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Canadian Media Resource Articles

China’s potash deal with Russia threatens Canadian profits – by Carrie Tait (Globe and Mail – September 25, 2013)

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.

CALGARY — China has bought a chunk of one of the world’s largest potash producers, giving the Asian country more control over what price it should pay for the fertilizer – a move that could drag down prices for the mineral and eat into profits for Canada’s potash companies.

China Investment Corp., Beijing’s sovereign wealth fund, agreed to acquired a 12.5-per-cent stake in Russia’s OAO Uralkali. The deal – a debt-for-equity exchange between CIC and a company owned by three Russian oligarchs – comes after Uralkali said it intends to break from Belarus Potash Co., the cartel it had with state-owned Belaruskali.

Companies controlled by Beijing have invested billions of dollars as part of an overall strategy to secure energy supplies as well as basic manufacturing and building materials. In Canada, Chinese oil and gas companies, along with CIC, are significant energy players. CIC’s deal with Uralkali fits the recent Chinese model: Invest in resources in order to secure supply and exert some control over prices.

China is the world’s most populous country and largest potash consumer, and its stake in Uralkali could hurt Canada’s fertilizer producers because they could further lose pricing power.

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Peter Munk responds to his critics – by Peter Munk (Globe and Mail – September 25, 2013)

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 article published in this newspaper on Sept. 18, 2013, David Parkinson was unfairly critical of me and the governance practices at Barrick Gold Corp. Mr. Parkinson went so far as to suggest that I was treating Barrick as if it were my “personal piggy bank.” You have extended to me the opportunity to rebut his criticisms, for which I am thankful.

I founded Barrick more than 30 years ago. In the period since, Barrick has become one of the most successful companies in Canada, and one of the world’s largest and most profitable gold mining companies. Barrick now has operations on five continents and more than 25,000 employees. In the most recent fiscal year, Barrick had record revenues of more than $14.5-billion. In the last three years alone, despite some major non-cash write-offs, Barrick had operating cash flows of more than $16-billion; and EBITDA (earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization) of more than $23-billion. Measured by these key metrics, this ranks Barrick as one of the top performing companies on the Toronto Stock Exchange over the period.

Contrary to Mr. Parkinson’s assertions, the board of directors of Barrick takes its governance obligations very seriously. Moreover, the compensation arrangements referred to in his article were approved both by Barrick’s compensation committee, comprised entirely of independent directors; and subsequently and unanimously by the independent directors of the board as a whole.

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B.C. Mining Protest: Company Pulling Out From Mt. Klappen – by The Canadian Press (Huffington Post – September 24, 2013)

http://www.huffingtonpost.ca/british-columbia/

VANCOUVER – A Canadian mining company is moving to diffuse a growing dispute with First Nations over a proposed open pit coal mine in northern B.C., by pulling out of the mine site for several months.

However, Fortune Minerals (TSX:FT) said it is not leaving Mount Klappan for good, and that the company remains committed to the mine in an area considered sacred by First Nations.

“While all of Fortune’s activities at the project site are focused on gathering necessary information that will be used in a B.C. environmental assessment process, … the company has faced disruptive and damaging protests,” the firm said in a statement.

On Sunday, about 40 members of the Tahltan First Nation, including elders, moved into the Fortune’s camp site at Mount Klappan and asked the workers to leave.

Tahltan members had earlier issued what they called an “eviction notice, requiring the company to halt its exploration activities and leave the area,” said a news release issued by the Tahltan Central Council on Tuesday.

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Japan Inc. shows it means business in Canada – by Claudia Cattaneo (National Post – September 25, 2013)

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

A major topic loomed large during Tuesday’s first official visit to Canada by Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe: building a long-term energy relationship for the benefit of both.

It’s well known that energy-poor Japan has been eyeing Western Canada’s abundant natural gas deposits as a new energy source, particularly since the Fukushima disaster in 2011 shut down its nuclear industry, and that Canada is equally motivated to sell energy to Japan as a way to diversify its energy markets away from the United States.

The big hurdle to what could be a union made in heaven is price: Japan is struggling to pay the premium prices for imported liquefied natural gas (LNG) that are prevailing in Asia, partly due to its own increased demand since Fukushima, and is bargaining hard for a new energy deal with Canada that it can afford.

While contracts are ultimately the domain of the market, Abe told reporters in Ottawa the two countries agreed to co-operate more closely on natural gas and praised Canada as a stable source that can provide natural gas at competitive prices. Showing it means business, Japan Inc. has moved en masse to Canada over the past two years to sweeten the relationship through investment.

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[Saskatchewan Premier] Wall silent on Cameco tax move – by Murray Mandryk (Regina Leader-Post – September 24, 2013)

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

It’s been six years since Brad Wall was elected Saskatchewan premier, but it was three years ago at this time when he cemented himself as a populist politician.

A proposed takeover of Potash-Corp by multinational South African-Australian mining giant BHP Billiton left Wall on the horns of dilemma: Should he subscribe to his philosophically conservative roots and simply allow the market/shareholders to sort this matter? Or should he act in the best interests of a province whose priority would be PotashCorp’s market share and, thus, royalties?

Compounding matters were BHP Billiton’s eagerness to excuse itself from the marketing cartel Canpotex, which controls offshore potash sales, versus the fact that BHP Billiton was in the early stages of developing what may be the province’s biggest potash mine and one of the first new mines to be built in 40 years.

By setting aside his philosophy and choosing to put the interests of Saskatchewan taxpayers first, Wall established himself as a populist leader voters could look to, to do the right thing … even if that meant sometimes going against his natural inclinations.

However, Wall’s future political and governance success will largely depend on his ability to demonstrate that this wasn’t just a one-off and – when the situation requires – that he is capable of taking on the corporate giants on behalf of the Saskatchewan citizenry.

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Boom towns could tax resources: municipalities – by Jeff Lee (Vancouver Sun/Canadian Press – September 19, 2013)

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

While the federal and B.C. governments are pushing hard to open up Canada’s liquefied natural gas reserves for export to Asia, local municipalities are raising concerns about the impacts the dramatically rapid developments will have on them.

Whether it is the pressure on local policing, health care and community resources that pop-up boom towns will have on neighbouring cities to the impact on infrastructure such as roads and sewers, municipalities in the northern half of B.C. are tepidly raising a caution flag at this week’s Union of B.C. Municipalities Convention.

“We’re not saying we don’t want the economic investments. We do,” said Oliver Ray, executive director of the North Central Local Government Association. “But with investment in LNG will come some heavy pressures on our municipalities, and we’re worried about the impact that can have on us.”

A third of the association’s 30 resolutions to the UBCM deal with concerns over the impacts caused by rapid resource development. The association represents all local governments in the northern half of B.C., including more than 400,000 residents.

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Mining labour shortage coming in next 10 years – by CBC News Sudbury (September 23, 2013)

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

Mining Industry Human Resource Council, Canadian Institute of Mining looking at options

Canada is poised for a big labour shortfall in the mining field — and Sudbury is not immune. According to the Mining Industry Human Resource Council, there could be a need for 150 to 200 thousand workers by 2023.

The head of the MIHR said the organization is coming up with strategies to make up for the gap. “Based on our forecasting, Sudbury will need about 20,000 new workers between now and the next 10 years,” Ryan Montpellier said.

“So really, we’ll need about 2,000 new people per year for the mining industry — due to some growth, but primarily due to replacement demand, or people leaving towards retirement.”

A recent industry report estimated that 25 per cent of current workers in Canadian mining will be eligible to retire by 2023. Meanwhile, the Canadian Institute of Mining is working on a new campaign to address the threat of a labour shortage in the global mining industry.

The executive director of the CIM said Canada could be short 100,000 workers in the next decade. “Right now, the industry doesn’t have a good enough handle on the global requirements,” Jean Vavrek said.

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Barrick Gold’s brave (and scary) new world – by David Milstead (Globe and Mail – September 21, 2013)

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 buzzword at Barrick Gold Corp. is governance, as the miner responds to unhappy shareholders by adding new members to its board and revising its pay practices for key executives.

The changes that may make the biggest difference to its survival, however, are occurring at the Toronto-based company’s mines. During the past few months, Barrick has cut its head count and deferred capital spending. It has also slashed its dividend as the price of gold has slumped.

As the most debt-heavy miner in the industry, Barrick has the most to lose as gold prices decline. It also has the most to gain as gold prices rise, which may explain why the shares are now near $20, up about 40 per cent from their weakest points earlier this year, as gold has bounced off its recent lows.

Investors who choose Barrick as a means of playing a gold rebound, however, could be in for a long, painful slog if the metal’s price languishes.

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Coal mining protest in B.C. set to erupt – by Margo Harper (Globe and Mail – September 21, 2013)

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.

An increasingly tense standoff between a B.C. First Nation and a London, Ont.-based coal company in a remote mountain valley known as Sacred Headwaters is set to erupt as protesters flaunt their month-long presence on a drilling site and taunt the RCMP to arrest them.

For the Tahltan First Nation, which has worked both with and against industry, the stakes are high: It is determined to halt the development of an open-pit coal mine in a spot it views as the land of origin, the birthplace of all waters.

“We dare Fortune to get us arrested. We have cameras here. We will make sure the world knows what’s going on,” said Rhoda Quock, spokeswoman for the protest group Kablona Keepers, in a statement.

Fortune Minerals Ltd., which has invested $100-million to develop what it says may be the world’s biggest undeveloped deposit of high-quality, clean-burning coal, has no intention of giving up on the Arctos Anthracite project.

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Staking Claim: Ontario’s Ring Of Fire Brings Opportunity And Fears To First Nations – by Sunny Freeman (Huffington Post – September 23, 2013)

http://www.huffingtonpost.ca/

Staking Claim is a multi-part series exploring the proposed Ring of Fire mining development in Ontario and how the First Nations communities are preparing for economic activity and the environmental and societal consequences of Canada’s next resource rush.

BETWEEN LONG LAKE No. 58 AND LONGLAC, Ont. — Along this desolate stretch of Northern Ontario highway, an idyllic white chapel is perched on the point of a peninsula next to to a “No Swimming” sign wedged into the poisoned shoreline that juts into glistening Long Lake.

On the opposite side of the Trans-Canada Highway, a downtrodden young man, a filled plastic garbage bag slung over each shoulder, saunters past a long-idle train toward the swampy lowland of the Long Lake No. 58 First Nations reserve.

There are no job opportunities where he is headed and no businesses, save for a single band-owned gas bar. Dilapidated box houses, many boarded and abandoned, line the three roads that form the reserve.

Two kilometres east is Longlac, the self-proclaimed “Gateway to Northwestern Ontario” and last stop for eastbound travellers — 14 hours from Toronto — in search of a coffee shop or motel ahead of a 200-kilometre stretch of uninhabited land.

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Sept. 19, 1992: Labour tensions high as Yellowknife blast kills replacement gold miners – by Chris Zdeb (Edmonton Journal – September 19, 2013)

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

Nine gold miners were killed in an explosion during a strike at the Giant Gold Mine in Yellowknife in one of the worst mass murders in Canadian history. The replacement workers were riding in a man-car more than 200 metres below the surface when the blast happened about 10:30 a.m. Six victims were from Yellowknife, two from Ontario and one from New Brunswick.

The union vehemently denied any responsibility for the explosion, which was investigated by the RCMP. Still, union officials expected violence in Yellowknife to get worse as more people who blamed the union for the explosion vented their anger. The mine was built in the 1930s and owned by Royal Oak Mines Ltd. It had continued to operate through the strike with replacement workers.

About 240 members of the Canadian Association of Smelter and Allied Workers walked off the job on May 23 in response to the company asking workers to take wage and benefit cuts and to tie any new contract to the price of gold, because of declining gold prices.

Workers wanted better pension benefits, improved safety standards and a five- to 10-per-cent wage increase.

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Hollywood vs. oil sands? Not a fair fight – by Gary Mason (Globe and Mail – September 20, 2013)

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.

Calgary — Once again, Alberta’s oil sands have become a whipping boy for the rich and famous.

Actor Robert Redford is the latest in a recent procession of actors and celebrities to voice opposition to the province’s petroleum patch. In a short but powerful video released this week, Mr. Redford calls northern Alberta’s “the dirtiest oil on the planet” and casts the development in the most unflattering light imaginable, saying “toxic tar sands fuel” is helping to destroy the planet.

The week before, singer Neil Young gave a speech in Washington that garnered international attention, comparing the sight of the oil sands to Hiroshima after it was annihilated by an atomic bomb. The singer did an air tour of the controversial resource development with one-time Hollywood starlet Daryl Hannah, better known these days for her political crusades than her movies.

Canadian-born director James Cameron is also among those who have visited the area. He has urged Alberta politicians to do more to protect First Nations lands from the titanic levels of pollution and destruction he said are caused by the oil sands.

Not surprisingly, many in Alberta are sensitive to the attacks by the entertainment crowd, whose regular treks to the oil sands have been dubbed “Hollywood eco-tourism.”

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Jim Flaherty: Ottawa, B.C. and Ontario agree to establish co-operative securities regulator – by Gordon Isfeld and Barbara Shecter (National Post – September 20, 2013)

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

OTTAWA/TORONTO – When Jim Flaherty first envisioned a single national securities regulator, he couldn’t have imagined that seven years on, it would still be very much a work in progress.

Even now, there appears to be a lot of work left to do. Regional concerns over federal oversight — and constitutional issues —have so far hamstrung efforts by the finance minister to create a Canadian equivalent of the U.S. Securities Commission.

So instead, Mr. Flaherty, acknowledging he won’t get an iron-clad agreement from all the provinces and territories in the near future, is going with what he’s got: two provinces, albeit significant players in the capital markets, agreeing to sign on to a voluntary, cooperative arrangement.

And he’s hoping most of the 13 separate securities agencies will join up as well. Mr. Flaherty, joined by his Ontario and B.C. counterparts, announced Thursday the creation of the Cooperative Capital Markets Regulators (CCMR), as it will be called. It will be based in Toronto — the financial hub of Canada — and take responsibility for overseeing common national rules.

“It isn’t a federal regulator, it isn’t a provincial regulator, it’s a common regulator, a cooperative regulator, which will share powers [between] borders and government.

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Ontario’s power disaster – by Terence Corcoran (National Post – September 20, 2013)

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

New study highlights desperate need for reform the province’s vast dysfunctional and costly electricity regime

For almost five years FP Comment has inveighed against the Ontario government’s profoundly uneconomic and costly electricity regime, a dictatorial and monopolist system that uses taxes and subsidies to greenify the power system of the largest provincial economy in Canada.

As I wrote in 2009: “In the midst of a major economic meltdown, and with looming budget deficits totaling more than $18-billion, now might not be the best time for the government of Ontario to be embarking on a crushing new green energy policy that could add billions to the province’s electricity costs. But Ontario Premier Dalton McGuinty is nothing if not immune to the folly of his own righteous policies and the fiscal crisis he faces as a result.”

Since then, via former Canadian banker Parker Gallant’s ongoing series — Ontario’s Power Trip — along with reports from consultant Tom Adams and many others, the growing absurdity of the regime has been detailed and documented on this page: Rising costs, market distorting feed-in-tariffs, subsidies to wind and solar, exports of power to New York at below cost — not to mention the $1-billion scandal over cancelled gas plants.

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Vale mine death plea disappoints union – by CBC News Sudbury (September 19, 2013)

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

The union that represents workers at Vale says a $1-million fine and guilty plea related to the 2011 deaths of two of its miners aren’t enough.

The nickel miner’s plea agreement was the largest fine ever levied under Ontario’s Occupational Health and Safety Act. Vale pleaded guilty to three charges, but six other charges were dropped.

“[The fine] will not have an impact,” said Mike Bond, chair of the health, safety and environment for Steelworkers Local 6500. The union conducted its own eight-month investigation into the tragedy, and Bond maintains the company should have faced criminal charges.

“We need support from the enforcement bodies that are there to protect and hand out penalties and discipline,” he said. The plea agreement means the case will not go to trail, and Bond said Vale won’t have to answer questions about what happened.

“In our views, the facts will never be on the books,” he said. Sudbury Police investigated the deaths of Jason Chenier and Jordan Fram, but announced last year that no criminal charges would be laid.

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