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Canadian Media Resource Articles

Ottawa needs tighter controls on resource wealth, says Nobel prize winner – by Richard Blackwell (Globe and Mail – April 10, 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.

The federal government needs to take a stronger role in ensuring the benefits of Canada’s resource-based economy flow to all its citizens, one of the world’s most respected economists said Thursday.

Joseph Stiglitz, a Nobel prize winner and a professor at Columbia University, said Canada has done relatively well in making sure that resource wealth is used to benefit all its citizens, but Ottawa needs to do more if it wants to be in the top ranks or resource-intensive nations.

He was speaking in Toronto at a press conference launching a conference sponsored by the Institute for New Economic Thinking and the Centre for international Governance Innovation.

Generally, economists talk of a “resource curse” where countries with an abundance of resources tend to perform poorly, Prof. Stiglitz said. That’s because the domestic currency tends to be high, impairing manufacturing and exports, and the resource sector can be subject to wide fluctuations in commodity prices.

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Why privatizing First Nation resources is a really dumb idea – by James Munson (ipolitics.com – April 10, 2014)

http://www.ipolitics.ca/

In the clamour of capitalism that is the Prospectors and Developers Association of Canada convention in Toronto, at least one tiny mining company wasn’t willing to move with the pack.

Golden Predator Mining Corp., a junior with gold properties in the Yukon owned by Americas Bullion Royalty Corp., has had its life made complicated by aboriginal land right regimes in the territory, but it wasn’t willing to criticize those rights as a whole.

Janet Lee-Sheriff, vice-president of communications and First Nations relations for the firm, refused to describe a 2012 Yukon Court of Appeal decision as a hindrance to business, as many in her industry have over the past year. The decision, which expanded a company and mining department’s duty to consult an aboriginal community all the way up to the early staking process, wasn’t a bad thing if you knew how to engage a community, she said.

The Fraser Institute couldn’t disagree more. And it couldn’t be more presumptuous. The policy direction of the last 40 years – whereby negotiations, agreements and Supreme Court decisions have grown and expanded aboriginal rights over resources to ever-unprecedented levels – hasn’t been a good thing for miners, according to one of the authors of Divergent Mineral Rights Regimes, a report released by the institute last week.

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Vancouver is biggest winner when forests, farms and mines do well – by Don Cayo (Vancouver Sun – April 9, 2014)

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

A lot of city slickers underestimate the value of resources to the B.C. economy, but a new think-tank makes the case that it is Metro Vancouver that benefits most when traditional hinterland industries prosper and grow.

“An initial boost to natural resources in B.C. spreads to other industries through demand for inputs or more spending induced by higher incomes,” writes Philip Cross, formerly StatsCan’s chief economic analyst, in a paper released today by Resource Works, a newly minted, Vancouver-based think-tank that intends to specialize in resource-related issues.

“The income and jobs this generates enriches all of B.C., especially the Lower Mainland,” Cross writes. “It is the cities that provide the wide range of financial, business and even transportation services used by the resource sector. It is also in the cities where the higher incomes in the resource sector and its spinoffs are spent on a wide range of retail and personal services.”

Cross bases his conclusions on sophisticated forecasting techniques developed by StatsCan — a combination of labour market analysis and a detailed analysis of tax records that document purchases by resource firms from suppliers. This not only provided “a precise accounting of all the inter-relationships among industries needed to produce all goods and services in Canada,” but also allowed him to look at how the benefits are shared among regions and provinces.

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Activist investor George Armoyan calls for ouster of Sherritt CEO – by Peter Koven (National Post – April 10, 2014)

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

TORONTO – Activist investor George Armoyan has called for the chief executive of Sherritt International Corp. to be fired, raising the animosity between the two sides ahead of a scheduled proxy showdown at next month’s annual meeting. In a circular filed Wednesday, Mr. Armoyan revealed he has been pushing Sherritt to replace CEO David Pathe with a “qualified executive who has operating experience.”

“The guy is not an operator; he’s not a leader. He was just put in there by default,” Mr. Armoyan, the CEO of Clarke Inc., said in an interview. He added that some Sherritt insiders, including former directors, have indicated to him that there is a vacuum of leadership at the company.

He said he has nothing against Mr. Pathe, but simply does not think he is CEO material. He noted that Mr. Pathe was an associate lawyer on Bay Street who joined Toronto-based Sherritt as assistant general counsel in 2007. He kept getting promoted, and six years later he was CEO. In Mr. Armoyan’s mind, he is not qualified to lead a mining company and Sherritt could recruit a much stronger candidate.

Sherritt did not comment on Mr. Armoyan’s plan to replace Mr. Pathe, but did state that the activist has not provided “any alternative to Sherritt’s current strategic plan or any credible ideas to increase shareholder value.” Both sides have said they are committed to cutting costs and reducing debt.

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Goldcorp sweetens hostile Osisko bid to $3.6-billion – by Bertand Marotte and Rachelle Younglai (Globe and Mail – April 10, 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.

MONTREAL/TORONO — Goldcorp Inc. is raising its hostile bid for Osisko Mining Corp. to $7.65 per share or $3.6-billion in an attempt to knock out a friendly deal between Osisko and Yamana Gold Inc.

Vancouver-based Goldcorp said on Thursday its offer now stands at 0.17 of a Goldcorp common share plus an increase in the cash portion of its offer to $2.92 for each Osisko share, from 0.146 and $2.26 respectively.

Goldcorp’s previous unsolicited bid was valued at about $6.30 per share. The agreement between Montreal-based Osisko, Yamana and two of Canada’s biggest pension funds is valued at $7.57 a share. The key asset Goldcorp is after is Osisko’s Canadian Malartic gold mine in northwestern Quebec.

Osisko chief executive officer Sean Roosen said Goldcorp’s offer is an improvement but does not sufficiently value Malartic’s potential. “It’s more respectful but it certainly doesn’t offer the same potency and the upside to Canadian Malartic that the Yamana-Osisko bid does,” he said in an interview.

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How much longer before the public tires of extremist environmental theatrics? – by Peter Foster (National Post – April 9, 2014)

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

There are signs that some on the more sensitive members of the green left may already sense the ground shifting beneath them

The enemies of fossil fuels were out in the streets of Bucharest and other Rumanian cities this week protesting Chevron’s plans to move the country towards shale gas self-sufficiency. They bore banners sporting such balanced messages as “Chevron US, you can’t just drop in uninvited and leave death in your wake.” Agence France Presse reported one student declaring “We have seen the effects of fracking on the environment in the U.S. and we do not want the same to happen here.”

But what she meant was that she had “seen” the kind of agitprop peddled by the likes of the movie Gaslands. There has been virtually zero impact from fracking in North America, but it has been established as a “cause” for young rebels, thus the facts must not be allowed to intrude on the social media-fuelled Two Minutes Hate.

The question is how much longer the public is going to be sympathetic to such theatrical displays. The more obvious it becomes that radical environmentalism is effectively the ally of regimes such as Vladimir Putin’s Russia and Nicolas Maduro’s Venezuela, the more tolerance for it is likely to decline.

As it becomes clearer that many of those who want to hold up fracking in Europe, or halt the Keystone XL pipeline, are as much enemies of democracy and prosperity as any strongman or caudillo, their inordinate power must wane.

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Why this “greeny” supports pipelines – by Robert McLeman (National Post – April 8, 2014)

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

Robert McLeman is an associate professor of geography and environmental studies at Wilfrid Laurier University.

As a professor at Wilfrid Laurier University in Waterloo, Ont., I teach introductory environmental studies to hundreds of students each year. I impress upon them the need to use less fossil fuels, to reduce our ecological footprints, and to live with nature and not at its expense.

I train them how to think systematically about environmental problems, and to look for innovative solutions to them, like making urban spaces into oases for pollinators and using backyard rinks to teach people why we should care about global warming.

I practice what I preach: I ride my bike to work in the dead of winter, I buy locally grown foods, and the coffee in my cup is fair trade organic, of course. In short, I am what many of you would call a “greeny.” My politics are less overtly green, but still lean in that direction. (Don’t get me started on how I feel about Revenue Canada auditing the David Suzuki Foundation while our finance minister goads them on.)

It was important to give you the preceding glimpse of where I’m coming from, given the statement I am about to make: I support the building of pipelines.

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Copper price expected to fall, possibly test $6 000/t as supply surges – GFMS – by Henry Lazenby (MiningWeekly.com – April 8, 2014)

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

TORONTO (miningweekly.com) – The global copper market is expected to post a moderate surplus this year, which will result in copper prices remaining under pressure, the fifth instalment of Thomson Reuters’ ‘GFMS Copper Survey 2014’ has found.

The average yearly price was expected to fall below $7 000/t in 2014 for the first time since 2009, with a test of the $6 000/t level deemed likely over the second half, the report states.

Launched on Tuesday during the CESCO/CRU copper conference in the Chilean capital city Santiago, this year’s study noted how copper prices continued to exhibit a downside bias in 2013, as a sharp acceleration in global mine supply and uncertainties over the global economic recovery dented the red metal’s near-term prospects.

GFMS said that the copper market was in a largely balanced position in 2013, despite global mine output rising by 8%, its fastest pace in more than a decade. Robust demand growth, a tight scrap market and delays in processing concentrate into refined metal limited the size of the market oversupply.

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Doyle’s exit from Potash well-timed – for him – by Brian Milner (Globe and Mail – April 9, 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.

Potash Corp. of Saskatchewan faces a future that is far more complicated than its illustrious recent past. The golden era of buoyant sales, tight supplies and soaring stock values are plainly in the rear-view mirror. And now after a tough year marked by plunging profits and steep cutbacks, the captain is leaving the ship just as it sails into even rougher waters.

Bill Doyle will depart June 30 after 27 years with the company, the last 15 as CEO. Mr. Doyle, who is approaching 64, is certainly entitled to rest on his laurels. But his timing raises concerns about the course that the company intends to chart. And the fact that the board has anointed an outsider, Jochen Tilk, as his successor doesn’t cast a favourable light on Mr. Doyle’s mentoring abilities.

One marker of a successful tenure in the corner office is the ability to foster a coterie of senior executives capable of stepping into the top job. But in Potash’s case, a three-year search brought them to the door of Mr. Tilk, a 30-year mining industry veteran whose main attraction was apparently his “focus on operational excellence and disciplined growth,” in the words of board chairman Dallas Howe. That sounds to me like someone preparing for more heavy cost-cutting of the kind that shuttered some production and lopped off about 18 per cent of the Potash work force in December.

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Mulroney calls on Ottawa to appoint natural resource projects crusader – by Steven Chase and Kathryn Blaze Carlson (Globe and Mail – April 9, 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 — Former prime minister Brian Mulroney is calling on Ottawa to show greater leadership in getting Canada’s natural resources to world markets, warning this country needs a federal persuader-in-chief to secure support for major projects or risk being outmanoeuvred by foreign rivals.

He said uncertainty over major resource projects is hurting Canada. “Put simply, we cannot market our resources globally if we don’t have the infrastructure, political and industrial, to deliver them to market,” he said.

Mr. Mulroney did not criticize Prime Minister Stephen Harper directly in a speech Tuesday evening to an Ottawa audience that included federal ministers such as John Baird, who introduced the former prime minister, and Peter MacKay, whose father served in Mr. Mulroney’s cabinet. But he argued forcefully that federal leadership should take a more hands-on role in urging major players to support the construction of necessary infrastructure, from pipelines to liquefied natural gas facilities.

He called on Ottawa to create a resource development office, similar to the Trade Negotiations Office he used to build support for both the Canada-U.S. free trade agreement and then the North American free trade deal.

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Brian Mulroney didn’t come to bury Stephen Harper. But he didn’t come to praise him either – by John Ivison (National Post – April 9, 2014)

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

Brian Mulroney didn’t come to Ottawa to bury Stephen Harper. But he didn’t come to praise him either. The former prime minister was in the capital to speak about the “next big thing” for Canada — making the most of its treasure trove of oil, gas and mineral resources.

To do so requires political leadership, Mr. Mulroney said, and he was pretty clear he doesn’t think Mr. Harper has been providing it.“Prime ministers are not chosen to seek popularity, they are chosen to provide leadership,” he told the audience at the Canada 2020 dinner. “Leadership is the process, not only of foreseeing the need for change but making the case for change. Leadership does not consist of imposing unpopular ideas on the public but of making unpopular ideas acceptable to the nation.”

Mr. Mulroney knows about popularity — or lack of it. “Popularity is bad for you. I try to avoid it like the plague and I’ve been reasonably successful,” he said, back in 1992 when his personal numbers dipped to the lowest ever recorded for a prime minister.

But he was expressing a frustration that is becoming a common refrain from visitors to the capital. Jim Prentice, the former Conservative environment minister, made a similar point recently about the need to get pipelines built, develop alternative markets to the United States and beat back state-level fuel standards designed to keep oilsands oil from the American market.

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Quebec’s Plan Nord Promises A Mining Boom – by Daniel Tencer (Huffington Post Canada – April 8, 2014)

http://www.huffingtonpost.ca/

The business community — both inside and outside Quebec — breathed a collective sigh of relief Monday night when Philippe Couillard’s Liberals won a formidable majority government.

But for the resource sector, the defeat of the Parti Quebecois means more than just the removal of the risk of a separation referendum. It means the imminent acceleration of a massive mining development plan that will see an area in northern Quebec twice the size of France — a full 72 per cent of Quebec’s land — transformed over the next quarter century.

It’s called Plan Nord, and it was initially introduced in 2011 by the previous Quebec Liberal government of Jean Charest, whose successor, Pauline Marois, scuttled the project when the PQ came to power. Now the plan is back. Couillard made a slightly revised version of the plan a central part of his electoral platform.

“We’re putting most of it back as it was, because it was an excellent plan of sustainable development for Quebec,” he said, as quoted at Forbes. “Unfortunately the Parti Quebecois basically killed it when they came into office. They have a hostile attitude towards the mining industry, and private activity in general, so it wasn’t long before the signal was sent that this was over.”

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New Potash CEO takes reins amid tough landscape – by Rachelle Younglai (Globe and Mail – April 8, 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.

Potash Corp. of Saskatchewan Inc. made the surprise appointment of a new chief executive officer with no fertilizer experience as the miner trudges through one of its most difficult periods in its history.

Jochen Tilk, the former chief executive of Inmet Mining Corp., has worked in the Canadian mining industry for more than 25 years and is recognized as a skilled operator who built his company into a respected metal producer.

But Mr. Tilk is unknown in the potash industry, where a handful of players have held sway over prices for decades and built their market share through negotiated deals with fast-growing economies like China and India.

He will become CEO as the Saskatoon-based company struggles to adjust to lower potash prices after Russian-based producer OAO Uralkali ended a partnership with its Belarus rival, a cartel-like arrangement to sell the fertilizer. Before the breakup, the Russian-Belarussian union along with Potash Corp. and its North American equivalent called Canpotex Ltd. controlled 70 per cent of the global potash market.

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Let’s not forget we [Canada mining] need help too – Russ Noble (Canadian Mining Journal – April 2014)

Russell Noble is the editor for the Canadian Mining Journal, Canada’s first mining publication.

There was a story on the evening news recently about Prime Minister Stephen Harper flying off to somewhere and it showed him climbing the stairs to his plane with his parting view to us as usual, but what really caught my attention was that he really looked like he didn’t want to go.

Head down, one hand on the rail as he trudged up the stairs and when he got to the top, not even a turn and a waive. He just got on and the door closed. Again, he looked like he was muttering to himself: “Why me, why do I have to go there again. They don’t understand me and I hate the food?”

Anyway, unlike other foreign trips where he’s often hand-in-hand with his wife Laureen as they climb the stairs, turn, smile and waive, then board the plane, this time the Prime Minister looked weary and dragged out; fed up with travelling.

In fact, I bet if someone asked him what he’d rather be doing than flying for eight or 10 hours with an entourage of staff and various other invitees, including the Press, he’d probably say: “Nothing.”

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Potash Corp. takes dramatic U-Turn with new CEO hire Jochen Tilk – by Peter Koven (National Post – April 7, 2014)

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

To many people, Bill Doyle is Potash Corp. of Saskatchewan Inc.

His bombastic personality and eternally optimistic outlook played a key role in bringing the sleepy fertilizer industry to the attention of investors. His oligopolistic practices were a model for the sector. His strategy and vision never wavered, even when BHP Billiton Ltd. came knocking with a $40-billion offer. And his 15-year tenure as chief executive is the longest of anyone among Canada’s 30 most valuable publicly-traded companies.

It is simply impossible to think of Potash Corp. and not think of Mr. Doyle. The 64-year-old is a rock star within the fertilizer business, a friend or a frenemy of absolutely everyone, be they customers, investors or rival producers. They all have stories to tell about Bill Doyle, the industry’s quintessential promoter and senior statesman.

Yet despite all of Mr. Doyle’s success, Potash Corp. has gone in a very different direction with his replacement. Indeed, the company has hired someone who is his opposite in almost every way. Jochen Tilk is a disciplined, conservative executive known for his strong operational skills. Unlike Mr. Doyle, he has avoided the limelight and has never spouted conspiracy theories on investor conference calls.

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