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Two unions seek federal court muscle to oust foreign workers from B.C. mine – by Dene Moore (Vancouver Sun – November 5, 2012)

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

The Canadian Press – VANCOUVER – Two labour unions want a federal court to overturn temporary work permits issued to Chinese workers at a coal mine in northern British Columbia, arguing that there are unemployed Canadians who could fill the jobs.

Permits have been granted under the federal Temporary Foreign Worker Program to 200 Chinese workers to conduct exploration work at HD Mining International Ltd.’s Murray River mine near Tumbler Ridge, B.C.

The company has said it was not able to find workers in Canada with the specialized skills necessary. But the court action filed by the International Union of Operating Engineers Local 115 and the Construction and Specialized Workers Union Local 1611 maintains that is not the case.

“There is no evidence of a labour shortage nor is there an absence of suitable Canadian citizens or permanent residents for the jobs,” said the application.

It says HD Mining received 300 applications to work at the underground coal mine “despite the fact that HD Mining did not advertise widely and imposed unreasonable and unnecessary requirements on Canadian applicants.”

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Foreign workers shouldn’t get jobs Canadians can do: Kenney – by Kristy Kirkup (Toronto Sun – October 31, 2012)

http://www.torontosun.com/

OTTAWA — Immigration Minister Jason Kenney said Wednesday he wants to ensure the temporary foreign work program operates “on the basis of Canadians first” in light of concerns raised about permits granted to Chinese miners at a B.C. coal mine.

“Companies cannot access foreign workers unless or until they have demonstrated to the government that they have advertised the job in Canada, offering it to any qualified Canadians,” Kenney told QMI Agency.

“We never want to give jobs away to foreign workers if qualified Canadians are available and applying for them.”

Human Resources and Skills Development Canada is now investigating why the work permits were granted to about 200 mine workers at HD Mining International Ltd., located west of Grand Prairie, Alta.

Employers who wish to hire temporary foreign workers must apply for a “labour market opinion” from Service Canada that assesses “the impact the foreign worker would have on Canada’s labour market.”

“Concerns have come to light, subsequent to these labour market opinions being approved for that particular mine, that Mandarin was listed as a work requirement,” Kenney said.

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Striking South African miners killed at Canadian coal mine: reports – by Geoffrey York (Globe and Mail – November 1, 2012)

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.

JOHANNESBURG — Two striking miners have been killed by security guards at a Toronto-based company’s coal mine in South Africa, local reports say.

The deaths, confirmed by the company Thursday, are the latest in a year of sporadic violence that has killed more than 60 people at mines across South Africa, including 34 who were killed by police at the Marikana platinum mine in August.

In the clash on Wednesday, about 100 striking workers tried to storm a locked mine-explosives armoury at a coal mine owned by Toronto-based Forbes & Manhattan Coal, but were dispersed by security guards, police said.

“It is further alleged that the security officers chased some of the workers into an informal settlement near the mine and shots were fired, injuring two men,” police spokesman Colonel Jay Naicker said in a statement.

He said the two men died from their injuries in hospital, and police are investigating two counts of murder. The company confirmed Thursday that two of its employees were killed in the clash.

The company said it has suspended operations at its Magdalena and Aviemore underground coal mines in South Africa, where strikes have been continuing since Oct. 17.

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[B.C. coal] Miners Could Have Been Trained Here Easily – by Bill Tieleman (The Tyee.ca – October 29, 2012)

http://thetyee.ca/

Longwall coal mining is hardly the rare, elite skill politicians want us to believe. If you don’t think Chinese miners should be coming to British Columbia as temporary foreign workers in new coal mines, get ready to be really angry.

That’s because the federal Conservative government will ratify a foreign investment agreement this week, ensuring even more Chinese takeovers of Canada’s natural resources — and jobs.

And if you doubt that China-owned coal companies had no choice but to import their own workers to B.C. because no trained, experienced miners are available, prepare to get downright furious.

The reason is simple. Neither the coal companies nor the federal or B.C. governments wanted to train Canadian workers — even though it’s nowhere near as hard as they claim.

“We require temporary foreign workers because we are introducing a highly mechanized form of longwall mining to the province. There’s currently no active long-wall mining going on in Canada or B.C.,” says Jody Shimkus, vice-president of HD Mining International, one of the companies involved in developing up to four coal mines.

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Canadian gov’t investigates foreign worker permits for Chinese miners in B.C. – by James Keller (Vancouver Sun – October 30, 2012)

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

The Canadian Press – VANCOUVER – Ottawa is investigating controversial foreign worker permits that will allow as many as 201 Chinese miners to work a proposed project in northern British Columbia, a government spokeswoman confirmed Tuesday.

HD Mining International Ltd. has obtained permits for miners from China to conduct exploration work at its proposed Murray River project near Tumbler Ridge, B.C., located about 200 kilometres west of Grande Prairie, Alta.

The company insists there aren’t any Canadian workers trained in the specialized skills it needs. Details of those permits became public earlier this month, prompting several unions to demand Canadians be hired instead. There have also been allegations that recruiters in China demanded fees for the jobs, which HD Mining has denied.

Human Resources and Skills Development Canada is now investigating whether the permit applications met all the necessary requirements, said Alyson Queen, a spokeswoman for Human Resources Minister Diane Finley.

“The government is committed to ensuring that Canadians always have first crack at the jobs available in Canada,” Queen said in an interview Tuesday.

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B.C. jobs plan abandons local benefits and exploits workers – by Jim Sinclair (The [Vancouver] Province – October 29, 2012)

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

Jim Sinclair is president of the B.C. Federation of Labour.

News that a company backed by Chinese state-owned steelmakers plans to bring more than 200 Chinese miners to work temporarily in its coal mines in northern B.C. has put a much-needed spotlight on Canada’s Temporary Foreign Worker Program, as has news that recruiters in China are charging $12,500 a head for access to these mining jobs in Canada.

That these are the first jobs directly associated with Christy Clark’s jobs plan ups the politics and has embarrassed the premier and her government. However, the issue is much bigger than the current electoral cycle.

The Temporary Foreign Worker Program was, in theory, designed to ensure that short-term skills shortages would not stifle economic growth by holding up major projects. But the theory doesn’t match the reality. Whether in coal mining, fast food or construction, the TFW program has proven to be less about solving a labour shortage and much more about keeping wages low.

The program claims to require employers to search for local workers at the going pay rate, and come up empty before looking outside Canada.

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Teck makes cuts amid global tumult – by Pav Jordan and Carrie Tait (Globe and Mail – October 25, 2012)

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.

TORONTO, CALGARY – Canada’s largest diversified miner is cutting back in the face of a global economic slowdown.

Buffeted by volatile markets for the commodities it produces, Teck Resources Ltd. is deferring some $1.5-billion in capital spending over the next year or so, the latest in a string of Canadian resource companies to rewrite its plans in response to rising costs and an unpredictable outlook for the economy.

Among the casualties announced was Fort Hills, an oil sands joint venture in which Teck is a 20-per-cent partner along with Suncor Energy Inc. and Total SA. The project is not scheduled to begin producing oil until after 2017, but now some of the pre-production work will occur at a slower pace.

Canadian mining companies are increasingly joining the ranks of resource businesses that are being forced to rethink capital spending as the demand drops for key industrial commodities. The commodities cycle is sputtering along with the economies of the United States and Europe and as growth slows in China.

Suncor said in July that it was reevaluating tens of billions of dollars of planned spending, and pledged to apply “rigorous scrutiny” to the cost of three projects, including Fort Hills.

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B.C. government investigating claims about Chinese recruiters looking for miners – by Jeremy Nuttall (Vancouver Sun – October 23, 2012)

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

Canadian Press – VANCOUVER – The provincial government is investigating after the B.C. Federation of Labour complained an employment agency has been advertising for Canadian jobs, offering miners in China a chance to work here in exchange for exorbitant recruitment fees.

The investigation was launched because it is against the Employment Standards Act to charge a foreign worker a fee for information about employment or help them find a job in the province. Workers also cannot be forced to pay back any costs associated with recruitment to the company or agency.

“It is a serious allegation,” said Jobs Minister Pat Bell of a news release issued by Jim Sinclair, president of the B.C. Federation of Labour. “I hope he has substance to it. If he does, we will get to the bottom of it.”

But that’s not good enough for the B.C. Federation of Labour, which has been a vocal critic of the decision earlier this month to allow foreign, temporary workers into B.C. coal mines. “The only sensible thing to do is to suspend the permits and conduct a full investigation,” Sinclair said in the release.

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In eastern Ohio, coal fuels discontent with Obama – by Patrick Martin (Globe and Mail – October 18, 2012)

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.

CADIZ, OHIO — The people of this eastern Ohio region believe they are at war – with the Obama administration. Which is odd, considering that about 75 per cent of the men and women in the area routinely vote Democrat, and they supported Barack Obama in 2008 in large numbers.

The war is over coal and the administration’s policies to curtail its use in heating and power generation. Those are fighting words to this blue-collar district whose men have mined coal for more than a century and all of whose citizens have a stake in the mining and related industries.

The issue is so worrisome that many of those life-long Democrats are casting their ballots this election against Mr. Obama – one of the factors that is putting into doubt a repeat of the President’s decisive 2008 victory in this key swing state.

“It made me change my vote,” said Democrat Hooty McKee, a 50-something miner at the Hopedale Mine, 10 kilometres north of Cadiz. Not surprisingly, some of the 170 workers at the mine are distributing lawns signs for people to display: “Stop the War on Coal – FIRE OBAMA,” they all read.

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B.C.’s low-wage migrant coal mining jobs send us back to the future – by Thomas Walkom (Toronto Star – October 13, 2012)

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.

Early on in the 20th century, the silver and gold mines of Northern Ontario imported thousands of foreign workers. The mine owners said they were filling a labour shortage. But their real reason was to keep wages down.

So when native-born, anglophone miners went on strike in Cobalt or the Porcupine region, the owners shipped in French-Canadians. And when they went on strike, Finns were brought in and, after them, Ukrainians and Poles and Italians and Englishmen from Cornwall.

In every case, the point of the exercise was to bring in workers who were less likely to make common cause with those already there and who, therefore, would be willing to work for less.

It was an ugly time in our history and it gave rise to very ugly labour disputes. So it is depressing in the extreme to see employers, aided and abetted by the federal government, engage in the same discredited tactics.

The latest and most bizarre example comes from British Columbia where, as the Vancouver Sun has reported, four brand new coal mines in the province’s northeast are bringing in just under 2,000 temporary Chinese migrants to do most of the work.

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B.C. government knew for years of plan to import Chinese miners – by Craig McInnes (Vancouver Sun – October 11, 2012)

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

Young Canadian workers could have been trained for highly paid mining positions

How long does it take to train a coal miner? Granted, at least in Canada, it’s been a while since all that was required was a strong back, a desperate need of a job and a high tolerance for dangerous and dirty work.

But five years? That’s how long the provincial government has known that a company proposing an underground coal mine near Tumbler Ridge in northeastern B.C. wanted to bring in experienced miners from China as part of its operating plan because of a lack of skilled underground miners here.

As Vancouver Sun reporter Peter O’Neil noted Wednesday, Premier Christy Clark didn’t mention during her trade mission to China last November that most of the coal mining jobs created by a $1.4-billion Chinese investment in B.C. would be filled by Chinese workers. But at least her officials should have known that the rationale given in 2007 by the Canadian Dehua International Mines Group for bringing in miners from China appears to be essentially unchanged in 2012, despite her government’s focus on jobs for British Columbians.

As O’Neil reported, the first of a group of 200 temporary Chinese workers approved by the federal government will be arriving in B.C. in the coming weeks to start work on one of four projects that could provide employment for 1,600 to 2,000 Chinese miners and an estimated 480 to 800 jobs for Canadians.

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Global coalification – by Terence Corcoran (National Post – October 11, 2012)

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

Europe and Asia are massively expanding?

I’ve been looking into the coal industry, in a superficial way. And here’s the scoop. The coal industry is dead and dying, in the U.S. and elsewhere — if not right now, then pretty soon. Scientific American in May trumpeted the news: “The End of Coal Burning in the U.S.” The Wall Street Journal noted: “The Coal Age Nears its End.” And then there’s Canada’s in-house peakster: “Is Peak Coal Coming?” asks economist/author Jeff Rubin.

So there you have it, except that’s only the half of it. The other half is this: “Coal Era Beckons for Europe,” says BusinessWeek. Bloomberg reports that “Merkel’s Green Shift Forces Germany to Burn More Coal.” Another report, citing the World Resources Institute, said 1,231 new coal plants with total power capacity of 1.4 million megawatts are planned worldwide.

“Beyond the biggest users — China, India and the United States,” reports ClimateWire, “the assessment finds a heavy coal demand building in Russia, Vietnam, Turkey and South Africa. The United States, with 79 coal plants in the pipeline, ranks fourth in this category.”

These two contradictory views of coal cannot long coexist, and a gambler might be well advised to put his money on a coming coal boom. The idea that coal is dying seems to be mostly wishful thinking on the part of green activists, as well as some politicians and regulators in the United States and parts of Canada. Ontario aims to end dirty coal-fired power generation, at great cost to consumers who are now paying high prices for the putative clean alternatives, wind and solar.

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Chinese workers fill B.C. mining jobs – by Peter O’Neil (Vancouver Sun – October 10, 2012)

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

Canadians ‘just don’t have the experience’ to operate equipment to extract coal

The first of a group of 200 temporary Chinese workers approved by the federal government will start arriving in B.C. in coming weeks to work in the burgeoning northeast coal industry, a mine project spokeswoman confirmed Tuesday.

In total, anywhere from 1,600 to just under 2,000 Chinese nationals could find full-time work in four projects being proposed in coming years for the region, due to the shortage of underground mining skills in Canada, according to industry officials.

The four projects could create an estimated 480 to 800 full-time mining jobs for Canadians. Canadians “just don’t have the experience” operating the equipment needed to safely extract coal in underground mines, said John Cavanagh, chief executive of Vancouver-based Canadian Dehua International Mines Group Inc., a company founded by China-born Vancouver businessman Naishun Liu.

“Without the Chinese and the technology they’re bringing … these particular mines would not have been developed.” The necessity of foreign work ers wasn’t mentioned in B.C. Premier Christy Clark’s Nov. 9, 2011 news release from Beijing, in which she announced $1.4 billion in Chinese funding for two of the four coal projects.

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Revenge of the fossil fuels: Setbacks mount for renewable energy sector – by Yadullah Hussain (National Post – October 5, 2012)

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

After a fantastic run spanning a few years, the renewable energy sector has taken a number of hits recently, which suggests its inevitable march as the energy source of the future is far from certain.

“It’s pretty bleak — there is no way to sugar coat it. But I wouldn’t call it a lost cause,” says Matt Horne, director of climate change at the Pembina Institute.

While all sectors have ups and downs, there is a fear that renewables’ weaknesses could lead to structural changes, as policymakers no longer have the luxury of supporting and extending subsidies at a time of fiscal austerity.

And much to the dismay of environmentalists, fossil fuels are clawing their way back into the public’s good books. Or at least they are offering a compelling economic case that few can resist at a time of slow economic growth.

A number of factors have turned the tide. Plentiful oil and abundance of cheap natural gas, especially in the United States and Canada, with its promise of high-paying jobs has been an irresistible lure for governments desperate to create employment.

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Ottawa unveils new coal-fired plant emission rules – by Shawn McCarthy (Globe and Mail – September 6, 2012)

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 – The federal government has released final regulations for coal-fired power plants that eases the expected burden on utilities by allowing them to run their plants longer before having to replace them with lower-emission alternatives, and to average emission reductions among their plants.

The new regulations may force the closing of at least two coal-fired plants in Alberta by 2020 and prevent construction of one planned by Maxim Power Corp., unless the provincial government can reach an agreement with Ottawa to impose its own regulations while meeting overall federal targets.

Saskatchewan and Nova Scotia are both working with Ottawa to reach such a deal. In Saskatoon Thursday, Environment Minister Peter Kent unveiled the long-anticipated regulations which the government describes as being among the most stringent in the world, but are significantly weakened from what was first proposed two years ago.

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