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‘You’re not listening to us’: Some First Nations warn they will resist Ontario’s Ring of Fire development – by Isaac Phan Nay (National Observer – March 30, 2023)

https://www.nationalobserver.com/

Leaders from five First Nations in northern Ontario gathered at the province’s legislature Wednesday vowing to resist proposed mining development near their lands. “We will take a stand, whatever that looks like,” Wayne Moonias, chief of Neskantaga First Nation, said. “Enough is enough.”

Representing the Neskantaga, Grassy Narrows, Muskrat Dam, Wapekeka and Kitchenuhmaykoosib Inninuwug First Nations, the leaders and community members called for a meeting with Premier Doug Ford and warned they would continue to resist if Ontario allowed development near their lands without further consultation.

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First Nations leaders removed from legislature after protesting mining development – by (The Trilliam – Aidan Chamandy – March 29, 2023)

https://www.thetrillium.ca/

It was the second time this month that leaders from the Neskantaga First Nation were at Queen’s Park to ask for a meeting with Premier Doug Ford.

Two First Nations leaders were removed from the Queen’s Park chamber on Wednesday after disrupting question period over what they say is a government trampling on their rights by speeding ahead with mining developments.

Neskantaga Chief Wayne Moonias and incoming chief Chris Moonias were sitting in the visitors’ gallery during question period when NDP MPP Sol Mamakwa asked Premier Doug Ford if the government would stop moving forward with its plans to develop the Ring of Fire over some First Nations’ objections.

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Marathon mine builder secures a copper customer in Glencore – by Staff (Northern Ontario Business – March 27, 2023)

https://www.northernontariobusiness.com/

Offtake agreement will send Generation Mining’s copper concentrate for processing in Quebec

Generation Mining, the developers of a proposed open-pit mine near Marathon, has secured an international mining company to be the buyer of its copper concentrate. An offtake term sheet has been finalized with Glencore International AG.

According to the term sheet, Glencore will purchase an average of 50 per cent of the future mine’s total copper concentrate. The polymetallic copper concentrate also contains palladium, platinum, gold, and silver. The concentrate from Marathon will head to Glencore’s Horne smelter in Rouyn-Noranda, Que. for further processing.

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GOVERNMENT OF ONTARIO STATEMENT: Ontario Responds to the Federal Government’s Budget 2023 (March 28, 2023)

OTTAWA — Today, Ontario’s Minister of Finance Peter Bethlenfalvy issued the following statement in response to the federal government’s Budget 2023:

“Our government appreciates the federal government working with us in a number of areas to help Ontario families, workers, and businesses. Together, we have attracted billions of dollars in investments, putting Ontario and Canada back on the map as an automotive powerhouse, including Volkswagen’s recent announcement that it has chosen St. Thomas as the new home of its first-ever offshore battery plant.

The Government of Canada’s 2023 budget provides significant support responding to the U.S. Inflation Reduction Act with investment tax credits in clean electricity, including small modular reactors, and clean technology manufacturing and extraction of critical minerals.

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First Nations protesting Ontario’s accelerated mining development plans – by Niall McGee (Globe and Mail – March 29, 2023)

https://www.theglobeandmail.com/

Five First Nations communities are planning to stare down Doug Ford in the Ontario Legislature Wednesday, alleging that the Premier is railroading through mining development without their consent.

Leaders of Neskantaga, KI, Grassy Narrows, Wapekeka and Muskrat Dam First Nations said in a statement they are converging on Queen’s Park with a message to Premier Ford that pushing through mining on their lands against their will, “courts conflict and violates their rights.”

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Excerpt from Ring of Fire: High-Stakes Mining in a Lowlands Wilderness – by Virginia Heffernan (March 27, 2023)

Click Here to Order Book: https://amzn.to/3FVk4hK

A valuable discovery under the world’s second-largest temperate wetland and in the traditional lands of the Cree and Ojibway casts light on the growing conflict among resource development, environmental stewardship, and Indigenous rights

When prospectors discovered a gigantic crescent of metal deposits under the James Bay Lowlands of northern Canada in 2007, the find touched off a mining rush, lured a major American company to spend fortunes in the remote swamp, and forced politicians to confront their legal duty to consult Indigenous Peoples about development on their traditional territories. But the multibillion-dollar Ring of Fire was all but abandoned when stakeholders failed to reach a consensus on how to develop the cache despite years of negotiations and hundreds of millions of dollars in spending. Now plans for an all-weather road to connect the region to the highway network are reigniting the fireworks.

In this colorful tale, Virginia Heffernan draws on her bush and newsroom experiences to illustrate the complexities of resource development at a time when Indigenous rights are becoming enshrined globally. Ultimately, Heffernan strikes a hopeful note: the Ring of Fire presents an opportunity for Canada to leave behind centuries of plunder and set the global standard for responsible development of minerals critical to the green energy revolution.

EXCERPT: Ring of Fire – Geological Richness on a World-Class Supersize Scale – by Virginia Heffernan

Geologists now speculate that the only way Nemis’s ring could contain so much mantle-derived (or ultramafic) magma and metal is if some cataclysmic geological event, such as two continents colliding or separating, had cracked open the basement rocks….

Now cast your mind back 2.7 billion years. The crust is splitting apart just west of the current imprint of Hudson Bay. The crust is thinner and the core hotter than now, creating a lot of melted mantle with nowhere to go. So as soon as a rift opens up, the restless magma lets loose and ascends….

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Northern Ontario First Nations claim up to $150 billion over ‘flagrant disregard’ of 1850 treaty – by Betsy Powell (Toronto Star – March 24, 2023)

https://www.thestar.com/

The Robinson Treaty gave the First Nations groups an annual payment that was supposed to increase over time, but was last raised to $4 per person in 1875.

After years of litigation, a court case is nearing an outcome that will put the Canadian or Ontario governments — or both — on the hook for a multibillion-dollar payout to First Nations groups for failing to abide by the terms of a 173-year-old treaty.

The Indigenous bands from north of Lake Superior signed the Robinson treaty in 1850, giving the province access to their natural resources in return for an annuity starting at $1.60 per person. That was supposed to escalate over time, in keeping with rising land values, but the annual payment has remained at $4 per person since 1875.

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Reflections on the Inco Superstack – by Jonathan Migneault (CBC News Sudbury – March 14, 2023)

Stan Sudol PhotoStan Sudol Photo

https://www.cbc.ca/newsinteractives/

Built in 1972 to clean up Sudbury’s environment and decommissioned in 2020, Canada’s onetime tallest freestanding structure is still standing

For Matteo Campagnaro, working on the Inco Superstack — Canada’s tallest structure for a brief time — was a pleasure. Campagnaro, who immigrated to Canada from Italy in 1965, said his time on the Superstack, from 1969 to 1972, made him fall in love with northern Ontario.

“The hunting, the lakes, the fish, the atmosphere, the outdoors, the friendly people — this is the best place in the world,” he said. Thanks to his job as a welder, he met his wife in Sudbury. They have two children and a grandson, and still live in Sudbury’s south end.

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Ontario calls on Ottawa to match $1-billion for Ring of Fire critical minerals in federal budget – by Laura Stone and Jeff Gray (Globe and Mail – March 25, 2023)

https://www.theglobeandmail.com/

Ontario’s Finance Minister is calling on Ottawa to match $1-billion in investment in the Ring of Fire critical minerals sector in next week’s federal budget, urging Canada to send a message to visiting U.S. President Joe Biden that the province is a welcome place to invest in the mining industry.

Finance Minister Peter Bethlenfalvy, who released his $204.7-billion budget Thursday, said Ontario is looking to further collaborate with the federal government to develop the country’s critical minerals sector and promote it abroad.

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Unlocking Northern Ontario’s Economic Potential (2023 Ontario Budget Papers – March 23, 2023)

2023 Ontario Budget Papers Document

Building the Corridor to Prosperity

Critical minerals are key to the economy of the future. These important resources are critical to products that the people of Ontario rely on, including cell phones, electric vehicles (EVs), and the semiconductors in countless goods. Critical minerals are some of the most sought after commodities in the global economy and Ontario happens to be one of the rare places on earth with many of these natural resources available.

Ontario’s endowment in critical minerals can be leveraged to encourage domestic mining and processing that support the high‐value downstream activities in the electric vehicle supply chain such as automotive and battery manufacturing. This is a competitive advantage that cannot be ignored.

Ontario is helping to build a strong critical minerals sector in the province. Through investments and support, the government is unlocking Northern Ontario’s economic potential in critical minerals and connecting these resources to the world‐class manufacturing capabilities in Southern Ontario. Ontario has tremendous opportunities for critical minerals to support future economic prosperity.

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Will a Road Make the Ring of Fire a Reality? – TV Ontario’s The Agenda host Steve Paikin interviews Kristan Straub, Virginia Heffernan and Stan Sudol (March 21, 2023)

https://www.tvo.org/theagenda

For the better part of 15 years, the Ring of Fire, the biggest mining prize in a generation, or more, has confounded those who would develop it. One of the key issues is how to get to and from the remote area. But the province may have presented a solution with a recently announced agreement on the terms of reference for a First Nations-led plan for a permanent road to the Ring of Fire.

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The Drift: Sudbury-raised CEO picked to plot the path in the Ring of Fire – by Ian Ross (Northern Ontario Business – March 22, 2023)

https://www.northernontariobusiness.com/

Groomed at Glencore, Kristan Straub now helms Ring of Fire Metals

Talk of a weekend snowstorm about to hit Sudbury rings up pangs of jealousy from Kristan Straub. A weather forecast calling for 30 to 50 centimetres of fresh powder is cause for impending calamity in the ‘burbs of the GTA where the newly appointed CEO of Ring of Fire Metals now resides.

But to Straub, 48, it’s a siren call to the snowmobile trails for the Sudbury-raised outdoor enthusiast. For now, those recreational pursuits will have to be put on hold. On March 1, Straub was introduced as the new boss of the Australian-owned James Bay mine developer, just days prior to the start of the PDAC mining conference in Toronto, one of the industry’s biggest global get-togethers. He was recruited from Glencore where was vice-president of exploration with the nickel team.

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Sudbury’s regreening expertise taking root in Peru (Northern Ontario Business – March 17, 2023)

https://www.northernontariobusiness.com/

City of Greater Sudbury signs letter of intent with Peruvian region to promote innovation and cooperation

Sudbury’s environmental remediation expertise is being exported to Peru. The City of Greater Sudbury and the regional government of Moquegua, two international mining centres, have signed a letter of intent of cooperation during the recent PDAC mining show in Toronto earlier this month.

According to a city news release, this alliance letter recently signed is a formal relationship builder between the Nickel City and this region of Peru with the intention that it will mutually “stimulate economic development, workforce development, battery and microchips development, research and remediation technology, and curricula transfer, helping people and businesses on both sides of the Americas thrive.”

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OPINION: To develop Ontario’s Ring of Fire, we must develop trust with First Nations – by Virginia Heffernan (Globe and Mail – March 17, 2023)

https://www.theglobeandmail.com/

Virginia Heffernan is a mining writer and the author of Ring of Fire: High-Stakes Mining in a Lowlands Wilderness.

One of the barriers to development in the Ring of Fire, a mineral-rich area in Ontario’s far north, is lack of trust. The Ring of Fire metal deposits lie within Treaty Nine lands.

Signed by the Crown and the region’s First Nations at the beginning of the 20th century, the treaty allowed the Crown to acquire land from Cree and Ojibway peoples in the James Bay Lowlands for white settlement and resource development. In exchange, Indigenous peoples were promised cash payments, reserves to live on, education for their children and hunting, fishing and trapping rights.

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Ontario mines minister says Ring of Fire could be worth $1 trillion, a figure critics call exaggerated – by Logan Turner (CBC News Thunder Bay – March 17, 2023)

https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/thunder-bay/

Wyloo Metals, which owns majority of known claims in area, estimates value of ‘defined ore bodies’ at $90B

From the time the Ring of Fire was discovered in 2007, politicians and industry leaders have emphasized the potential economic value of the remote, mineral-rich area in northern Ontario. That has intensified in recent weeks, with Ontario Mines Minister George Pirie saying recently: “Anecdotally, mining people are saying this is a trillion-dollar project.”

Pirie told Global News in a recent documentary that the $1-trillion amount was “not a formal valuation,” but was “based on the increased value of critical minerals that are already established being in the ground.”

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