant Capital in Calgary. “In the environment that we are in today, where you have equity prices reacting dramatically to the drop in the commodity … the intrinsic value of a lot of these companies is far greater than what the market is valuing them at.”

In anticipation of more consolidation, investors pushed up many battered Canadian energy names, with Encana Corp. bouncing 7.4% to close at $14.53, Crescent Point Energy Corp. gaining 10% to close at $24.13; Baytex Energy Corp. gaining 5.7% to $16.21, and Whitecap Resources Inc. gaining 5.4% to $10.99.

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B.C. approves $8.8-billion Site C hydroelectric dam – by Justine Hunter and Ian Bailey (Globe and Mail – December 17, 2014)

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.

VICTORIA and Vancouver — The B.C. government has approved the construction of the Site C dam on the Peace River at an estimated cost of almost $8.8-billion, making it the largest public infrastructure project in the province’s history.

But the government will delay the project until next summer and has adjusted the price to be $900-million higher than what BC Hydro had proposed. The project faces a series of lawsuits, and on Tuesday, environmentalists, First Nations and the NDP renewed their opposition to the dam.

Premier Christy Clark, at a news conference in Victoria, said the revised budget reflects “the true cost” of building the dam, but she believes it remains the cheapest option to meet British Columbia’s growing demand for electricity in the future.

“I believe the people of our province will continue to prosper,” she said. “We need to ensure there is power – clean, reliable, sustainable power.”

Site C will be built downstream of the W.A.C. Bennett and Peace Canyon dams in northeastern B.C., and will be the first major hydroelectric dam to be built in the province since completion of the Revelstoke dam in 1984.

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Greg Rickford responds to province’s latest Ring of Fire request – by Jody Porter (CBC News Thunder Bay – December 17, 2014)

http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/thunder-bay

Ontario wants $1B from Building Canada Fund for roads and power to remote mineral deposit

Ontario’s plan for the remote Ring of Fire mineral deposit has “serious structural problems” according to the federal Natural Resources Minister, and that’s why Greg Rickford says Canada is cautious about partnering with the province to build roads and power lines.

Ontario’s Minister of Northern Development and Mines wrote to Rickford last week, asking for a meeting to discuss the province’s proposal for $1 billion under the Building Canada Fund.

“We need you to be actively engaged in these discussions as we chart a path forward,” Michael Gravelle wrote in a letter dated Dec. 11. “Your government’s acknowledgement of a matching $1 billion commitment to support infrastructure development is key.”

Rickford said he is happy to meet with Gravelle but is not so happy with the way the province is approaching development of what both levels of government see as a key resource.

“We’re waiting for the province to maybe move beyond the letter-writing and get a submission to us, technically, about a priority and a priority project and we’ll move forward on that,” Rickford said.

He outlined what he describes as three key structural problems with Ontario’s approach that “only the province can resolve.”

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Resource revenue sharing ‘not going away’ – by Jason Warick (Regina Leader Post – December 15, 2014)

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

“This is something we need to get right,” Cam Broten says

The Saskatchewan government should join the growing number of other provinces and consider sharing natural resource revenue with First Nations, say experts.

“How do you reconcile if you don’t share the resources?” said Vancouver lawyer Tom Isaac, author of Aboriginal Law: Commentary, Cases and Materials. Isaac, a University of Saskatchewan law graduate who represents governments and resource companies, said any revenue sharing must be sustainable and measured, but the issue “is not going away.”

Resource revenue sharing hit the national stage last week when former Federation of Saskatchewan Indian Nations Chief Perry Bellegarde was elected to head the national Assembly of First Nations. In a fiery speech to AFN delegates in Winnipeg, Bellegarde vowed resource development would occur only after First Nations’ concerns were addressed.

“We weren’t meant to be poor in our own lands,” Bellegarde said. Saskatchewan’s Energy and Resources Minister, Bill Boyd, was not available for an interview this weekend. In a written statement, the government said its position has not changed.

“Our province’s resources belong to everyone in the province. Revenues from Saskatchewan’s resources belong to all Saskatchewan people, and everyone, including First Nations, benefit from that revenue,” read the statement.

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A new cold war: Denmark gets aggressive, stakes huge claim in Race for the Arctic – by Tristin Hopper (National Post – December 16, 2014)

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

For years, the Race for the Arctic had promised to be one of the most gentlemanly land grabs in history: Using only science and a whiff of diplomacy, the oil-rich Arctic Ocean could be peacefully divvied up between Russia, Canada, the United States and Europe.

That is, until the tiny nation of Denmark approached the United Nations on Monday with a staggering claim to nearly one third of the total prize — including the North Pole.

“It is ironic that the only country that right now could be said to be acting provocatively in the Arctic is Denmark,” said Michael Byers, the Vancouver-based author of Who Owns the Arctic? speaking to Danish media on Monday.

Canada has not yet wrapped up its final claim to areas of the Arctic Ocean now considered international waters, although Ottawa has vowed to shoot for 1.2 million square kilometres of ocean, including the North Pole. There is no definitive scientific evidence that Canada has any claim to the North Pole, but that did not stop Citizenship and Immigration Minister Chris Alexander from issuing Santa Claus with Canadian citizenship last year.

On Monday, Rob Huebert at the University of Calgary’s Centre for Military and Strategic Studies called Denmark’s claim evidence that it was wrong to ever believe that the Arctic could be divvied up simply with geological data.

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Ontario needs its pride back – by Kelly McParland (National Post – December 16, 2014)

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

I’m half-way convinced that some weird political inversion has taken place, so that Ontario and Quebec have somehow ended up with the other’s government.

It’s like The Prince and the Pauper, or any of the long line of imitations that have followed that tale, in which children are somehow switched at birth and end up in the wrong household. It feels like Quebec Premier should be running Ontario, and Ontario’s Kathleen Wynne should really be premier of Quebec.

There are new signs of this almost every day. The Montreal Gazette reported Monday that Mr. Couillard’s government is sharply reducing funding for Fete Nationale, one of the public celebrations the separatist Parti Quebecois poured money into as a symbol of Quebec’s detachment from Canada. It’s held a week before Canada Day, celebrated only in Quebec, and was to get $5.4 million from the PQ in 2016. Instead, the Liberals will provide 40% less, or about $3.4 million.

This is the latest cost-reduction measure introduced by Mr. Couillard as he tries to eliminate Quebec’s deficit – which is a mere shadow of Ontario’s – and end the province’s long tradition of chronic over-spending. He hasn’t shied from controversy in doing so, going so far as to reform the hallowed $7-a-day daycare program, introducing a sliding scale of fees in its place.

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Falling oil price puts Ottawa’s surplus at risk – by Bill Curry (Globe and Mail – December 16, 2014)

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.

OTTAWA — Finance Minister Joe Oliver is acknowledging the dramatic drop in oil prices will take a further bite out of government revenues, making Ottawa’s previously declared surplus less certain.

The government already shaved billions off of its revenue forecasts when it released a fiscal update on Nov. 12, when the price of North American crude was around $81 (U.S.). That price closed Monday below $56.

As the price of oil continued to slip after his fiscal update, Mr. Oliver initially maintained that these adjustments were conservative enough to capture lower prices without affecting Ottawa’s bottom line. But he said Monday the further drop will have an impact.

“We’re not about to come out with a number at this point. However, we’re confident we will achieve a budgetary balance next year,” he said Monday, before a meeting of provincial and territorial finance ministers in Ottawa.

The government is forecasting a surplus of only $1.6-billion, which would be at risk of slipping into deficit territory should oil prices stay low. Ottawa has set aside $3-billion for unforeseen events, and several economists said Monday that should be enough to maintain a small surplus.

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