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Canadian Media Resource Articles

Iron ore prices – Where’s the bottom? (Northern Miner Editorial – Novmeber 26, 2014)

The Northern Miner, first published in 1915, during the Cobalt Silver Rush, is considered Canada’s leading authority on the mining industry.

As the daylight hours shorten and winter chill takes hold of the iron ore mines and surrounding communities in the Labrador Trough, it’s as good a symbol as any of the deep freeze that is engulfing the global iron ore market, as spot prices continue to head south.

Back in October, Cliffs Natural Resources said it would permanently close its Wabush iron ore mine on the Labrador side of the Trough, after having laid off some 500 workers in February when it first idled the mine.

And now Cliffs says it has failed in its attempts to find investment partners for the US$1.2-billion expansion of its Bloom Lake iron ore mine on the Quebec side of the Trough — an expansion that the struggling major said was needed to make the Bloom Lake mine financially viable.

While Cliffs had been optimistic about finding such financial partners as recently as a month ago, layoff notices have been sent to some 400 workers at Bloom Lake ahead of the closure of the entire Bloom Lake complex, which will take affect in mid-December. Around 80 workers will be kept for care and maintenance.

Cliffs now states bluntly that it is pursuing its “exit options” for all its Eastern Canadian iron ore assets. Perhaps the biggest surprise in the announcement is the high price tag that Cliffs has put on closing shop and leaving Eastern Canada: up to US$700 million in the next five years.

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Prem Watsa embraces his roots with launch of Fairfax India – by Jacqueline Nelson (Globe and Mail – November 27, 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.

Fairfax Financial Holdings Ltd. founder Prem Watsa has always seen major growth potential in his birthplace of India, and now he is putting money behind that vision with a new investment holding company that has already raised $500-million (U.S.).

Toronto-based Fairfax said Wednesday that it will sponsor and promote Fairfax India Holdings Corp., which will operate as a public company that invests in businesses focused on India’s marketplace.

Fairfax India will be funded in part by a $300-million investment by Fairfax, in exchange for 30 million voting shares, according to an initial public offering prospectus filed Wednesday. Hyderabad-born Mr. Watsa will serve as chair of the new company.

“We’ve been in India for at least 15 years, but we’ve found that the amount of money we could invest given regulatory constraints is limited.

The opportunity in India is greater than our ability to invest alone so we decided to create a separate company to allow other investors to participate,” Mr. Watsa said when reached by phone in Toronto. The company will be listed on the Toronto Stock Exchange.

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Why the black stuff can take shine off gold – by Eric Reguly (Globe and Mail – November 25, 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.

ROME — Long suffering investors in gold companies should be feeling the warm glow of sunshine again. Gold prices are up about $40 (U.S.) an ounce, to just under $1,200, since the end of October, when they hit a four-year low of $1,160. But gold shares are not responding. With the exception of Toronto’s Kinross Gold, one of the industry’s hardest-hit players thanks to its Russian mines, the prices of the biggies have dropped over the last month.

How can this be? The rising U.S. dollar could explain part of the share slump. But here’s another explanation: Falling oil prices.

While the connection between oil and gold prices is not immediately obvious, there is no doubt that falling oil prices are triggering disinflation everywhere; in Europe, outright deflation is a clear and present danger, which is why the European Central Bank is warming up the market to the idea of U.S-style quantitative easing.

If you buy gold is an inflation hedge, it follows that disinflation or deflation would encourage you to sell gold. And that’s what appears to be happening, thanks in good part to oil prices that have fallen by 30 per cent since June. Euro zone inflation is running at a paltry 0.3 per cent, well short of the ECB’s target rate of 2 per cent , and could go lower – we’ll get fresh inflation data on Friday.

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Wawatay Native Communications Society risks closure (CBC News Thunder Bay – November 26, 2014)

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

Wawatay Native Communications Society is in financial trouble and has laid off most of its staff. The organization runs a radio network serving more than 50 isolated First Nations, a tri-lingual newspaper, and television production studios serving First Nations in northern Ontario.

The board of directors is holding emergency meetings in an attempt to save the nearly 40-year-old institution.

The president of Wawatay’s board, Mike Metatawabin, said if a solution can’t be found immediately, the network may shut down. Wawatay must find a new direction if it’s going to survive — and it will take the attention, support and cooperation of all the communities to save Wawatay, he added.

“It’s like milking a cow, but now the cow is not producing any milk. But people are still kicking at it, saying, ”C’mon, we need more.’ But nobody has fed the cow. Nobody has nourished the cow.”

Wawatay’s mandate is to promote, preserve and enhance the languages and cultures of the Nishnawbe Aski Nation. It was created in 1974 by elders who saw the need for cultural preservation as well as media adaptation.

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Ontario lecturing Harper on good government is laughable 133 – by Christina Blizzard (Toronto Sun – November 25, 2014)

 http://www.torontosun.com/

TORONTO – They’re the terrible twins of Confederation: Ontario and Quebec. Yet like two wayward, know-it-all teenagers, Ontario Premier Kathleen Wynne and her Quebec counterpart, Philippe Couillard, have taken to lecturing the grown-ups about what they’re doing wrong.

Prime Minister Stephen Harper, like a bemused dad, rolls his eyes and ignores them — which as any parent will tell you is the best way to deal with kids who act out.

Except these two aren’t just seeking attention. They want his money. Quebec and Ontario are the two most indebted provinces. It’s almost as if they’re competing with each other. Who can dream up the costliest program to drive their province deeper in the red? Quebec comes up with $7-a-day daycare? We’ll raise that — and see you with full-day kindergarten.

Wynne and her government use any opportunity they can to slam Harper. Clearly, they’re trying to help federal Liberal Leader Justin Trudeau as we head into next year’s federal election. Don’t forget, some of Trudeau’s advisers are the people who brought former premier Dalton McGuinty to power.

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Canadian investors outraged after being shut out of Paladin Energy’s $138-million rights offering – by Peter Koven (National Post – November 26, 2014)

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

TORONTO – A group of Canadian retail investors is outraged after they were shut out of a rights offering that is poised to crush the value of their investment.

Uranium miner Paladin Energy Ltd., which is based in Australia but also trades in Toronto, announced a A$144-million ($138-million) rights offering this week to bolster its balance sheet ahead of a US$300-million debt repayment due next year.

Under a rights offering, existing shareholders are given the opportunity to buy stock at a discounted price — 32% in this case — to maintain their overall stake in the company. But in the Paladin deal, the Canadian retail crowd is being deliberately excluded, meaning they can only watch as they get massively diluted.

“I think the whole principle here is outrageous,” John McNeil, the former chairman and chief executive of Sun Life Financial Inc., said in an interview. He owns Paladin shares, and like many other small investors, he is phoning the company to complain.

The central issue is inconsistencies between the Canadian and Australian regulatory regimes. Put simply, it is a lot easier and cheaper for Paladin to push this deal through in its home country than to offer it in Canada as well.

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Ontario, Quebec should embrace Energy East pipeline – by Brad Wall (Toronto Star – November 26, 2014)

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.

 Brad Wall is the premier of Saskatchewan.

Saskatchewan Premier Brad Wall says the Energy East pipeline will be an economic boon to Canada, and to Ontario and Quebec in particular.

Plans for TransCanada’s Energy East pipeline that will move Alberta and Saskatchewan conventional oil to Atlantic Canada for refining while replacing the need for eastern Canada to import foreign oil are prompting considerable national debate. The National Energy Board is conducting a full review of the proposal as they are mandated to do.

We in Saskatchewan support the Energy East proposal. The project will generate significant economic activity, create jobs and increase tax revenue — particularly in Ontario and Quebec.

Energy East has been described as the largest pipeline project in Canada in over 50 years. A current gas pipeline with excess capacity will be repurposed to move western Canadian oil to refineries in eastern Canada. Two-thirds of the pipeline is already in the ground.

A pair of comprehensive analyses have been done on the proposal: one by Deloitte, the other by the Conference Board of Canada. Both point to the substantial benefits TransCanada’s plan will achieve.

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Sudbury Basin formed by comet, not asteroid, researcher says (CBC News Sudbury – November 22, 2014)

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

Laurentian University’s Joe Petrus says comet likely created major geologic structure, not asteroid

It’s been long believed the Sudbury Basin was shaped by an asteroid that hit the region more than a billion years ago, but a Laurentian University researcher now says it was likely a comet.

The Sudbury Basin is the second largest known impact crater on Earth — 62 kilometres long, 30 kilometres wide and 15 kilometres deep. PhD candidate Joe Petrus’s recent research looks at what exactly came crashing down from space to form the massive crater.

“Impacts provide … a way to connect space [and] earth by looking at the interaction of things that were in space that have come and created a massive crater on earth,” he said.

“Sudbury is kind of unique in terms of meteorite impact. It’s one of the largest and one of the oldest.” The fiery object that struck near Sudbury, 1.8 billion years ago, formed a deep hole that can be seen from space.

When it slammed into the earth, it punched a hole in the Earth’s crust, allowing the mantle below to well up and fill the basin with a thick sheet of melted rock.

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Canada’s unheard aboriginal narrative – by Lawrence Martin (Globe and Mail – November 25, 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.

Canada’s rank racism toward aboriginal peoples was institutionalized within the fundamentals of European philosophy and culture, says maverick thinker John Ralston Saul. Europeans insisted their principles were universal. “Of course they were universal. After all, they said they were.”

With their technological and cultural sophistication came a conviction of racial superiority. They were so superior, the writer adds, that they proceeded to massacre one another, as the aboriginals quizzically looked on, in one world war and then a second. A hundred million died in less than half a century.

More wars followed, along with more racist attitudes toward the destined losers. In more recent times, a more sympathetic attitude has been adopted toward indigenous peoples, but it still smacks of soft racism, according to Mr. Saul.

What’s missing, he robustly contends in his new book, The Comeback, is the realization that aboriginal peoples have been making a remarkable recovery and are now on the verge of taking a prominent place in this country.

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Renewables are not enough – by Margaret Wente (Globe and Mail – November 25, 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.

All over Ontario, giant wind turbines are sprouting up across the rural landscape and ruining people’s lives. Ordinary people are trying to fight them off in court, but they don’t have a chance. The multinational wind industry has a lot more money than they do. The law is on Big Wind’s side. So is Premier Kathleen Wynne’s Liberal government, which has pledged to triple the number of wind and solar generators and stick taxpayers with the bill.

But the fundamental problem with Big Wind is much bigger than its cost and unreliability. The problem is that today’s renewable energy technologies won’t save us from the effects of climate change – and we’re wasting our time by trying.

That’s the conclusion Google has reached. Google has invested many years and significant resources in tackling the world’s climate and energy problems. Its biggest initiative was called RE<C (Renewable Energy Cheaper Than Coal), a massive effort to find renewable energy sources that could compete in cost with coal.

Last week, Ross Koningstein and David Fork, two of the engineers at the heart of the RE<C project, published an article describing what they learned, and why Google threw in the towel. “We had shared the attitude of many stalwart environmentalists,” they wrote.

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Three of Canada’s premiers have a golden opportunity to serve the national interest – by Kelly McParland (National Post – November 24, 2014)

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

The leaders of three of Canada’s biggest provinces have a golden opportunity to contribute to the growth and prosperity of the country, throwing their weight behind a project of national interest while helping create jobs and support their own economies. To do so, however, may require two of them to demonstrate leadership in the face of short-term populist agendas with strong — if ill-informed — emotional pull.

Last week premiers Kathleen Wynne of Ontario and Philippe Couillard of Quebec agreed to follow a coordinated strategy in dealing with the Energy East project, the $12-billion pipeline that would move Alberta crude to the East Coast. Responding to popular concern about the impact of the pipeline on a range of interests, they issued a list of conditions to be met, including consultations with First Nations; due consideration of greenhouse gas emissions, adoption of the highest standards of safety and protection of the natural gas supply for consumers.

None of the conditions is unreasonable – what company is going to object to a demand for high safety standards? What’s worrying is the sense that Canada’s two biggest provinces may be positioning themselves for a repetition of the aggressive opposition adopted by British Columbia’s government in regard to several pipeline projects that would cross B.C. to Pacific ports.

Seeking to bolster her party’s low standing in polls before the most recent election, B.C. Premier Christy Clark took a combative approach to the $6.5 billion Northern Gateway project running from Alberta to Kitimat.

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Ridley delays expansion of terminal in B.C. – by Brent Jang (Globe and Mail – November 24, 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.

PRINCE RUPERT, B.C. – A federally owned coal-shipping operation in northern British Columbia is placing its expansion on hold for up to five years, getting only halfway toward its goal to double the terminal’s capacity.

Ridley Terminals Inc., a Crown corporation put up for sale by Ottawa nearly two years ago, has been ramping up its capacity in anticipation of increased coal exports to energy-hungry customers in Asia. Some industry observers estimate Ottawa might have been able to fetch $1-billion had the government sold the operation in early 2013.

But as coal prices spiralled downward over the past couple of years, producers vastly scaled back or cancelled exports. Interest among prospective buyers of Ridley has waned and the terminal’s market value declined. In less than two years, Ridley has gone from scrambling to keep up with surging demand to now having excess capacity – plenty of new equipment but dwindling supplies of coal that arrive in railcars at the Port of Prince Rupert.

During a tour last week, no ships waited to be loaded at the Ridley berth, and some conveyors used to help stockpile coal were halted. Ridley, which loaded its first coal ship in 1984, leases land from the Prince Rupert Port Authority.

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Why are Canada’s resource boards behind the curve? – by Janet McFarland (Globe and Mail – November 24, 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.

When it comes to putting women on company boards, Canada has two solitudes: the resource sector and everyone else.

Despite years of high-profile pressure to bolster the representation of women on boards – including new diversity disclosure rules from regulators taking effect Dec. 31 – Canada’s resource companies remain far behind the curve. Women fill just 7.8 per cent of seats on the boards of energy companies in Canada and 11 per cent in mining and forestry firms.

In most other sectors – including financial services, utilities, telecommunications, health care and consumer staples – women now account for between 20 per cent and 25 per cent of corporate directors, a proportion that has been growing rapidly as companies respond to calls from regulators, shareholders and advocacy groups for greater diversity in senior roles.

Calgary-based corporate director Stella Thompson, a retired Petro-Canada executive, says the slow pace of improvement on board diversity in the energy sector is becoming an embarrassment for women in Alberta’s oil patch.

“There are lots of capable women to help with boards,” she says. “You don’t necessarily have to be the CEO of an oil company – you need a few of those, but you don’t need all of them.”

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‘Canada Brand’ Harmed By Misbehaving Mining Companies, Feds Finally Realize – by Bruce Cheadle (Canadian Press/Huffington Post – November , 2014)

http://www.huffingtonpost.ca/business/

OTTAWA – It’s taken almost a decade of loud, often unwelcome advocacy, but the federal government appears to finally recognize that Canada’s international brand needs a little spit and polish.

In back-to-back addresses this week to a Mining Association of Canada luncheon, two federal cabinet ministers repeatedly stressed the critical importance of what they called the “Canada brand” — and how it is a key to grabbing new business in the mining sector.

“We as a government and Canadians broadly speaking expect our companies to do business in a way that reflects the highest ethical standards, that reflects the highest environmental standards, the highest level of corporate social responsibility, the highest level of transparency,” International Trade Minister Ed Fast told the gathering at an Ottawa hotel.

Fast recited a host of laudatory statistics: about 1,200 Canadian mining companies operate more than 8,000 properties in over 100 countries, with 35 per cent of global exploration budgets coming from Canada.

“Can we do things better? Of course, there’s always things we can improve,” Fast finally conceded. “But I’m absolutely confident that we have a very, very good story to tell.” Natural Resources Minister Greg Rickford had already warmed up the crowd by cautioning that “there can be no compromise” on environmental stewardship and social responsibility.

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Callinex to target high-grade copper- and zinc-rich VMS deposits in Manitoba (MiningWeekly.com – November 21, 2014)

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

HANNESBURG (miningweekly.com) – TSX-listed CallinexMines has adopted an aggressive new strategy to discover and develop high-grade copper- and zinc-rich volcanogenic massive sulphide (VMS) deposits.

The company has identified its Flin Flon and Pine Bay projects as the focus of future exploration based on potential to host the Flin Flon mining district’s nextVMS deposit. Both projects are located within 20 km by road to Hudbay Minerals’ processing facility in Flin Flon, Manitoba, which is projected to require additional ore in the coming years.

President and CEO Max Porterfield said: “I am eager to lead the renewed exploration focus on VMS deposits within the Flin Flon mining camp. Prior to the 2011 spinout from Callinan Mines, the company has benefited from several VMS discoveries based in its project portfolio, including the Callinan and 777 mines.

“Additionally, existing infrastructure and Manitoba’s favourable permitting environment can be leveraged to significantly reduce capital costs and lead times to production.”

He added that the strategic shift in focus “comes at a time when the zinc market faces a medium-term supply deficit and copper continues to have positive long-term fundamentals”.

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