Canadian miners caught up in Mali unrest – by Jessica McDiarmid (Toronto Star – January 23, 2013)

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.

Canadian miners in Mali are grappling with security as a French-led assault pushed rebel forces further away from the capital on Tuesday.

Some companies have reduced operations, cancelled exploration or pulled out foreign workers. But mining operations are still carrying on normally in Mali’s gold-rich southwest, where most companies work hundreds of kilometres from the fighting that has gripped the vast West African nation.

Toronto-headquartered IAMGOLD evacuated about six Canadian workers from several areas in early January when rebels began advancing southward toward the capital, Bamako, as a “precautionary measure,” said Bob Tait, vice president of investor relations.

It has cut some exploration activities but its two mines continue to operate normally, he said. IAMGOLD holds equal shares in the Sadiola and Yatela gold mines with AngloGold Ashanti, which operates both mines. Mali is Africa’s third-largest gold miner after Ghana and South Africa. Production — and investment — is rising as its government looks to take advantage of high metal prices worldwide.

As of 2011, Canadian mining assets in the country were nearly $500 million, ranking it ninth in Africa. There are more than 15 Canadian mining and exploration firms working in the country, according to Natural Resources Canada.

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More strife in South Africa’s troubled mines – by Margaret Evans (CBC New.ca – January 21, 2013)

 http://www.cbc.ca/news/

Labour unrest ripping through the country

Picture a site not far from the town of Rustenburg in the broad expanse of South Africa’s North West “platinum province,” along the border with Botswana. To one side stands the industrial hulk of the Lonmin mine, symbol of industry and (until recently) South Africa’s booming resource economy. It’s grey concrete shafts rise up out of the ground to tower over a maze of power lines.

Sprawled at its feet, the muddy shantytown that serves as home to the miners who fuel the industry, and scratch out their meagre living. In the distance you can see the red kopi, the hill where 34 miners met their end, shot dead by police in the midst of a wildcat strike in August. A crooked cluster of white wooden crosses, their memorial.

This is the stage where the most seminal event in South Africa’s recent history was played out, where the raw elements of a fractured society collided with deadly effect.

“They were killed right in front of me,” says miner Teboho Hlakentso. “And some of the people who got killed, they were not just shot, they were stabbed with spears by the police.

“So the people would be shot and they would be laying there wounded and dying and the police would take their spears and the police would finish them off with spears.”

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Environmental assessment of Cliffs Chromite project is off the rails – by Ramsey Hart (rabble.ca – January 18, 2013)

http://rabble.ca/

Rabble.ca is a left-wing news website and Ramsey Hart is the Canada Program Coordinator at MiningWatch Canada.

If you follow mining in Canada you’ve certainly heard about the much hyped “Ring of Fire” or McFauld’s Lake area of northern Ontario. This area on the boundary of the Hudson Bay lowlands and boreal shield is Oji-cree and Cree territory. It is also where Cliffs Natural Resources and Noront Resources are proposing the first of what could be many mining projects in the remote and relatively pristine area.

MiningWatch recently had an opportunity to comment on an important document that will guide Cliffs in drafting the environmental assessment for their project, the latest draft of the Terms of Reference. As reported in the Wawatay News Cliffs initially gave First nations and “interested parties” like MiningWatch only 15 days to comment on hundreds of pages of documents.

While the company justified this by saying it was a revision of a previously released document and the revisions were minor — a careful read of the documents showed this was not the case. In response to several requests Cliffs conceded to extend the deadline on comments until January 11. Joining MiningWatch in submitting comments were the Wildlands League, Wildlife Conservation Society (WCS) and Vermillion River Stewardship.

Unlike the joint review processes we are involved with there is no public registry of submissions for this project so it’s hard to know who else may well have submitted comments. Certainly we expect some of the affected First Nations will have. Neskantaga First Nation has an outstanding request with the Ontario Government for mediation over the terms of reference.

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Time to fight back against Hollywood’s [mining and oil/gas industry] misinformation – Gwyn Morgan (Globe and Mail – January 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.

Hollywood hates big business. Movies portraying corporate leaders as greedy villains have been common for decades, but the film that inspired today’s movie makers had its roots in British Columbia. That was the 2003 documentary The Corporation, written by a University of British Columbia law professor, Joel Bakan.

It featured a procession of leftist luminaries, including Naomi Klein and Noam Chomsky, uttering views such as that corporations turn citizens into “mindless consumers of goods that they do not want” and that “the problem comes from the profit motivation.”

Hollywood’s attack has escalated to the point where many films feature an anti-corporate “moral” message, the most popular of which portray industries as uncaring pillagers of the environment. The plot of James Cameron’s 2009 blockbuster Avatar featured a greedy mining boss intent on destroying an ancient forest inhabited by native humanoids on the distant planet of Pandora to mine a precious mineral called unobtanium.

Animated films for children also follow the lead; consider 1992’s FernGully: The Last Rain Forest, in which fairy folk help stop a logging company from destroying their forest home.

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Greece Sees Gold Boom, but at a Price – by Suzanne Daley (New York Times – January 13, 2013)

http://www.nytimes.com/

IERISSOS, Greece — In the forest near here, bulldozers have already begun flattening hundreds of acres for an open pit gold mine and a processing plant, which Canada’s Eldorado Gold Corporation hopes to open within two years. Eldorado has reopened other mining operations around here, too, digging for gold, copper, zinc and lead from nearby hills.

For some residents, all this activity, which promises perhaps 1,500 jobs by 2015, is a blessing that could pump some life into the dismal economy of the surrounding villages in this rural northeast region of Greece.

But for hundreds of others, who have mounted repeated protests, the new mining operation is nothing more than a symbol of Greece’s willingness these days to accept any development, no matter the environmental cost. Only 10 years ago, they like to point out, Greece’s highest court ruled that the amount of environmental damage that mining would do here was not worth the economic gain.

“This will be a business for 10, maybe 15 years, and then this company will just disappear, leaving all the pollution behind like all the others did,” said Christos Adamidis, a hotel owner here who fears that the new mining operations will end up destroying other local businesses, including tourism. “If the price of gold drops, it might not even last that long. And in the meantime, the dust this will create will be killing off the leaves. There will be no goats or olives or bees here.”

Tensions over new development schemes are being felt elsewhere in Greece, too, as the country stumbles into its sixth year of recession, eager to bring in moneymaking operations and forced by its creditors to streamline approval processes.

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No Means No: The Kitchenuhmaykoosib Inninuwug and the Fight for Indigenous Resource Sovereignty – by David Peerla

http://www.miningwatch.ca/

David Peerla is KI’s political advisor and former MiningWatch board member.

In 2006, the remote Ontario First Nation of Kitchenuhmaykoosib Inninuwug (KI) said no to a mining company, was sued for $10 billion, had its leaders found in contempt of court and jailed but eventually prevailed when, three years later, the Ontario government paid the company $5 million to go away. This is how it happened.

KI, a remote First Nation community of 1200 or more people, is located on the shores of Big Trout Lake, on the margins of the Hudson Bay lowlands, in one of the largest remaining roadless areas in North America. Far from being simply a “wilderness,” the lands that the KI depend upon for their cultural and spiritual survival, their sacred and spiritual sites, were being staked and drilled in an extensive Canadian mining boom fueled by recent finds of diamonds and record high prices for gold, platinum, uranium, base metals and nickel (Strauss 2006). The boom threatened to “enclose” a commons that KI have occupied since time out of memory, and it triggered one of a global series of circulating struggles between the state, resource capital and Indigenous peoples in Canada and the global south.

The immediate context for these struggles in Ontario was the free entry regime, a legislative framework where so-called Crown lands are open for mineral exploration entry, unless they are specifically withdrawn. Free entry is a neo-liberal fantasy. There was no legislative requirement under the Mining Act that government consult First Nations or other land users, prior to opening lands for mineral exploration.

There was no prior planning to establish which tracts of Crown land are culturally sensitive, or serve as critical habitat for endangered species, or are valued ecosystem components. In the words of lawyer Kate Kempton, “The problem is this is called a free entry system and it allows anybody and their dog basically to go out there and stake a claim to the land, which is often traditional territory of First Nations, without any consideration at all of their rights” (Kempton 2007).

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S. Africa’s Amplats to shed mines, 14,000 jobs – by Ed Stoddard (Globe and Mail – January 15, 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.

JOHANNESBURG — Reuters – Anglo American Platinum, the world’s top platinum producer, said it will mothball two South African mines, sell another and cut 14,000 jobs, risking a repeat of last year’s strikes when about 50 people died.

In a review announced on Tuesday that is seen as crucial to reviving the fortunes of Anglo American, which owns about 80 per cent of Amplats, the platinum producer said it aimed to cut output by around a fifth or 400,000 ounces.

But analysts have cautioned the cut could be overstated, as it is based on production capacity that Rustenburg mines have not matched for several years. Against forecast production, the cuts may amount to closer to 300,000 ounces.

Amplats has said it probably fell to a full-year loss because of the 2012 strikes, which were centred on Rustenburg where most of the job cuts will fall. The price of platinum rose over 2 per cent to 3-month highs, leaping past gold for the first since March last year, on concerns over supply.

Reaction was swift, with an Amplats labour leader threatening a strike across its South African operations if the indefinite closures, when they would be put on “care and maintenance”, go ahead.

“If they put any shaft on care and maintenance, all of the operations will go on strike. Nothing like this will be allowed,” said Evans Ramogka, labour leader in Rustenburg.

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First Nations leaders want in on natural resources boom – by Les Whittington (Toronto Star – January 11, 2013)

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.

OTTAWA—Over the next decade, a huge boom in Canadian natural resource projects — possibly worth $600 billion — is foreseen on or near First Nations lands. And this time, aboriginals are demanding their share of the economic pie.

Behind the complex issues of treaties and historic rights being raised by native leaders is the dollars-and-cents reality of who gets to pocket the benefits from Canada’s mining and petroleum riches.

Natural resources generate $30 billion in provincial and federal tax and royalty revenues annually, along with tens of billions of dollars in economic activity. With worldwide demand for commodities surging upward, Prime Minister Stephen Harper has anchored his government’s economic growth strategy on a massive expansion of the highly profitable natural resource sector.

For First Nations, gaining access to more of this wealth is vital to their hopes of improving their peoples’ living standards. So, new approaches to sharing resource riches will be a key part of any talks between Harper and aboriginal leaders.

At the same time, the ability of native groups to derail the Conservatives’ blueprint for prosperity by blocking natural resource projects has been made apparent by the Idle No More protests.

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Ring of Fire brings aboriginal issues to fore in Ontario Liberal leadership – by Teresa Smith (Ottawa Citizen – January 10, 2013)

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

OTTAWA — Ontario’s Liberal leadership candidates seem to agree that provincial relations with First Nations — specifically figuring out how to divvy up the resources in the province’s northern “Ring of Fire” — should be a high priority in the coming months.

For the past month, aboriginal leaders supporting Attawapiskat Chief Theresa Spence’s hunger strike have been demanding that Canada renew its “treaty relationship” with First Nations, and agree to share the wealth that comes from extracting natural resources found in their traditional territory.

In Ontario, however, the province is also a signatory to Treaty 9, which was signed in the early 20th century and covers 250,000 square miles of northern Ontario, including Attawapiskat and the Ring of Fire.

According to a former professor of political science who has been watching Canada’s relations with First Nations for 50 years, there can be no change to the treaty relationship unless the provincial government is at the table during discussions between aboriginal leaders and Prime Minister Stephen Harper.

University of Toronto Professor Emeritus Peter Russell said Ontario’s government in the 1880s fought tooth and nail to be included in negotiations so it would have access to the vast land and resources, initially for trapping and logging.

Now, with the discovery of billions of dollars in mineral wealth in the ground around James Bay — Treaty 9 territory, which was supposed to be “shared” by the three treaty partners — the stakes are high.

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First Nations threaten to limit access to traditional lands – by Rick Garrick (Wawatay News – January 10, 2013)

Northern Ontario’s First Nations Voice: http://wawataynews.ca/

Shibogama’s Margaret Kenequanash is warning the erosion of treaty rights will result in “very difficult” access to First Nations territory.

“Prime Minister Harper and his government can make all the legislation and impose funding cuts that will have devastating impacts and will erode our treaty rights,” said the executive director of Shibogama First Nations Council during the Nishnawbe Aski Nation Treaty Unity press conference, held on Dec. 21 in Thunder Bay. “This will not be recognized in our territory and will meet strong opposition without our free, prior and informed consent. And it will be very difficult to access our territory. All the prime minister is doing is removing his Majesty and his subjects’ access to our territory.”

Keneqauanash said the federal government’s move to vacate the treaty relationship leaves First Nations with no option but to use the resources within their territory to develop the future for their people without the involvement of government. “We are resilient people — we are survivors,” Kenequanash said. “We’ve been surviving for hundreds and hundreds of years. We will remain a strong nation.”

Kenequanash said the Shibogama chiefs support Attawapiskat Chief Theresa Spence on her hunger strike and demand a response from the prime minister on treaty issues.

“Bill C-45 (Jobs and Growth Act) is only one of many different pieces of legislation and policies that First Nations and tribal councils are contending with from the federal and provincial governments,” Kenequanash said.

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Chief Moonias vows to oppose Cliffs at all costs – by Shawn Bell (Wawatay News – January 10, 2013)

Northern Ontario’s First Nations Voice: http://wawataynews.ca/

Neskantaga Chief Peter Moonias burst into the national media’s attention in the spring when he announced to the world that he would stop a bridge to the Ring of Fire from being built over the Attawapiskat River, by any means possible.

“They’re going to have to cross that river, and I told them if they want to cross that river, they’re going to have to kill me first. That’s how strongly I feel about my people’s rights here,” Moonias said in May.

Since then Neskantaga has become a thorn in the side of Cliffs Natural Resources, the mining giant that Moonias has pegged an “American mining bully.”

Moonias’ efforts have brought international attention to the First Nations fight to be consulted and accommodated on what may be the biggest development ever in northern Ontario. For those efforts he has earned Wawatay’s male newsmaker of the year.

The First Nation is making true its claim to use any means possible to oppose the Ring of Fire until proper consultation gets completed.

In May the chief sent a series of letters to the Ontario government, demanding consultation and expressing his concerns over Cliffs’ announcement that it was going ahead with its Ring of Fire chromite mine, along with a north-south highway and a smelter in Sudbury.

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Rubicon Minerals appoints new operations boss – by Staff (Northern Ontario Business – January 7, 2013)

Established in 1980, Northern Ontario Business provides Canadians and international investors with relevant, current and insightful editorial content and business news information about Ontario’s vibrant and resource-rich North.

Rubicon Minerals has appointed a new vice president of operations and hired a new director of investor relations. “Putting in place a team that can take us to the next level is one of my key priorities,” said Michael Lalonde, Rubicion president and CEO, in a Jan. 7 statement.

Dan Labine is the new operations boss, effective Jan. 21 and Allan Candelario will handle investor relations. Labine has more than 35 years of engineering, mine operation, and project management experience, most recently as Goldcorp’s senior project manager in charge of the construction and development of the Cochenour project in Red Lake.

Rubicon is constructing a gold mine in the Red Lake district. Its Phoenix Gold project is slated for a 2014 startup. Labine supervised the construction of a five-kilometre underground haulage drift between the Cochenour project and its Red Lake mine infrastructure.

Labine previously worked in management for Inco, AMEC Earth and Environmental Ltd. and was a senior project engineer for Nordpro Mine and Project Management Services.

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The way to break the Northern Gateway logjam: aboriginal equity – by Brian Lee Crowley and Ken Coates (Globe and Mail – January 3, 2013)

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.

Brian Lee Crowley and Ken Coates are co-leaders of the Aboriginal Canada and the Natural Resource Economy project at the Macdonald-Laurier Institute, an Ottawa-based public policy think tank.

The bitter debate over the Northern Gateway oil pipeline project shows Canadian policy-making at its worst.

A piece of nationally significant infrastructure, the project is currently mired in a toxic mess, assailed by environmentalists, targeted by vote-hungry B.C. politicians and publicly challenged by many first nations. You could be forgiven for feeling a dreadful sense of déjà vu.

In the 1970s, an ambitious plan was mooted for a natural gas pipeline down the Mackenzie Valley. Aboriginal people and environmentalists protested. Justice Thomas Berger was named to head an inquiry that galvanized opposition to the pipeline, recommending that it be delayed until aboriginal people were ready to participate fully.

Eventually, companies created new aboriginal partnership models. Aboriginal communities and governments grew more familiar with the project and innovated by becoming equity partners. While some opposition remained, most in the region supported a pipeline that promised jobs for the North and revenue for aboriginal governments.

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Simplistic arguments from Theresa Spence, Idle No More could have tragic consequences for natives – by John Ivison (National Post – January 3, 2013)

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

“De Beers is investing $1-billion in the Victor mine near Attawapiskat. It agreed to pay
the band about $30-million over the 12-year life span of the mine. A further $325-million
in contracts has been funnelled through companies owned by the band, to supply catering,
helicopters, dynamite and the like. One wonders how Attawapiskat Resources Inc. has only
made profits of $100,000 on that level of revenue, but that’s for another day.” (John Ivison)

I made the observation on Twitter the other day that certain native leaders seem intent on conflict, and that they want the “hapless” Theresa Spence, the hunger-striking Attawapiskat First Nation chief, to become a martyr.

The reaction was venomous. One of the more considered respondents, Gerald Taiaiake Alfred, called me a “racist p—k” and threatened to kick my “immigrant ass” back to Scotland. And he’s a political science professor at the University of Victoria.

It brought home the power of what psychologist Jonathan Haidt calls “the righteous mind” — the righteous certainty that those who see things differently are wrong, while being completely blind to our own biases.

The prospect of rational debate on this subject is slipping away — and may be lost entirely if Ms. Spence dies. Canada is facing a tumultuous moment in its history with its native people, such as we haven’t seen since the Oka crisis.

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Canada’s pipeline squeeze Joe Oliver’s biggest challenge – by Shawn McCarthy (Globe and Mail – January 2, 2013)

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 — As the front man for the federal government’s resource development plan, Natural Resources Minister Joe Oliver enjoyed some key victories in the past year, but the continental battle over proposed pipelines rages on and the economic health of the Canadian oil industry is far from assured.

In the months ahead, Mr. Oliver will need to reassure Canadians that Ottawa’s overhaul of environmental assessment legislation will not undermine the safety of proposed pipelines, and that the sector’s success is a national priority, even as oil companies push ahead with controversial plans to extend their access across British Columbia and deep into Eastern Canada.

Mr. Oliver expressed a sense of vindication with the recent release of three reports illustrating the economic risks confronting Canada’s oil industry with its lack of access to key markets. Fears about a major Canadian industry hobbled by lagging infrastructure is what prompted the federal government’s effort to speed the process for pipeline approval.

The minister launched 2012 with an attack on “radical” environmental groups whose no-holds-barred opposition to new pipeline development threatened to undermine the value of Canada’s most strategic resource. Now, as a new year begins, Alberta heavy oil is selling at a near-record discount to international crudes, and analysts are warning that, without rapid construction of pipelines, the industry faces disaster.

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