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Mining and Oil Sector Image

How Canada’s big oil firms are trying to sway public opinion – by Kelly Cryderman (Globe and Mail – June 11, 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.

CALGARY — The images have become ubiquitous in the Canadian TV advertising landscape – earnest engineers working to unlock oil sands bitumen from Northern Alberta’s boreal forest, and manufacturers parlaying the Fort McMurray boom into jobs in Ontario and Quebec.

The oil industry has developed TV, print and online ads to extol the national economic and social benefits of the oil sands, and to battle critics who have emphasized the risk of spills, and say an overreliance on the energy industry as an economic driver means outsized greenhouse gas emissions and environmental degradation.

The question is, are Canadians moved by the pictures and words paid for by big Canadian oil? Greg Lyle, managing director of Innovative Research Group Inc. – a Toronto-based public affairs and corporate communications firm that counts a number of energy companies among its clients – believes there’s some potential to move “the mushy middle” of Canadian public opinion.

“When they’re given new information – which are the arguments the industry puts forward – they’re prepared to be swayed. That doesn’t mean they will be.”

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WORLD VISION NEWS RELEASE: More Canadians would pay extra for products free of child labour, shows poll

“Mining is one of the worst forms of child labour. The heavy work can permanently damage a growing child’s bones and muscles. Minerals mined are often hazardous and exposure to uranium and mercury can have profound health effects. Falling down open mine shafts, being trapped or injured by collapsing tunnels, or drowning while mining underwater are all serious threats. (CNW Group/World Vision Canada)”.

June 10, 2013 – World Vision launches #nochildforsale campaign across Canada

MISSISSAUGA, ON, June 10, 2013 /CNW/ – Growing numbers of Canadians are willing to pay more for products that are free of child labour, according to a poll released just prior to the World Day Against Child Labour (June 12). Eighty-nine per cent of Canadians said they would pay more, up from 68 per cent last year. Canadians said they would pay on average 23 percent more to guarantee a purchase is child-labour free—this is double the amount they said a year ago.

International development organization World Vision commissioned the national Ipsos Reid poll a few weeks after the Bangladesh factory disaster which killed more than 1,100 textile workers. The incident sparked debate about retail supply chains and ethical consumerism.

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Child Miners Speak: Key Findings on Children and Artisanal Mining in Kambove DRC – (World Vision – May 2013)

World Vision is a Christian relief, development and advocacy organisation dedicated to working with children, families and communities to overcome poverty and injustice. http://voices.worldvision.ca/home/

Executive Summary

Child labour is a highly complex problem interlinked with poverty, a lack of social services and alternative employment, education and health impacts, and exploitation. The challenge we have is to understand the specific circumstances and needs of working children and their families, in particular settings. From there, we can develop appropriate and effective solutions that address these circumstances and needs, and sustainably move children out of the worst forms of labour. Simplified calls to eradicate all child labour often ignore the complexity of the problem, the persistence of poverty, and the difficult choices children face.

Child miners in one community in the DRC’s southern Katanga province speak to this reality throughout this report. A key objective for the research was the direct participation by children. They themselves described the circumstances, impacts and drivers of their work as miners, as well as possible solutions to the challenges they face. This was then compared to, and supplemented by, parents, other community members, and mining stakeholders.

By listening carefully, we heard that:

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Children as young as 8 working in Congo copper mines in Democratic Republic of Congo – by Tanya Talaga (Toronto Star – May 24, 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.

World Vision has documented the voices of children kept out of school to work in a copper and cobalt artisanal mine in the southern Democratic Republic of Congo and has found that “this type of hard labour is robbing children of their childhood.”

Child labour in developing world garment factories is a tragic, known occurrence but a new report on children as young as eight toiling away in African mines sheds light on a forgotten group. World Vision, a Christian relief organization, documented the voices of children kept out of school in order to work in a copper and cobalt artisanal mine in the southern Democratic Republic of Congo.

The key goal of this project, entitled “Child Miners Speak,” was to build trust and talk specifically to children to ask them how they feel about working in the harsh conditions of the mines, said Harry Kits, World Vision’s senior policy adviser for economic justice.

“This type of hard labour is robbing children of their childhood,” Kits said in an interview Thursday.

After speaking with 50 children in Kambove, aged eight to 17, World Vision documented children ill with various infections from working in polluted water or being exposed to mercury or uranium.

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South Americans Face Upheaval in Deadly Water Battles [Mining conflicts] – by Michael Smith (Bloomberg Markets Magazine – February 13, 2013)

http://www.bloomberg.com/markets-magazine/

People streamed into the central square in Celendin, a small city in the Peruvian Andes, the morning of July 3, 2012. They were protesting the government’s support for Newmont Mining Corp. (NEM)’s plan to take control of four lakes to make way for a new gold and copper mine. By midday, there were 3,000.

Some hurled rocks at police and brandished clubs. Then assailants shot two officers and an Army soldier in the leg.

Blocks away, construction worker Paulino Garcia left home on foot to buy groceries. As he approached the central square, he encountered chaos. People ran for cover as federal troops fired their weapons, Bloomberg Markets magazine will report in its March issue.

One bullet struck Garcia as he watched the mayhem. It ripped open his chest and exited through his back. The 43-year-old father of two fell to the ground and died. Another three people were shot and killed, and more than 20 were wounded.

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Modern mining is much more than ‘dirty’ work – by Paul Farrow (Vancouver Sun – April 23, 2013)

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

Outdated image is driving young skilled workers away from an exciting industry that calls for a wide variety of skill sets

Paul Farrow is the senior vice-president for people and safety at Goldcorp, based in Vancouver. For more information, visit goldcorp.com/careers.

Canada’s resource sector is facing a skilled labour shortage due to an aging workforce and a scarcity of new skilled workers. In the next five to 10 years, it’s estimated the global mining industry will need well over 55,000 new workers to meet demand.

In B.C. alone, according to the Mining Association of B.C., the industry will need to fill nearly 6,000 positions by 2016. As The Vancouver Sun’s BC2035 series attests, competition to attract the best talent is intense. For instance, Goldcorp typically has more than 100 job openings at any given time across operations in Canada, the U.S., Mexico and South America.

What’s preventing the mining industry from attracting skilled workers? In part, our sector has struggled to overcome misconceptions about mining practices and the type of work experience we can offer our employees. Outdated ideas about mining as an old-fashioned or “dirty” industry persist, even though our sector has made significant progress in advancing technologies, improving environmental performance and ensuring positive, lasting social benefits in the communities where we operate.

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Mining makes your life possible – by Stephen Hume (Vancouver Sun – April 20, 2013)

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

Whether it’s your bicycle or cellphone, life as you know it would not exist without minerals

So, you’re parking both the family car and the transit pass, biking to work instead and feeling a tad righteous about helping British Columbia wean itself from its dirty addiction to the mining industry and the minerals it extracts.

Say thanks to a coal miner for the privilege. And don’t forget the hardrock miner. Not to mention the smelter crew and the roughneck yanking pipe on some frigid drill rig.

Oh, and say thanks to the trucker hauling canisters of molybdenum, titanium or tungsten concentrate or the geologist staking gold, silver or rare earths deposits. Without them and the industries that employ them, you’d be walking, not biking.

Bicycles, unless you ride one you made yourself from bamboo, lashings of hemp and dried banana peels, is entirely manufactured from materials obtained by mining – steel processed by burning metallurgical coal, perhaps lightened by adding specialized metals like titanium; plastic and synthetic rubber obtained from petroleum products.

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Excerpt from “The History of Mining: The events, technology and people involved in the industry that forged the modern world” – by Michael Coulson

To order a copy of The History of Mining, please click here: http://www.harriman-house.com/products/books/23161/business/Michael-Coulson/The-History-of-Mining/

 

MINING FILMS

One of the earliest mining themed films was Charlie Chaplin’s The Gold Rush made in 1925 and set in the time of the Alaskan gold rush where Chaplin revives his famous Little Tramp role as a gold prospector.

Gold has always had a key role to play in films with mining themes. The classic Treasure of the Sierra Madre directed by John Huston in 1948 and starring Humphrey Bogart and John’s father Walter Huston was one of the finest of the genre of prospectors searching for gold to secure them financially for life and falling out with disastrous consequences.

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Time to bust myths on mining’s impact, raise awareness about benefits – Ian Gould, former Rio Tinto Australia MD – by Christopher Russell (Adelaide Now – April 8, 2013)

http://www.adelaidenow.com.au/

THE public too often views the mining industry as a necessary evil rather than the valuable mainstay of the community it actually is, one of South Australia’s leading businessmen says.

UniSA chancellor and former Rio Tinto Australia managing director Ian Gould said most people realised the resources sector generated a lot of Australia’s wealth.

“But many do not like or understand the industry,” he said. “They just tolerate it; and some of that is in the light of it being a necessary evil.

“Why would this be? Big, foreign, powerful, insensitive, low-tech, 12-hour shifts – sounds terrible. A major cause of environmental degradation, contests over land use with indigenous, conservation, agricultural and grazing interests.

“It doesn’t pay its fair share of taxes, it’s a small employer of Australians but its high salaries and its forcing the exchange rate higher are making other industries uncompetitive. “It undertakes very little training of Australians – instead using 457 visas.”

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Yellowknife’s Giant Mine cleanup costs to double – CBC News North (March 27, 2013)

http://www.cbc.ca/north/

New documents show arsenic-contaminated site will take close to $1B to remediate

n the Northwest Territories, new documents show the cleanup costs for Yellowknife’s arsenic-contaminated Giant Mine site will be close to a billion dollars.

That’s double what officials with Aboriginal Affairs and Northern Development have said it would cost to remediate the former gold mine. The cleanup plan is currently in the final stages of an environmental review.

Kevin O’Reilly is with Alternatives North and was one of the people who pushed for an environmental assessment of the cleanup plan. He obtained the new information through an access to information request.

The documents show the Department of Aboriginal Affairs and Northern Development revised its cost estimate in March of 2012 — six months before public hearings on the cleanup. But during the public hearings, federal officials never said they expected the cleanup to cost that much. Officials repeatedly said it would cost half that amount.

The document attributes the jump in price to a combination of inflation, additional maintenance, as well as fast-tracking some of the work to stabilize the site. O’Reilly questions why they’re not being more transparent.

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NEWS RELEASE: The Sound of Silence: First Nations Release Oil Spill Commercial Reminding British Columbians of Dangers Oil Tankers

March 24, 2013

Released on the 24th anniversary of the Exxon Valdez oil spill, powerful television commercial features oil spill footage and iconic song by Simon & Garfunkel

VANCOUVER, BRITISH COLUMBIA (March 24, 2013) – The Coastal First Nations today released a television commercial reminding British Columbians of the dangers and costs of bringing oil tankers to BC’s pristine coastal waters.

See the commercial on YouTube: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1XNwjdI5m_E

“We thought it was appropriate to release the commercial on the 24th anniversary of the Exxon Valdez oil spill in Alaska,” said Art Sterritt, Executive Director of the Coastal First Nations. “The Coastal First Nations have banned oil tankers from our traditional territories in the Great Bear Rainforest, and we have invested more than $300 million dollars over the past decade to establish a sustainable economy on the coast.”

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Stompin’ Tom Connors, Canada’s troubadour, sang of everyday lives – by Sandra Martin (Globe and Mail – March 8, 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.

Back in the days when posses of cowboys galloped across the duotone television screen, you could always tell the good guys because they wore white hats. That’s only one of the anomalies about Canadian troubadour Stompin’ Tom Connors. He wore a black Stetson, not to side with the bad guys, but because he liked the colour. Besides, he didn’t want to give the impression, which a white hat might have conveyed, that he was sissified or pumped up about himself.

Still, there was plenty of dark in the cantankerous outsider who rambled the country, carrying his 3/4-inch plywood stomping plank, the way other musicians might pack a keyboard into their luggage. And when he performed, usually in a black shirt and jeans stretching up from his pointed black cowboy boots, with the hat planted firmly on his head and a guitar slung over his shoulder, he stomped his left foot to keep the beat and stared straight ahead as though hoping a ride would materialize from over the next hill on the highway.

Most entertainers long for international fame and try to write songs that are universal, but Mr. Connors celebrated the particular and shunned the monolithic American musical bandwagon. He’d been told that he was never going to get anywhere singing songs about backwater places, and he agreed that might be true. But as his bandmate Tim Hus, the cowboy singer, once heard him tell an audience, “When you put them all together, we call it Canada.” His manager Brian Edwards said, “he could relate to anybody whether you were a doctor, a lawyer, or a homeless person with two cents in your pocket.”

Tall and lanky with an aquiline nose and a square jaw, Mr. Connors loved the nooks and hamlets of this country, and the ordinary girls who “are out to bingo” while the boys “are gettin’ stinko” on a Sudbury Saturday Night.

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Tom started Stompin’ in Timmins – by Ron Grech (Timmins Daily Press – March 8, 2013)

The Daily Press is the city of Timmins broadsheet newspaper.

Stompin Tom Connors’ Mining Songs: http://republicofmining.com/2013/01/21/stompin-tom-connors-wiki-profile-and-mining-songs/

TIMMINS – His patriotism, twangy music and storytelling lyrics made him a beloved Canadian icon. But for many Timmins residents, Stompin’ Tom Connors, who was born in New Brunswick, was as much a hometown hero as Shania Twain, Frank Mahovolich or Steve Sullivan.

Connors died Wednesday of natural causes at his home in Halton Hills, Ont. He was 77. Connors, who would go on to great fame, got his first break in Timmins.

He signed a contract to perform for 13 months at the Maple Leaf Hotel and recorded his first songs here at CKGB Radio, which was located in the old Thomson building, which was then shared by The Daily Press. He would end up recording 16 tracks at CKGB during his time in Timmins.

One of the first two songs he recorded was Carolyne which opens with the words: “T-I-M-M-I-N-S That’s going to be my new address, ’Cause I just got a new job working in the mine, Hollinger Mine.” Many city residents know it simply as the “Timmins song.”

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Stompin’ Tom remembered for Northern roots – by Sebastien Perth (Sudbury Star – March 8, 2013)

The Sudbury Star is the City of Greater Sudbury’s daily newspaper.

Stompin Tom Connors’ Mining Songs: http://republicofmining.com/2013/01/21/stompin-tom-connors-wiki-profile-and-mining-songs/

The ties Stompin’ Tom Connors formed with Northern Ontario are legendary.

Connors, who was surrounded by his family when he died Wednesday night at age 77, often credited the Maple Leaf Hotel in Timmins for launching his professional career and the song he penned at the Townehouse Tavern — Sudbury Saturday Night — in 1965 became one of his biggest hits.

Charlie Angus — musician and Member of Parliament for Timmins-James Bay — says Connors showed Canadians who they were through his writing.

“I think what Tom did that was so important is that he put our experience and our places on the cultural map of Canada. I was talking to a woman who said when she was 11, she memorized Sudbury Saturday Night. She had never been there, but her dad worked at Stelco so she thought Stelco was like Inco and it was.

“My grandfather had been at the McIntyre mine (in Timmins) where the fire had been and Tom wrote the song and it gave chills to hear it. We thought we had that special relationship,” Angus said. Townehouse manager Paul Loewenberg said Connors captured the city very well when he wrote Sudbury Saturday Night in 1965.

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NEWS RELEASE: Mayor Matichuk leads Greater Sudbury in mourning Canadian icon Stompin’ Tom Connors

 

For Immediate Release

Thursday, March 7, 2013

Mayor Marianne Matichuk was saddened to learn of the passing of Canadian music legend Stompin’ Tom Connors on Wednesday.

“Stompin’ Tom endeared himself to Canadians because he devoted himself and his music to life in Canada,” Mayor Matichuk said.

“He wrote and sang about the things Canadians hold dear, such as hockey. He cared most about being a Canadian … and he will never be forgotten for that.”

One of his most famous songs, Sudbury Saturday Night, written and first recorded in Canada’s Centennial year of 1967, remains recognizable to all Canadians. Though Greater Sudbury has evolved considerably from the company town immortalized in that song, Connors captured compellingly the spirit of our community 45 years ago.

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