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Sarah Palin’s Defence of Alaskan Mine Threatens Canadian Fish [Mine Tailings in Lakes] – by Toronto Star National Writer Linda Diebel

Linda Diebel is a National Writer for the Toronto Star, which has the largest circulation in Canada. The paper has an enormous impact on Canada’s federal and provincial politics as well as shaping public opinion. This article was originally published October 3, 2010.

The Dolly Varden carp isn’t much of a looker except, perhaps, to the opposite sex of the same scaly species. What is exceptional (other than a name from Dickens) is how the impending death of about a thousand of these duller members of the salmon family changed Sarah Palin’s life and influenced the fate of fish across Canada.

Of course, they’re not the only factor. Still, their role is impressive, considering these particular fish in southeastern Alaska’s Lower Slate Lake are, in all likelihood, quite dead.

It’s a sprawling story that begins with fish and grows to include mining conglomerates, politicians, lobbyists, promoters, environmental activists and, in Canada, lakes with names like Bucko, Bamoos, Fish (Teztan Biny to the Tsilhqot’in people), Sandy Pond and Ruby Creek.

Already, there are winners and losers; there will undoubtedly be more. Let me explain.

In June, 2007, Palin was governor of Alaska with political ambitions as vast as the northern sky. She’d already hired a savvy East Coast PR firm to promote Alaska (and herself) but she needed serendipity. And that’s exactly what pulled into Juneau in the form of a luxury cruise, sponsored by the conservative magazines The Weekly Standard and National Review. On board were elite American journalists, including William Kristol, Fred Barnes and Michael Gerson.

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The Political Storm Watch on Fish Lake [Taseko Mines Tailings]- by Wendy Stueck (Globe and Mail-September 11, 2010)

Wendy Stueck is a reporter for the Globe and Mail, Canada’s national newspaper with the second largest broadsheet circulation in the country. It has enormous impact and influence on Canada’s political and business elite as well as the rest of the country’s print, radio and television media.

Aboriginals and pro-development groups are on a collision course as they await decision on $800-million B.C. mining project

On the surface, Fish Lake looks serene – a sun-dappled body of water where fish jump in the shadows of snow-capped mountains.

But this lake, about 125 kilometres southwest of Williams Lake in British Columbia’s rugged Chilcotin Territory, is the heart of a battle that has put the federal and provincial governments on a collision course, pitted predominantly aboriginal concerns about the environment against the prospect of jobs and investment in a hard-pressed region, and raised fears of violent confrontations if a proposed mine goes ahead.

The federal government  is to make a final decision on the proposed Prosperity copper-gold mine, which the B.C. government has already approved, as early as this month.

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Vale Targets Pristine Lake for [Mine] Tailings – by Linda Diebel (Toronto Star-September 11, 2010)

Linda Diebel is a National Writer for the Toronto Star, which has the largest circulation in Canada. The paper has an enormous impact on Canada’s federal and provincial politics as well as shaping public opinion. This article was originally published on Saturday, September 11, 2010.

A coalition of environmental groups is fighting to set a national precedent by stopping Brazilian mining giant Vale from dumping 400,000 tonnes a year of toxic tailings into a Newfoundland lake known for its prize-winning trout.

“Sandy Pond is a wonderful, beautiful lake and all aquatic life is going to be annihilated,” said Meera Karunananthan, national water campaigner for the Council of Canadians and a member of the newly-created Sandy Pond Alliance. “The authorities are allowing the company to use our pristine water as one big garbage dump.”

Vale plans to use the lake for waste from a nickel processing plant, set to open in 2013. It’s located near Long Harbour on the Avalon Peninsula in southeastern Newfoundland, about an hour’s drive from St. John’s.

The environmental alliance recently filed a legal challenge in federal court to what they see as a loophole in the Fisheries Act. It allows Canadian lakes to be reclassified as “tailings impoundment areas.”

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SAVE THE OIL SANDS! – by Carrie Tait (National Post-August 21, 2010)

Carrie Tait is a reporter for the  National Post, Canada’s second largest national paper. This article was originally published on August 21, 2010.

Alberta’s oil sands are twice the size of England. Alberta’s oil sands tailings ponds are, collectively, the size of Washington State. Alberta’s oil sands help subsidize continued wars of aggression against other oil-producing nations such as Iraq, Venezuela and Iran.

These three statements all make Janet Annesley’s Top 10 list, a David Letterman-inspired collection of the most egregious falsehoods against the oil sands. As the vice-president of communications for the Canadian Association of Petroleum Producers (CAPP), she is on the front lines of a he said/she said public relations war.

The oil-sands industry, she concedes, has been getting creamed.

“We were caught flat-footed,” she said. “The oil-and-gas industry was not being effective in engaging Canadians because it didn’t have the ability to connect with them emotionally.”

Indeed, organizations have been taking pot shots — as well as making reasonable and fair critiques — at the oil-sands industry for years. They reached out to citizens on an emotional level. But the industry’s wonky technical rebuttals went ignored.

Now, after two years of revamping its PR strategy, CAPP hopes it can trump, even pre-empt, its critics’ charges.

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Hollywood’s Avatar Imitates Ontario Mining/Aboriginal Conflicts – by Juan Carlos Reyes

Juan Carlos Reyes is the organizer of the annual Learning Together conference and an aboriginal consultant with Efficiency.ca. He is passionate about human rights and works tirelessly to help improve the lives of Canadian aboriginal people. This column was originally published in May 2010.

There still may be a few among you who have yet to see James Cameron’s epic blockbuster Avatar.  My advice: Go see it! The movie offers an interesting vision of colonial mentality — something to which many Aboriginal people will relate. Here’s my take on it: White Americans travel to a distant planet to mine an invaluable mineral.

They hire researchers and scientists to placate the indigenous population (called the Na’vi) by socially infiltrating the community and attempting to convince them to move to more “suitable” locations. When the ruse fails, the mining company gets fed up and redefines the term “explosive climax.” The hero of the story, a white American military recruit, switches sides and helps lead the Na’vi to victory.

James Cameron has received a lot of heat over this movie. But I think that Avatar was developed brilliantly. Some reviews claim that Cameron’s idea was to portray the Black or Muslim or indigenous experience. Regardless of his motivation, the movie succeeds in its depiction of the way industrialized nations have “taken over” in many developing countries.

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Mining Projects and Aboriginal Communities – Respect and Consultation Must be Part of the Environmental Process – by David Hill

This commentary is from the digital version of the Canadian Mining Journal, Canada’s first mining publication.

David Hill is director and senior advisor of GMG Consulting Services. Reach him at david@gmgconsulting.ca. He has over 18 years of experience as a manager, senior policy advisor, project manager, program developer, communications coordinator and issues management advisor to the provincial government, Aboriginal communities and organizations, and private sector clients across British Columbia. He is a highly skilled and experienced facilitator, trainer, supervisor, planner, public speaker and writer and has professional training in project management and public speaking.

In addition to his direct experience with Aboriginal communities, Hill has also worked as a senior advisor and manager for Aboriginal relations for the BC Ministry of Energy, Mines and Petroleum Resources, during which time he facilitated engagement between Aboriginal communities and the mining and petroleum development industries, and negotiated consultation, accommodation and benefit sharing agreements between Aboriginal communities and the provincial government.

Commentary

Recently I heard Mike Kaplan, president and CEO of Aspen Skiing Co. in Colorado, say “Progressive companies aren’t thinking in terms of ‘or’, but of ‘and’: short-term financial performance and long-term growth, being environmentally and socially sound, and fiscally successful.”

Kaplan’s idea reminded me of the current controversy surrounding the Canadian Environmental Assessment Agency (CEAA)’s deliberation over the fate of the Prosperity mine, a multi-billion dollar project proposed by Taseko Mines. The most controversial aspect of the project is the destruction of Teztan Biny, more commonly known as Fish Lake, which includes a significant rainbow trout habitat, and which is considered sacred by the Tsilquot’in people. The BC environmental assessment (EA) office approved Taseko’s application, and the BC government hopes the CEAA will rubber stamp the project as well.

Perhaps not surprising, the Tsilquot’in Nation are among the loudest opponents of the project as it’s being proposed. The Tsilquot’in have expressed significant concerns over the long-term effects of the project on the environment, and the resulting infringement on their inherent rights, and feel they have been shut out of the review process so far.

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Ontario Place Overhaul Golden Opportunity for Mining Sector’s Image – Stan Sudol

Metal Men Comic Cover

Stan Sudol is a Toronto-based communications consultant, who writes extensively about mining issues.(stan.sudol@republicofmining.com)

Ontario Place, the provincial government’s Toronto lakeshore tourist attraction has put out a formal request for innovative ideas from the private sector to help overhaul the 39-year old park. http://www.ontarioplace.com/en/rfi/index.html

“There is significant social, cultural, and economic value in revitalizing Ontario Place,” states a provincial government news release. “It also presents opportunities to explore projects related to education, culture and the arts, recreational activities and Green Energy initiatives to showcase all that Ontario has to offer.”

Ontario Place opened in May 1971 and featured a five pod pavilion complex, an open air forum, pedal boats, a marina, restaurants and the world’s first permanent IMAX theatre, the Cinesphere. During the 1970s, Ontario Place routinely drew roughly 2.5 million visitors a year. In 2009, only about one million visited the facility.

Iron Man Comic Cover

In 1980 the provincial government constructed an ambitious display to specifically feature northern Ontario. The display was known as Ontario North Now and consisted of seven concrete silos linked by walkways on the western short of the park. I remember visiting that popular pavilion and realizing that it was a great opportunity to educate urbanites about the North’s wildlife, resource industries and their enormous contributions to the provincial economy and in our daily lives. Unfortunately, Ontario North Now was closed down many years ago.

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Coal Mining Ravages Appalachia Mountains – by Catherine Porter (Toronto Star-February 23, 2008)

Catherine Porter is a columnist for the Toronto Star, which has the largest circulation in Canada. The paper has an enormous impact on Canada’s federal and provincial politics as well as shaping public opinion. This article was originally published on Saturday, February 23, 2008.

They’re ripping the tops off mountains in West Virginia coal country to feed our insatiable appetite for power. It’s cheaper that way. And the trees and the animals and the flooding? It may not be pretty, but we’ve got all those dishwashers to run

CHARLESTON, WEST VIRGINIA–When you flick on the lights this evening, think of Kayford Mountain. Or what was Kayford Mountain, but now is a sprawling, muddy, trembling construction site 100 metres below Larry Gibson’s home.

Three years ago, Gibson hunted wild boar here, picked gooseberries and peaches, and sat under the shade of white oaks and hickories so thick he couldn’t see the sky.
“Now, you can see the sky below your feet,” Gibson says.

The boars have long scurried away. The trees have been reduced to a heap of pulp. The gooseberries have been bulldozed, replaced by rows of explosives. Just past the “Do Not Enter” sign, the mountain has been brought to its knees – cut down like a giant tree. Instead of gazing 200 metres up to its peak, as Gibson once did, you peer down at its rubbly remains, clawed at by giant shovels and trundled off by bucking yellow dump trucks.

There are no birdsong or rustling leaves – just beeping and grinding, and sounds like a 747 taking off.

A small sliver of the former mountain slumps to one side of the construction, like the last piece of Black Forest cake left amid the deflated balloons and streamers. On top are the trees and soil, then sandstone and shale, and at the bottom, a thick chocolate layer – coal.

“They say they can make the land better than it originally was,” says Chuck Nelson, gazing down sorrowfully from his friend’s property, hands in his pockets. “Who can do a better job than God? This land will never be no good for nothing.”

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Mining Accidents Do, and Will Continue to Happen – by Russell Noble

Russell Noble is the editor of the Canadian Mining Journal, Canada’s first mining publication. This editorial is from the May, 2010 issue.

Accidents but worst of all, deaths have been associated with mining ever since the Stone Age so I’m not surprised when I hear of people getting hurt or even killed by rocks.

Given they are harder than humans in their natural makeup, it’s no wonder that people nearly always come out second when rocks decide to fight back. Even “hard-as-rock” individuals are no match for their namesakes.

Cave-ins, slides, or even chips flying from the blow of a hammer or shrapnel from an unplanned explosion usually results in injuries or worse and as we all know, the latter has made too many headlines lately.

China’s Wangjianling coal mine in Xiangning, Barrick’s Bulyanhulu gold mine in Tanzania and most recently Massey Energy’s disaster in West Virginia are just few examples of what I’m talking about and being realistic about it all, similar occurrences will happen again, and again, and again.

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[Sudbury/Vale strike]Nickelled and Damned -by John Gray (Globe and Mail- March 26, 2010)

The Globe and Mail is Canada’s national newspaper with the second largest broadsheet circulation in the country. It has enormous impact and influence on Canada’s political and business elite as well as the rest of the country’s print, radio and television media.

This article was the cover story of the March 26, 2010 edition of the Globe and Mail’s monthly Report on Business magazine.

Down the road from the Copper Cliff smelter, where the Inco Superstack reaches 380 metres into a clear winter sky, striking Steelworkers stamp their heavy boots and feed a smoking fire pit with scrap wood. Massive ore trucks, engines growling, wait for permission to drive through the picket line. It is a familiar ritual; after 10 or 15 minutes, the picket captain signals the drivers to proceed and go about their business at the smelter—their business being strikebreaking.

When Local 6500 of the United Steelworkers walked off the job at the Vale Inco nickel mines, it was mid-July. The progression from agreeable summer weather to minus 20 C has been brutal. The best to be said about minus 20 is that it’s better than minus 30, just like strike pay of $200 a week is better than no pay at all. It’s hardly surprising that there’s little of the bravado that usually sustains picket lines.

The downbeat atmosphere may also reflect a sense among the strikers that the world has changed and that their strike has not been noticed by Canadians. There have been many strikes in Inco’s history—but every other one was decided in Canada. Now Inco is a subsidiary of a company based far away.

If the long stalemate in Sudbury had a sound, it might be that of the other shoe falling. When the takeover binge of the mid-2000s saw many of Canada’s pre-eminent companies disappear into foreign hands, the debate over the “hollowing out” of the domestic economy was muted. After all, Vale, like other acquisitors, made undertakings to preserve jobs and, in fact, to carry on much like before.

Now, it appears, things look very different to Vale.

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Inside Sudbury’s Bitter Vale Strike – by Linda Diebel (Toronto Star-June 6, 2010)

Linda Diebel is a National Affairs Writer for the Toronto Star, which has the largest circulation in Canada. The paper has an enormous impact on Canada’s federal and provincial politics as well as shaping public opinion. Linda Diebel is originally from Sudbury. This article was published on Sunday, June 6, 2010.

COPPER CLIFF, ONT.—My grandmother, Lillian Rose, was the sweetest person I’ve ever known. She gave up more than youth and beauty to leave England and come with her husband to the nickel mines of Canada’s Precambrian Shield. The Sudbury region, some 400 kilometres north of Toronto, is an unforgiving place for a fragile English rose.

During the last 40 years of her life, she had a disease that turned her once-pale skin red and left it blistered and scabbed. The constant flaking embarrassed her and, on bad days, the pain sent her to bed. My earliest memory — and I was no more than 18 months — was of being on her bed on Jones Lane in Copper Cliff, understanding even then I had to be gentle.

Doctors couldn’t help because they believed her allergic to the air she breathed, a soup of industrial pollutants. Sometimes the sulphur was so thick it seared the throat.

Move away, they said, and your skin will clear up. But they didn’t talk about that publicly. My grandfather Reg was an electrician at the Copper Cliff smelter and his job, and the livelihoods of the physicians themselves, depended on what was then King Inco, the world’s biggest producer of nickel.

Lately, Lillian Rose has been on my mind. Last Sunday, I was preparing to fly north to write about the 11-month-long strike against Inco, now called Vale, by 3,000 members of the United Steelworkers Local 6500. The pending trip evoked memories, and I found myself staring at a faded photo of my grandmother and me.

Still, I had no intention of writing about her.

My story would be about the culture of a company town from the perspective of generations of men who went down the mines, or worked in the smelter or refinery, at what used to be Inco. That seemed the best place to start, given that Inco’s owner since 2006 — Companhia Vale do Rio Doce — insists the working culture of its new operations must change.

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Thoughts on BP’s Oily Environmental Problem – by Marilyn Scales

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.

I’ve been in the United States these last three weeks, and have been bombarded with news of British Petroleum’s uncontrolled oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico. For readers who don’t already know, BP’s drill rig, Deepwater Horizon, exploded and sank six weeks ago. All of the company’s efforts so far have failed to stem the spread of crude oil from 1,500 metres under the sea onto the coast of Louisiana. Large parts of the fishery on which so many coastal residents depend are closed. A recent report said cleanup workers are falling ill, and workers at rigs near the site of the doomed BP rig, are being sent home because of the noxious smell.

The wall-to-wall news coverage of BP’s woes on American TV has made the tailings ponds of Alberta’s oil sands producers fade into the background. The anti-tar-sands activists have been quieter than usual, perhaps stunned into silence by the spill in the Gulf. The spill is estimated to have released at least 475,000 barrels and perhaps over 1 million barrels of crude oil.

Worse, hurricane season is underway, and expectations are that it could be a very active season. No one knows how far the crude oil could be spread by high-velocity winds.

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Killing the Goose that Lays the Mineral Sector’s Golden Eggs – The Industry’s Bad Reputation – by Jean-Francois Minardi

Jean-Francois Minardi is a senior policy analyst with the Fraser Institute, www.FraserInsitute.org.

The mining industry is under attack everywhere in Canada, even in the country’s friendliest location, Quebec.

Gone are the days when activists offered constructive criticism that allowed the industry to improve its corporate social responsibility profile and improve environmental standards in mining projects. Today anti-mining activists advocate one thing: an outright destruction of the mining industry.

Nowhere is this attitude more prevalent than in a recent report from the Institute for Research and Socio-Economic Information (IRIS), an organization whose self-described purpose is “to provide an opposite point of view to the neoliberal view,” that suggested nothing less than an end to mining in Quebec. Their simplistic argument can be summed up as, “the economic, social and environmental costs of the mining industry seem to outweigh the benefits, and the economic prospects of the sector in the coming years are not promising.”

Yet, according to the mining associations of Quebec – the Association minière du Québec and the Association de l’exploration minière du Québec – the IRIS study is riddled with factual errors that undermine its conclusions.

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The Mining Industry has a PR Problem – by Liezel Hill

Ever since its founding in 1981, the mission of Creamer Media has been to provide accurate and comprehensive news and information about South Africa’s and Africa’s industrial and resources sectors. Engineering News and Mining Weekly aim to offer news that you can use to give you a competitive edge in your business endevours.

This article was originally published May 14, 2010 
  
LICENCE TO OPERATE

TORONTO (www.miningweekly.com) – Mining companies based in the US and Canada find themselves in a strange situation.

With demand for commodities from China and India still red hot, and, as the rest of the world begins to clamber back from the Great Recession, most producers are cranking out all they can to take advantage of high prices and widening margins.

But, while bottom lines are thriving, the industry is having to defend its actions domestically and abroad to an increasingly hostile public.

The death of 29 coal miners at a West Virginia mine in April galvanised antimining sentiment in the US, and President Barrack Obama’s public criticism of the mine’s owner, Massey Energy, and attendance at the memorial service for the fallen men, has helped keep the tragedy in local and international headlines.

And in December last year, Canadian governor-general Michaëlle Jean was subjected to chants of ‘Canada go home’ on a visit to Mexico, where antimining protests took centre stage during her trip.

A month earlier, Canadian miners watched in frustration as environmental and human rights groups marched dozens of witnesses before Parliamentary committee hearings, to relate allegations – some nothing short of horrific – of Canada-based miners’ involvement in human rights and environmental crimes abroad.

The November 2009 hearings were held to discuss the contentious private members Bill C-300, which has proven a flashpoint for both miners and their opponents.

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Canada’s Mining Sector Fails to Communicate with Media and General Population – by Stan Sudol

Leo DiCaprio on Cover of Vanity Fair Green Issue - April 2007A version of this column was originally published in the June 2007 edition of Northern Ontario Business .

The mining sector is ignoring the green light at the end of the tunnel that is attached to a 100-tonne locomotive driven by the environmental movement.

The collision is going to be messy! It will impact the industry at a time when the voracious metal demands of China and India could bring enormous prosperity to isolated Aboriginal communities throughout northern Ontario.

This constant demonization of the mining sector by media-savvy NGOs is also affecting the recruitment of the next generation of workers the industry so desperately needs.

From the Academy award-winning documentary An Inconvenient Truth that stars Al Gore to Hollywood actor Leonardo DiCaprio posing on the cover of Vanity Fair – photographed in the Arctic with a cute polar bear cub to highlight global warming – there is no doubt that environmental issues dominate society’s cultural and political agendas.

Unfortunately, the mining sins of the father are certainly coming back to haunt the sons!

Past industry practices that were detrimental to the environment are still highlighted by the anti-mining crowd today.

Yet, the reality of mining in the 21st century is quite the opposite.

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