This article was provided by the Ontario Mining Association(OMA), an organization that was established in 1920 to represent the mining industry of the province.
When Linda Byron-Fortin started Blue Heron Solutions for Environmental Management from her Timmins basement in 2004, she may not have envisioned it growing into the operation it is today with a payroll of 17 occupying a 7,000 square foot facility.
From her Timmins headquarters, she can list among her mining clients De Beers Canada, Xstrata Nickel, Xstrata Copper, Goldcorp, Lakeshore, Northgate, Kirkland Lake Gold, St. Andrew Goldfields and a range of junior exploration and development companies. Blue Heron’s spectrum of environmental services encompass planning and compliance, education and eco-retailing.
“I like having an ability to help people and I have an interest in management systems,” said Ms. Byron-Fortin. “Most of my staff are ex-environmental coordinators from the resource sector who take an operational perspective on environmental permitting and compliance programs.”
The Sudbury Star, the City of Greater Sudbury’s daily newspaper.
NDP MPP France Gelinas is standing by her party’s plan to keep Ontario’s resources in the province for processing, despite the Liberal claim it would put hundreds of well-paying jobs at risk in Sudbury.
Ontario NDP Leader Andrew Horwath announced earlier this month that if her party is elected in October, it would amend the Mining Act so resources mined in Ontario cannot be exported if they can be processed in Ontario. ” The North’s natural resources should be creating jobs in the North,” Horwath stated.
“Instead of letting companies take our resources and run, we can keep good value-added jobs and industry in northern communities.” Sudbury’s Liberal MPP Rick Bartolucci, however, said Monday the policy would mean job losses for Sudburians.
” This is just a policy that would ensure that other countries would close their borders to Canada and … most immediately would result in the loss of jobs in Sudbury,” he said.
The Ontario Liberals will wait to see how much money the private sector is willing to invest in infrastructure to develop the Ring of Fire chromite deposits before it puts government money into the area, says the premier.
The province will definitely have to help build infrastructure, such as roads, to bring the project online, but it wants to maximize its opportunities before it does, says Dalton McGuinty.
Any public investment would have to be shown to benefit Ontarians — and especially Northern Ontarians — and that includes businesses and First Nations.
“We’ve got an opportunity to do this in a way that’s never been done before, so we’re excited about that,” McGuinty told reporters at Laurentian University’s J.N. Desmarais Library on Saturday. “But, yes, at some point in time, it will call for an investment in infrastructure.”
He visited Laurentian to address the annual Summer Fling policy conference of Ontario Young Liberals, where he announced an initiative to help new graduates who work in the not-for-profit sector.
A fever is spreading throughout northern Ontario, from the eastern districts adjacent Quebec to the far reaches of the northwest right up to the Manitoba border. This raging malaise is caused by a metal that has captured mankind’s attention from the dawn of time. I am referring to “gold fever” and many in northern Ontario – a vast northern territory, which is almost equal to Germany, United Kingdon, Greece and Ireland combined – are thoroughly infected or obsessed over this beautiful precious metal.
Historically, Ontario’s gold mining industry has played a major role in the settlement of the province’s northern regions and along with the Cobalt silver boom and further gold and base metal discoveries in northwestern Quebec were primarily responsible for the establishment of Toronto as today’s mine financing capital of the world.
The many gold mines that came into production during the Depression of the 1930s made a vital contribution to keeping the province solvent and with over a century of experience building many underground mines helped solidify Ontario’s hard-rock mining expertise that is well respected globally.
However, northern Ontario’s gold rushes have always seemed to play second-fiddle to the legendary Klondike in the Yukon, aided by famous writers like Jack London, Robert W. Service – of the Cremation of Sam McGee fame – and Canadian literary icon, Pierre Berton. At it’s peak, the Klondike gold rush only lasted for a few years – 1896-99 – and produced a miserly 12.5 million ounces of gold. “Chump change” compared to northern Ontario’s four major gold rushes and a number of smaller gold districts, most of which are still producing the precious metal today.
Considering the record setting price of gold, moving upwards almost daily, the political stability of northern Ontario and its strong world-class mining infrastructure versus lesser developed countries like Tanzania, Guatemala or Papua New Guinea, exploration in all current and former gold mining camps is booming.
ONTARIO NDP Leader Andrea Horwath is courting northern votes by proposing to protect and create northern jobs. It’s a familiar pledge. Few northerners will argue with her value-added intentions, announced in Thunder Bay Tuesday. But forcing industry’s hand at a time when industry is fond of simply moving to the cheapest jurisdiction goes against all that free trade and globalization, such as they are, strive for. It’s a tide that will be hard to turn.
Horwath says that if an NDP government is elected in October, it will ensure that Ontario’s natural resources stay in Ontario to create value-added forestry and mining jobs and give northern communities and First Nations a chance to share in more of the prosperity the North creates.
Horwath unveiled plans to fix forestry tenure rules to give communities more control over wood allocations. And she would amend the Mining Act so resources mined in Ontario cannot be exported if they can be processed in Ontario.
The National Post is Canada’s second largest national paper.
“By 1930, Canada became the world’s second-largest producer of gold, with
Ontario responsible for most of that output,” Stan Sudol writes in a recent
Canadian Mining Journal article.
It is an awkward moment, and it happens all the time. Jessica Bjorkman will meet a stranger, a new face in town, and if they start talking, and if the conversation winds around to the inevitable career question – ”So, what do you do for a living?” – she will sigh, just a little. See, it is complicated.
Ms. Bjorkman is not a wildeyed old man with a grizzled beard yodelling around the great north woods on the back of a donkey. And she does not live in the Yukon. And she has not memorized all the words to Robert Service’s poem, The Cremation of Sam McGee. So when she tells someone, “I am a prospector,” that someone will invariably shoot her a curious look.
“Most everybody is surprised,” Ms. Bjorkman says. “I say we go out looking for rocks that have potential. We are the step before a mine. Basically, we are the ones out there, on the ground, looking for something promising.”
This article was provided by the Ontario Mining Association(OMA), an organization that was established in 1920 to represent the mining industry of the province.
The cover story on Business Week magazine on December 17, 1984 bore the ominous headline “The Death of Mining.” Twenty seven years later, at the 68th Canadian Mines Ministers Conference held in Alberta, the Canadian Mineral Industry Federation (CMIF) presented evidence of a diametrically opposite point of view.
“Canada’s mining industry is a major contributor to Canadian prosperity – providing $35 billion to GDP in 2010 and based on Natural Resources Canada definitions, employing 308,000 workers in mineral extraction, processing and manufacturing,” said the CMIF submission to mines ministers. “There are more than 3,200 companies, which provide inputs to the industry ranging from engineering services to drilling equipment.”
“The industry pays around $10 billion annually in taxes and royalties to federal, provincial and territorial governments,” it said. “Alberta, Saskatchewan, Newfoundland and Labrador, New Brunswick, Manitoba and British Columbia all typically derive a significant portion of government revenues from the mining industry.”
Back in 1984, Business Week told us “a series of factors accounts for mining’s malaise.
We cannot accept fatalities like the recent tragedy we experienced with the loss of Jordan Fram and Jason Chenier at Stobie Mine, and must do everything in our power to work together to honour their memories and those lost before them to prevent future injuries and fatalities in everything we do. – Steve Wood: Vale Vice-president Mining and Milling North Atlantic Operations
Speech to the Sudbury Area Mining Supply and Service Sector (SAMSSA)
Howard Johnson Hotel – Sudbury, Ontario, August 9, 2011
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Thank you and good morning everyone. It’s a pleasure to see you here today.
As Dick said, my name is Steve Wood — and not Jon Treen — but as Jon’s boss hopefully I will do okay as his ‘stand in’! But seriously, Jon sends his regrets and apologizes that he can’t be here today to speak to you.
Before I begin, I would like to thank Dick Destefano for inviting Vale to be here this morning.
Dick is an outstanding advocate of the mining industry, and an effective ambassador of the mining supply and service sector, and we have enjoyed a very positive relationship with Dick over the years. He certainly isn’t afraid to stand up for you, his members, and at Vale we truly respect that. Thank you, Dick.
* * * * *
Today, I am here to speak to you about Vale and our future in the Sudbury Basin. We have a great journey in front of us, and as our key partners, it’s a journey that we want you to be a part of…and many of you are already well on board.
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. Dave Robinson is an economist with the Institute for Northern Ontario Research and Development at Laurentian University. drobinson@laurentian.ca
The Dark Age begins in less than 10 years. Sometime before 2021, southern Ontario will begin rolling brownouts and plant closures. It will happen in the summer because Torontonians really need their air conditioners. It will happen because no one wants to pay full cost for power. And it will kill jobs.
By 2021, Ontario’s demand for electricity will have outrun supply. Shortages that began before 2002 were hidden when the recession cut manufacturing jobs. As the economy recovers, and the population of southern Ontario grows, a gap will open up between demand and supply. Energy conservation and repairing old nuclear plants will help, but won’t fill that gap.
Why should Northerners care? Because northern rivers will be poured into the gap. Because the price of electricity will be so high that jobs will be lost in Northern Ontario. Because even though demand for northern wood, metal water and power is rising, Northern Ontario will continue to stagnate.
Most of the hydroelectric capacity in Northern Ontario has been already been developed.
I read your latest article this evening in Northern Ontario Business (Mining Marshall Plan for Northern Ontario). This was very well done, informative and a must read for every provincial and federal politician from Ontario. You have made many key points that should be taken under consideration immediately, if not sooner. Of course, the article tickled a number of thoughts in the mind of a lowly forester who has experienced the wilds of northern Ontario, especially those areas that have a peat substrate and high water levels.
Thank you for the heads-up on Quebec’s “Plan Nord”. By your comments, it is much more meaningful than Ontario’s “Growth Plan for Northern Ontario 2011”. However, as the authors said of the Ontario document….”…This Plan is a strategic framework that will guide decision-making and investment planning in Northern Ontario over the next 25 years”.
Your recommendations for a “Mining Marshall Plan” are to the point, imperative to the implemented, and applies equally well to the forest industry. In actuality, Mining and Forestry should probably work hand-in-hand.
1) Transportation infrastructure is necessary for both, but should not be restricted for the sole use of either or both of these sectors.
“There is no doubt we have one of the best mining supply and service sectors here today. … Having one of this level in our backyard gives us a significant advantage, especially when
circumstances require us to be nimble. … We will have a new copper strategy to respond
to increasing global demand in foreign countries. … Sudbury will play a pivotal role, including the Victor and Capre properties …” (Steve Wood – Vale Vice-president Mining and Milling North Atlantic Operations, August 9, 2011)
The turmoil in the markets in recent days and the debt crisis in the United States won’t derail Vale’s plans for its Greater Sudbury operations, a senior company official said Tuesday. “We are staying the course,” Steve Wood told members of the Sudbury Area Mining Supply & Service Association at the group’s monthly meeting Tuesday. “We have our vision to be the biggest and the best (global mining company) and these projects have built up well situationally, as well.
“We don’t see any changes.” Wood is Vale’s vice-president of mining and milling for its North Atlantic operations. A Greater Sudbury native, Wood provided a 20-minute update of the global mining company’s plans for its Greater Sudbury operations.
In a scrum with reporters following his presentation, Wood reiterated that the bad economic news won’t affect the company’s Greater Sudbury operations or planned projects.
NDP Leader Andrea Horwath unveils Northern Ontario platform
Standing in front of the idled Xstrata Copper smelter in Hoyle, Ontario New Democrat Leader Andrea Horwath unveiled planks in her party’s Northern platform, which she claims would have prevented the mining facility from closing.
Flanked by NDP candidates from four Northeastern Ontario ridings, including MPP Gilles Bisson (NDP — Timmins-James Bay), Horwath said if elected, her government would ensure forestry and mining resources are processed where they came from.
The NDP say they would amend the Mining Act so that resources mined in Ontario must be processed in Ontario. “It makes no sense to pull raw resources from the earth and process them somewhere else,” Horwath said.
Currently Section 91 of the Mining Act requires mining companies extracting ore in Ontario to get permission from the government before being allowed to ship the ore outside of Canada for processing.
Tanya Talaga is a Queen’s Park reporter with 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.
In a campaign swing through northern Ontario, NDP Leader Andrea Horwath vowed to stop resources mined in the province from being exported if they can be processed here. “Companies are pulling them out of the ground and shipping them elsewhere for processing and it doesn’t have to be that way,” Horwath said Monday from Dubreuilville, Ont.
“We need to be conscious about what is happening with our natural resources. It helps us put some control over how much of our resources get processed and it creates good jobs for Ontario families.”
Horwath said the time to secure mining and resource jobs is now as Ontario begins to develop the Ring of Fire, a $30 billion chromite deposit nearly 500 kilometres northeast of Thunder Bay. In December 2010, Swiss mining giant Xstrata announced it was shutting down its Timmins Kidd Met Site smelter and transferring the operation to Quebec. The move eliminated 700 jobs, she added.
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. Brenda Bouw is the Globe’s mining reporter.
Global mining giant Xstrata PLC will use bulging profits to expand its Canadian operations and sweeten shareholder payouts, a sign of the industry’s rosy demand outlook despite global economic uncertainty alongside rising costs and government intervention.
Xstrata, based in Zug, Switzerland, said profits rose by about 30 per cent in the first half of the year, and the diversified miner more than doubled its dividend on the back of record-setting commodity prices.
“Our recovery has been swift and robust and we are now operating with good momentum to deliver a substantially stronger second half,” Xstrata chief executive officer Mick Davis told investors on Tuesday. He cited in particular strong demand from China, the world’s largest consumer of commodities, as the country continues its frenzied infrastructure build.
Cliffs Natural Resources of Cleveland has yet to decide where it will build a smelter to process chromite concentrate from its Ring of Fire properties in northwestern Ontario.
A promotional video on the Cliffs’ website about the company’s three chromite deposits in the zone (Black Thor, Black Label and Big Daddy), entitled Value Beneath the Surface, highlights Greater Sudbury as one of the four communities where an enclosed chromite electric arc furnace facility could be built.
In the video, Cliffs says it is looking to start production with the Black Thor deposit in 2015 through an open pit operation and produce one million tonnes of chromite concentrate and 600,000 tonnes of ferrochrome annually. The three chromite deposits are described as “extensive, thick and high quality” with a potential production period of 80 years.
