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Mining Railway, Road and Other Infrastructure

‘Historic event’: Groundbreaking marks start of Tlicho all-season road construction (CBC News North – August 23, 2019)

https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/north/

Elected officials stabbed at muddy ground with clean shovels at the official groundbreaking on the Tlicho all-season road in Whatı̀​​​, N.W.T., on Saturday. For Whatı̀ Chief Alfonz Nitsiza, the moment was the culmination of decades of effort.

Speaking to reporters in a scrum, Nitsiza said that decades ago two elders — including his own uncle, who is a former chief — survived two plane crashes in the Tlicho region.

“They quickly realized, this is too much, and there’s a lot of people going in and out of the community for medevac, we need to get a road here. That’s when it all started — almost 30 years ago.”

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Pre-election goodies for First Nation bridges, clean water projects – by Staff (Northern Ontario Business – September 10, 2019)

https://www.northernontariobusiness.com/

Ahead of a federal election, Ottawa was rolling out funding and breaking ground on First Nation community infrastructure projects across Northern Ontario. Nipissing First Nation, west of North Bay, received $3.3 million to build a new road between the on-reserve communities of Yellek and Duchesnay.

The construction involves building a 2.1-kilometre paved road with shoulders, walkways and culverts. Local MP Anthony Rota said on Sept.6 that the road gives members “better access to critical services” and will improve community safety.

The province is chipping in $808,650 for the project while Nipissing First Nation is contributing $294,225. “In 2015, our citizens identified this linkage as a priority to address safety concerns stemming from both communities having only one access point,” said Chief Scott McLeod in a press release. “This critical new infrastructure will also open up land for development and lead to more centralized services to improve quality of life for our citizens.”

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China would benefit most from billion-dollar, 700-km highway through Canadian Arctic, critics say – by Meagan Campbell (National Post – August 23, 2019)

https://nationalpost.com/

Questions are being raised about plans to build a $1-billion, 700-km highway from Yellowknife to a proposed port on Nunavut’s Arctic coast, paid for by Canadians but which critics say would largely serve Chinese government interests.

Last week, Transport Minister Marc Garneau pledged more than $50 million to the Northwest Territories and Nunavut to study the feasibility of a highway to replace ice roads that are no longer reliable amid climate change.

While local leaders applaud the funding, critics say the largest benefit would go to a mining company, MMG, which is controlled by the Chinese government and holds several mineral deposits in the region where the highway would be built.

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Northern residents applaud pair of federal announcements paving way to long-awaited all-weather Arctic road – by Bob Weber (Globe and Mail – August 16, 2019)

https://www.theglobeandmail.com/

CANADIAN PRESS: Two federal announcements this week are expected to kick-start a long-awaited road into the heart of the Canadian Arctic that would lower grocery costs for northern families and unlock billions of dollars in mineral resources.

Transport Minister Marc Garneau pledged more than $50-million to cover preliminary studies and planning for an all-weather road from Yellowknife in the Northwest Territories to a deep-water port on Nunavut’s central Arctic coast.

“This will change the economy of Canada,” Wally Schumann, the NWT’s minister of industry, tourism and investment, said Thursday. A direct, all-weather connection to southern Canada’s highways – Nunavut’s first – would allow everything from fresh vegetables to construction materials to be shipped more cheaply and easily by trucks.

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Ottawa gives $21.5 million to Kitikmeot road and port project – by Derek Neary (Nunavut News – August 13, 2019)

Nunavut News

The federal government is committing $21.5 million to the Kitikmeot Inuit Association’s slimmed-down request to get the Grays Bay Road and Port project “shovel ready” over the next couple of years.

The funding announcement for the initiative, which is expected to make Nunavut mining projects more economical and potentially reduce cost for community resupply, came Tuesday in Iqaluit. Federal Minister of Transport Marc Garneau was on hand for the occasion.

Nunavut Tunngavik Inc. (NTI) had already announced that it would give $7.25 million to the initiative. “We are very happy with the outcome… we feel good about where we are,” said Scott Northey, CEO of Nunavut Resources Corporation in regards to the financing from the federal government and NTI.

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Guinea iron ore prospectors set sights on ArcelorMittal rail – by Barbara Lewis and Saliou Samb (Reuters U.S. – June 5, 2019)

https://www.reuters.com/

LONDON/CONAKRY (Reuters) – The race to mine Guinea’s iron ore has started although the focus is not on its giant Simandou deposits but on smaller finds whose output could be transported via Liberia if ArcelorMittal shares its railway, banking and industry sources said.

Guinea’s aspirations to develop Simandou, the world’s largest known untapped iron ore deposit, have foundered because of the cost of infrastructure and protracted legal disputes.

Guinea says it is still trying to reach a deal with China to build the roughly 650 km (406 miles) of railway needed to transport the iron ore through Guinea.

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Thunder Bay: Project to build permanent road to northern Ontario First Nation ‘the right move’ chief says – by Matt Prokopchuk (CBC News Thunder Bay – April 18, 2019)

https://www.cbc.ca/

The chief of a northern Ontario First Nation says an ongoing project to build an all-season road to the community will help in many ways.

Marten Falls, which is about 300 kilometres northeast of Thunder Bay, is in the midst of the provincial environmental assessment process to construct a thoroughfare that will link the remote First Nation to the provincial highway system north of Nakina.

“There’s a lot of socio-economic benefits that would derive from having an all-weather road to the community,” said Chief Bruce Achneepineskum, adding that those would include lowering the cost of freight, making it easier for community members to travel and better positioning the First Nation to take advantage of various economic development opportunities in the forestry, mining and tourism sectors.

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CLIMATE CHANGE THREATENS ICE ROADS. SATELLITES COULD HELP – by Nick Stockton (Wired Magazine – April 18, 2019)

https://www.wired.com/

FOR A FEW months each winter, Canada’s Tibbitt to Contwoyto Winter Road is the world’s longest ice highway, a 300-plus-mile network of frozen lakes that connects lucrative diamond mines in Canada’s Northwest Territories to supplies from the nation’s not-quite-so-far north.

But warmer winters and earlier springs have shortened the road’s open season by up to two weeks over the past decade. The loss of the road for even such a short time is very expensive, because the only other way to reach these mines is by air.

Salvation may come from space. A Canadian researcher has demonstrated that radar emitted from satellites can peer through the ice, determining not just its thickness but also its quality. (Does it have a lot of bubbles?

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Grays Bay Road and Port gets going again – by Jane George (Nunatsiaq News – April 9, 2019)

https://nunatsiaq.com/

“We have just applied for funding from the federal government to make the project ‘shovel ready’”

Western Nunavut’s Grays Bay Road and Port Project is back: the Kitikmeot Inuit Association’s wholly-owned subsidiary, the Nunavut Resources Corp., has reapplied for money from the federal trade corridors program.

“We have just applied for funding from the federal government to make the project ‘shovel ready,” said Scott Northey, the NRC’s director and CEO, who spoke at last week’s Nunavut Mining Symposium in Iqaluit. To do that, they’ll need about $22-million to add to the roughly $7 million that Nunavut Tunngavik Inc. has committed to the project.

The $550-million Grays Bay project would involve the construction of a 227-kilometre all-weather road running from the site of the defunct Jericho mine, which is located at the northern end of the Tibbit-Contwoyto winter road, to a deep-sea port at Grays Bay on Coronation Gulf.

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Panelists at Nunavut Mining Symposium want link to Canada’s road system – by Jane George (Nunatsiaq News – April 2, 2019)

https://nunatsiaq.com/

Governments of NWT and Nunavut and Inuit orgs united in call for North-South road connection

At the Nunavut Mining Symposium, now underway in Iqaluit, you don’t have to look far to find supporters of a road linking Nunavut to the Northwest Territories or Manitoba, to reduce the North’s dependence on marine transportation and satellite telecommunications.

At a Monday morning panel session called, “Maybe the resources are the road?,” the Northwest Territories’ industry minister, Wally Schumann, Nunavut’s transportation minister, David Akeeagok, and Kitikmeot Inuit Association President Stanley Anablak all made pitches for roads and how the federal government should come up with money to help make that happen.

Anablak, a promoter of the Grays Bay port and road project, which would aim to join the Arctic coast to mines in the western Kitikmeot and eventually the N.W.T., said that proposed project in western Nunavut finally has regained Nunavut government support.

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NEWS RELEASE: New Coalition says East-West route to Ring of Fire needed now (March 5, 2019)

(Toronto, March 5, 2019) – The East-West Ring of Fire Road Coalition (EWRFC) is a new organization at the world’s largest mining conference, the Prospectors and Developers Association of Canada conference (#PDAC2019) advocating for an “East – West road” to access the Ring of Fire.

The EWRFC contends this route will benefit the greatest number of Ontario communities, providing all-season road access, increasing the range of economic opportunities associated with the Ring of Fire – a massive deposit of the mineral chromite, with an estimate value of $60 billion.

The EWRFC was conceived to represent municipalities, First Nation communities and businesses in Northwestern Ontario supporting the construction of a four-season access road into the Far North. Which will build on the current success of First Nation businesses in Sioux Lookout.

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‘Significant first step’: Feds fund new road to mineral-rich Arctic – by Bob Weber (CTV News/Canadian Press – March 4, 2019)

https://www.ctvnews.ca/business/

TORONTO — Northern leaders are cheering a federal funding announcement for a long-awaited all-weather road into the heart of Canada’s mineral-rich Arctic. “This is a significant first step,” said Wally Schumann, minister of industry and infrastructure in the Northwest Territories.

The $5.1 million outlined at a mining conference in Toronto is a small fraction of the total cost that is expected to exceed $1 billion.

But Schumann said the money will pay for planning and development of the first part of the road, which could be under construction within five years. “It’s one of the richest regions in North America,” he said.

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Environmental assessment starts on Ring of Fire supply road – by Staff (Northern Ontario Business – February 28, 2019)

https://www.northernontariobusiness.com/

Webequie, SNC-Lavalin prepare study outline for airport-to-exploration camp route

The first step in a provincial environmental assessment (EA) of a supply road to the Ring of Fire is underway. Webequie First Nation, the community closest to the Far North mineral deposits, has initiated the EA study of a permanent road running from Webequie’s airport to the fly-in exploration camps near McFaulds Lake in the James Bay lowlands.

The length of the proposed road is 107 kilometres. According to a document posted Jan. 25 on a community road project web page, the EA’s terms of reference (ToR) are being prepared, which basically outlines the framework and the work plan for the study.

The ToR will be submitted to the Ministry of the Environment, Conservation and Parks for review this spring. The actual environmental assessment, slated to start this year, is a three-year process.

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Report from transportation watchdog probes commodity discrimination by rail – by Christopher Reynolds (Financial Post – January 26, 2019)

https://business.financialpost.com/

A preliminary report from the Canadian Transportation Agency appears to confirm shippers’ complaints about a relatively high number of restrictions on commodities they tried to move by rail through the Vancouver area.

Industry groups have accused Canada’s two largest rail companies of “discriminatory treatment” against some commodities, the report notes, highlighting the use of embargoes that temporarily stop traffic at specific loading points or interchanges.

Filed Thursday, the report is part of a CTA investigation launched on Jan. 14 following complaints from shipping associations about rail service in B.C.’s Lower Mainland over the past three months.

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NEWS RELEASE: Marten Falls First Nation Selects AECOM to Conduct Road Study and Environmental Assessment for new All-Season Road

THUNDER BAY, ON, Nov. 22, 2018 /CNW/ – Marten Falls First Nation and Ontario announced the agreement to study a long-awaited community access road on August 21, 2017. Since then, Marten Falls has entered into a voluntary agreement with the Ministry of Environment and Climate Change (MOECC) to conduct an Individual Environmental Assessment (EA) and Preliminary Design (PD) for the proposed community access road from Marten Falls First Nation going south to existing provincial highways.

The First Nation has established a project team and conducted one field season of baseline surveys; but to carry out the full suite of technical services and studies, and other steps within the EA process, Marten Falls has brought on AECOM.

This global engineering firm provides design, consulting, construction, and management services. AECOM will consult with Marten Falls and neighbouring communities, perform data collection, prepare technical studies and all documents associated with the project, to complete the EA process.

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