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Canadian Media Resource Articles

Time to make Canada free of conflict minerals – by Paul Dewar (Toronto Star – April 03 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.

Paul Dewar, New Democratic Party MP for Ottawa Centre riding, is the Official Opposition’s Foreign Affairs critic.

Today (Thursday, April 3) the House of Commons is to begin debating my bill C-486, the Conflict Minerals Act.
The illegal trade of conflict mineral from the Democratic Republic of the Congo and other parts of central Africa has been funding and fueling the deadliest war since the Second World War. The Conflict Minerals Act is a significant and proactive step toward ending the trade of conflict minerals and eventually ending the war.

The scale of the crimes in the Congo, and the connection between consumers and the conflict, is shocking. More than five million people have been killed. Rape is used as a weapon of war – with an estimated 48 women raped every hour. In 2012, there were 2.2 million people displaced and driven away from their homes.

Bill C-486 is part of an international trend to end the trade in conflict minerals and improve consumer awareness of product supply chains. The aim is to cut off the financial resources that sustain the horrors of war in the Congo. 

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How Quebec politicians are piggybacking on the battle for Osisko Mining – by Nicolas Van Praet (National Post – April 4, 2014)

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

MONTREAL – Business and politics mix freely in Quebec, sometimes in dangerous ways.

So when Yamana Gold Inc. announced early Wednesday it had struck a friendly deal to buy half of Montreal-based Osisko Mining Corp.’s mining and exploration assets while maintaining Osisko’s head office, it didn’t take long for provincial politicians to react. We are in an election campaign after all and in the eyes of some, there are points to be scored piggybacking on the affairs of private enterprise.

The governing Parti Québécois, eager to cast itself as the best defender of made-in-Quebec businesses, quickly called a press conference to discuss the transaction.

“This is very good news for Quebec’s mining industry,” declared natural resources minister Martine Ouellet, noting the partnership will split assets including Osisko’s flagship Canadian Malartic gold mine in the Abitibi region of Quebec. Finance Minister Nicolas Marceau focused on the role of the Caisse de dépôt et placement du Québec in the deal, saying the pension fund’s presence as a financial backer ensures Osisko will remain an independent publicly traded company.

For its part, Quebec’s Liberal Party, which is set to take power April 7 according to the latest poll, has insisted it wants any deal for Osisko to be a friendly one.

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Clarke Inc proposes three Sherritt board nominees – by Henry Lazenby (MiningWeekly.com – April 3, 2014)

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

TORONTO (miningweekly.com) – In its attempt to shake up the board of diversified miner Sherritt International, Halifax-based investment firm Clarke Inc on Thursday named its three nominees for election to the Sherritt board at the Toronto-based mining company’s annual and special meeting on May 6.

Under the leadership of Clarke president and CEO George Armoyan, a group of concerned shareholders nominated Armoyan, resource advisory and investment business Astor Group CEO Ashwath Mehra and 30-year accounting and international business veteran and Municipal Group of Companies VP of finance and CFO David Wood for election to the Sherritt board.

In a statement published on Thursday, the concerned shareholders sought to ensure that Sherritt’s board acted on behalf of all shareholders and increased its focus on creating shareholder value.

“Directors should share in the risks and the rewards alongside the shareholders of Sherritt. We believe a primary cause of Sherritt’s dismal performance is that the board has no incentive to improve the return to shareholders. “The directors are not significant investors but are exceptionally well paid, no matter how the company or its shares perform. Sherritt belongs to its shareholders. Together, we can regain the value lost,” Armoyan said.

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Editorial: Barrick rejigs exec pay – by John Cumming (Northern Miner – April 2, 2014)

The Northern Miner, first published in 1915, during the Cobalt Silver Rush, is considered Canada’s leading authority on the mining industry. Editor John Cumming MSc (Geol) is one of the country’s most well respected mining journalists.  jcumming@northernminer.com

Businessman and Bay Street veteran Peter Crossgrove, the one-time Placer Dome CEO and long-time Barrick Gold director, published his memoirs last year, and it makes for some lively and insightful reading, especially in light of Barrick’s newly revamped executive compensation program.

In his book titled “Boardroom games: You’re fired! When core values, respect and meaningful business practices are compromised for money and prestige,” Crossgrove is blunt in his criticism of the Barrick board, from which he was booted a couple of years ago to make way for Goldman Sachs’ John Thornton, who will become full Barrick chairman at the April 30 annual meeting, as founder Peter Munk retires.

“What do I think Barrick has to do to recover?” writes Crossgrove in 2013. “First of all, I would say they should find at least three directors who know the operating side of the business and form a technical committee . . . I suggest the chair, vice-chair and board members’ salaries be cut by 70%. They should only allow the chief operating officer the use of the corporate jet and get rid of the advisory board, which is a large expense and should be deleted . . . in 22 years I can only recall one meeting with the advisory board, whom I believe meet one day a year and are paid $100,000 per year.”

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Osisko finds white knight in Yamana Gold deal aimed at fending off Goldcorp – by Nicolas Van Praet (National Post – April 3, 2014)

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

MONTREAL – Osisko Mining Corp. chief executive Sean Roosen had to come back to his shareholders with an attractive alternative to Goldcorp Inc.’s bid or risk embarrassment. What he’s given them instead is a tricky transaction with Yamana Gold Inc. and two pension funds that the market is still struggling to digest.

Now, with its bid set to expire Friday, Goldcorp has to decide whether to raise its offer or walk away in a politically charged battle for Canada’s largest gold mine.

In a surprise agreement that values Osisko at about $3.4-billion, Toronto-based Yamana said Wednesday it will buy a 50% interest in Montreal-based Osisko’s mining and exploration assets. The two companies would be equal partners in Osisko’s operations and Osisko would maintain its head office in Montreal. Osisko’s flagship Malartic gold mine in Quebec would be run through a joint operating committee.

“This allows our Osisko shareholders to maintain their ownership in Canadian Malartic [while monetizing] shareholders who want to receive liquidity,” said Mr. Roosen, who owns 5% of Osisko.

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Osisko finds white knight in Yamana – by Rachelle Younglai (Globe and Mail – April 3, 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.

In an effort to block Goldcorp Inc.’s hostile bid, Osisko Mining Corp. cut a complicated deal with Yamana Gold Inc. and two Canadian pension funds that will allow Osisko to operate its large gold mine in Quebec.

Toronto-based Yamana will use cash and its stock to buy a 50-per-cent interest in Osisko’s mining and exploration assets for $1.37-billion. Osisko will keep the rest of its company. That will give Osisko shareholders cash, a stake in Yamana, and a new common share of Osisko that’s worth $3.35 apiece, according to the companies.

Combining the new Osisko and the Yamana offer, the total per-share value is $7.60 for every Osisko share, the companies said. That is 10 per cent higher than Osisko’s closing price on Tuesday and 20 per cent more than Goldcorp’s current cash-and-stock offer of $6.33 a share.

As part of the friendly arrangement, Osisko will keep its head office in Montreal and continue to operate its flagship Canadian Malartic gold mine. The Quebec connection has become a key talking point for Osisko, whose chief executive officer Sean Roosen has been playing up the company’s ties to the province ahead of a provincial election next Monday.

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Flash Boys’ rigged tale ignores high frequency trading’s revolutionary effect on markets – by Terence Corcoran (National Post – April 3, 2014)

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

Michael Lewis’ Flash Boys is a rigged market fairy tale of little significance

This is the story of how Michael Lewis, veteran producer of Wall Street pot boilers, rigged media coverage for his new book, Flash Boys: A Wall Street Revolt, and conned just about everybody. And I mean rigged. First Mr. Lewis appeared on CBS’ 60 Minutes Sunday night for a little front-running on the Monday launch of Flash Boys. Then he strung together a couple of words so as to manipulate public attention paid to the book and trigger an artificial jump in sales and line his own pockets with fat royalties — maybe 15% — on the spread between the C$32.95 retail price of the book and the cost of producing it.

The words he used on 60 Minutes were: “The stock market is rigged.” In a New York Times Sunday Magazine adaptation of the book, Mr. Lewis says “The stock market really was rigged.” That’s a pretty good sales pitch if you’re trying to sell a book about the stock market. The odd thing is that Mr. Lewis never actually says those words in the book. The words Flash Boys also fail to make an appearance, leaving readers guessing as to who they are.

Possibly the Flash Boys are the group surrounding Brad Katsuyama, the Canadian employee at Royal Bank of Canada in New York who is credited with having uncovered market manipulation by unscrupulous traders in the big-game business of computer-driven high frequency trading (HFT).

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Canadian says ‘moral compass’ led him to solve unfair gaming of stock markets by high-frequency traders – by Armina Ligaya (National Post – April 1, 2014)

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

Even though Canadian trader Brad Katsuyama had found the elusive answers to a question that baffled even the most powerful Wall Street investors, he had a tough time, at first, even getting a meeting in the executive offices of one of the top financial firms in the United States.

The Markham, Ont.-native worked in the Manhattan offices of the Royal Bank of Canada, a bit player in Wall Street eyes, and was armed with a degree from Wilfrid Laurier University, not an ivy-league pedigree school.

But after a few minutes with Mr. Katsuyama, it was clear he had cracked the code of the next frontier of finance: how some high-frequency trading firms game the stock-market system to skim profits in a fraction of the time it would take to blink an eye, and how his software could get around this.

“I think at first, when I walk into the office, I’m not impressing anyone, right?” said Mr. Katsuyama, in a phone interview from New York. “But after five minutes of talking, I think I had their attention. It is kind of nice that it had more to do with what I was saying and not what I looked like.”

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Aboriginal talent pool central for Ring of Fire success – Noront – by Simon Rees (MiningWeekly.com – April 2, 2014)

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

TORONTO (miningweekly.com) – Engaging with the growing aboriginal talent pool is increasingly critical for those operating in Canada, Noront Resources VP for human resources Leanne Hall told members of the Canadian Institute of Mining’s Management and Economics Society on March 26.

“There are around 1 200 aboriginal communities in Canada currently located within 200 km of mineral properties. It’s estimated 60% of mining activity in Canada happens on aboriginal lands,” she said. “Aboriginal Canadians are the most accessible source of talent closest to our projects, so it makes sense to look to them for developing a workforce.”

Noront is developing its flagship Eagle’s Nest project in the Ring of Fire region, in northern Ontario, which it hopes to bring into commercial production in 2017. The project has just over 11.13-million tonnes proven and probable reserves grading 1.68% nickel, 0.87% copper, 0.89 g/t platinum and 3.09 g/t palladium.

Aboriginal people also represent one of the fastest-growing demographics in Canada. “Currently there are 652 000 aboriginal people in Canada of working age. By 2020, another 400 000 aboriginal youth will come on stream. So there will be a million aboriginal people available for work,” she said.

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The Monumental Copper Disconnect – by Christopher Pollon (TheTyee.ca – March 28, 2014)

http://thetyee.ca/

Click here for the entire series about copper: http://thetyee.ca/News/2014/03/24/Travels-with-Copper/

Billions to mine, refine and assemble into products that last maybe a year or so? Last in a series.

LANGLEY, B.C. — Not long ago this industrial park was farmland: now it’s home to a virtual mine harvesting metal, plastic and glass from all the electronics British Columbians throw away.

For anyone who has ever disposed of a cell phone, hair dryer or appliance at a B.C. drop-off box, this is where some of it goes: a graveyard of sorts, where “end-of-life” products take the first step toward life anew. In any given month, a million pounds of “e-waste” comes through this plant alone.

Cindy Coutts is the President of Sims Canada, a subsidiary of the biggest urban “mining” company on earth. Walking through the Walmart-sized plant (which will double to 60,000 square feet this year), she grabs a printed circuit board the size of a coffee table book and holds it up. Gold and copper gleam against a green backing.

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Welcome to Peak Copper – by Christopher Pollon (TheTyee.ca – March 28, 2014)

http://thetyee.ca/

Click here for the entire series about copper: http://thetyee.ca/News/2014/03/24/Travels-with-Copper/

It’s not far off. So, why aren’t there more operations like this one in BC’s north? Fifth in a series.

FORT ST. JOHN, B.C. — The stretch of Highway 97 in the northeastern B.C. Interior between Dawson Creek and Fort St. John is an odd place for a two-kilometre traffic jam — until you consider that this roadway straddles a resource boom.

Gregg Drury is idling his pick-up on a July morning amid logging trucks, oil field suppliers and RVs, trying to get to the metal salvage yard he operates for ABC Recycling near Fort St. John. He’s doing a huge business these days buying all the metal discarded from old farms, local residents, and more than anything else, the oil patch.

“They’re generating incredible amounts of waste up here,” he says. “From pipelines, I get all that steel, but when they tear a plant down for instance, there’s lots of aluminum, stainless steel, and excess copper and wire.”

The metal salvage yard buys thousands of pounds of copper each day. It’s a tiny part of the business by volume, but huge in dollar value. Steel fetches about eight cents a pound, aluminum about 40 cents; copper, anywhere from $2 to 2.40.

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Cell Phones, Brought to You by BC Copper via China – by Christopher Pollon (TheTyee.ca – March 27, 2014)

http://thetyee.ca/

Click here for the entire series about copper: http://thetyee.ca/News/2014/03/24/Travels-with-Copper/

Home to Apple’s Foxconn plant, Kunshan is China’s Silicon Valley. But for how long? Fourth in a series.

KUNSHAN, CHINA — The kid standing outside the barbed wire fence at Unimicron’s electronics factory near Shanghai is feeling anxious. “Is the work hard?” he asks a middle-aged man, a private recruiter who brought the youth here.

The man tells him to relax. “It’ll be easy. Don’t worry.” It’s a Wednesday morning in September, and I’m standing with a crowd of recent high-school grads gathered to submit resumes at Unimicron, one of the world’s biggest electronics manufacturing companies, and a destination for copper mined 9,000 kilometres away near Princeton, B.C.

These kids are gathered here hoping to land an entry level factory job. High-school grads with no formal training are being offered up to CDN$680 (4000 Renminbi) per month to start, with medical insurance, room and board included (no tattoos allowed, see the translated job ad they are responding to here.)It’s a package that would have been unthinkably rich even five years ago, when Shanghai was booming as a low-cost workshop to the world, drawing millions of migrant labourers from across rural China.

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Where Copper Meets Fire – by Christopher Pollon (TheTyee.ca – March 26, 2014)

http://thetyee.ca/

Click here for the entire series about copper: http://thetyee.ca/News/2014/03/24/Travels-with-Copper/

Naoshima Island in Japan is a surreal melting pot of BC metal and fine art. Third in a series.

From the deck of a private ferry racing across the Seto inland sea, Naoshima Island appears as a tower of yellow rock on the horizon, tipped in a lush emerald. As we approach, blue-uniformed figures appear, darting in tiny vehicles around an imposing industrial complex bearing the red insignia of Mitsubishi, one of the world’s most powerful corporate conglomerates.

If this were a James Bond movie, Naoshima would be the island lair of an arch-villain. Instead it’s home to one of Japan’s oldest operating copper smelters, in almost continuous use since 1917. It’s also the first destination for the raw copper produced at the Copper Mountain mine near Princeton, and much of the rest of the copper mined today in British Columbia.

I came expecting Mordor, only to find the world’s oddest fine art display, with a 230-metre smokestack rising from the northern tip. In a surreal twist that is uniquely Japanese, Naoshima is also a world famous art gallery “park,” covering most of the island’s 17 square-kilometres. It’s home to three major art galleries featuring works by Pollock, Warhol and Monet.

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Betting at the Copper Casino – by Christopher Pollon (TheTyee.ca – March 25, 2014)

http://thetyee.ca/

Click here for the entire series about copper: http://thetyee.ca/News/2014/03/24/Travels-with-Copper/

That would be Vancouver’s mining district, where BC’s future is low-grade and high-risk. Second in a series.

VANCOUVER, B.C. — British Columbia copper ends up in smartphones, in the cars we drive, in our plumbing and electrical systems, as well as in our scrap yards and landfills. But to understand how it gets there, you need to visit a nondescript office tower on Pender Street in Vancouver’s financial district. Or perhaps more aptly put, Vancouver’s mining district.

If mining capital were mineral ore, Vancouver would be the mother lode of all mother lodes. More publicly-traded mining companies are headquartered here (and in Toronto) than anywhere else on earth: 60 per cent of all mining corporations on the planet are found in Canada. Their collective market value in 2012 approached half a trillion dollars: an estimated $449 billion. (See sidebar.)

Many in the mining industry view this global cluster as proof that we are the unrivalled masters of mining on the planet. This has some basis, but the reality is a lot more complex.

“The single largest reason for the concentration of head offices here,” says Alan Young, former executive director of the watchdog group Environmental Mining Council of B.C., “is that stock exchanges like the TSX Venture Exchange or TSX [Toronto Stock Exchange] have been developed to promote venture capital that mid-level and small exploration companies require to exist.”

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REVIEW: Bre-X – Dead Man’s Story – by Marilyn Scales (Canadian Mining Journal – April 1, 2014)

Marilyn Scales is a field editor for the Canadian Mining Journal, Canada’s first mining publication. She is one of Canada’s most senior mining commentators.

You don’t have to be an industry insider to remember the story of Bre-X – the 200 million oz of gold in the jungles of Borneo that disappeared overnight. The story of the company’s rollercoaster ride – propelled by enormous greed – made headlines all over the world and severely damaging the reputation of Canada’s stock exchanges and mining community.

The facts should be familiar. A junior explorer sets out in a remote part of Indonesia to make a gold mine. They drilled, and released promising results. Investors invested, driving up the Bre-X stock price, and the company suddenly had no shortage of investors. More drilling was done, and even better results were released. The analysts loved the project. Bre-X management made higher and higher contained gold estimates – 20 million, 30 million, 100 million, and finally 200 million oz of gold just waiting to make everyone rich.

Of course, promises of huge riches attracts huge appetites. Bigger companies considered buying out Bre-X and gaining control of the Busang gold. The head of the Indonesian government, Suharto, wanted the pot of gold enough to usurp Bre-X’s claim to the property and asked an American miner to develop the project.

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