Twitter

Commentary: What does Aboriginal title mean for mining in BC? – by Robin Junger and Brent Ryan (Northern Miner – July 15, 2014)

The Northern Miner, first published in 1915, during the Cobalt Silver Rush, is considered Canada’s leading authority on the mining industry.

Based in Vancouver, Robin M. Junger is co-chair of McMillan LLP’s aborginal and environmental practices, and co-chair of its oil and gas practice in B.C. Brent Ryan is a student-at-law at McMillan.

The recent decision of the Supreme Court of Canada in Tsilhqot’in v. B.C. has received a great deal of attention and has caused people to ask some important questions. Nowhere has this been more so than in the mining sector. We will address some of those questions.

Does aboriginal title include mineral rights? The law is not completely settled on this point.

In Delgamuukw v B.C. in 1997, then Chief Justice Lamer, when explaining that the content of aboriginal title is not restricted to practices, customs and traditions which are integral to distinctive aboriginal cultures, stated:

122 The [Indian Oil and Gas Act] presumes that the aboriginal interest in reserve land includes mineral rights, a point which this Court unanimously accepted with respect to the Indian Act in Apsassin v. Canada (Department of Indian Affairs & Northern Development) in 1995. On the basis of Guerin, aboriginal title also encompass mineral rights, and lands held pursuant to aboriginal title should be capable of exploitation in the same way, which is certainly not a traditional use for those lands.

This was cited in a decision by the Yukon Court of Appeal in Ross River Dena Council v Yukon in 2012 (a duty to consult case, not a title case) where the court stated:

Read more

I refused to play the Conservatives’ fiscal game. So should Wynne – by Bob Rae (Globe and Mail – July 17, 2014)

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.

Bob Rae was premier of Ontario from 1990 to 1995

Critics on the right are now claiming that Kathleen Wynne’s Ontario government is on the road to fiscal rack and ruin – that it could, in one commentator’s words, push Ontario “back to the Bob Rae years.” That provokes these comments.

One would have thought that the experience of the last few years would have made the right wing narrative look pretty goofy but, no, these guys just can’t help themselves. In 1990, interest rates were kept deliberately high, the dollar rose predictably, U.S. companies shut factories in Canada as the newly minted free-trade agreement encouraged rationalization, and a bloated real estate market plummeted. All in one go, all at one time.

The shock to the Ontario economy was sharper and more severe than in 2009, and, as a direct result, public spending increased and revenues fell. This is what happened to Prime Minister Stephen Harper and Ontario premier Dalton McGuinty in 2009. It would have happened in Ontario even if Mike Harris had been elected in 1990. Remember that Tory premiers Bill Davis and Frank Miller ran deficits after the 1980 recession as well.

So, to compare 1990-91 with 2014-15 is to ignore where we were in the cycle, and what governments since the 1930’s have done when faced with such a drastic drop in prosperity.

Read more

Goldman Forecasts Lower Commodity Prices as Cycle Ends – by Glenys Sim (Bloomberg News – July 16, 2014)

http://www.bloomberg.com/

Commodities from iron ore to copper and Brent crude will drop over the next five years as global supplies climb, according to Goldman Sachs Group Inc., which highlighted oil’s recent losses as a sign of increased output.

There will be substantial declines in some metals, energy and bulk commodities, analysts including Chief Currency Strategist Robin Brooks wrote in a report. The period of continued year-on-year price rises for most commodities is over, they said in the report, which was dated yesterday.

Banks from Citigroup Inc. to Deutsche Bank AG have called an end to the commodities super-cycle, when China’s surging demand combined with supply constraints to more than double prices in the 12 years through 2010. Raw materials rallied this year from three annual losses as a lack of rain in Brazil lifted coffee and a ban of ore exports from Indonesia spurred a rally in nickel. The drop in energy prices since last month showed the impact of higher global output, Goldman said in the report.

“A prolonged period of elevated commodity prices has catalysed a supply response,” the analysts wrote. “We do not expect a collapse in global commodity prices. But we do anticipate substantial declines.”

Copper was forecast to drop to $6,600 a metric ton over five years, while iron ore was seen at $80 a ton and Brent may be $100 a barrel, according to Goldman.

Read more

Governance Options for the Ring of Fire – by Nick Mulder (Northern Policy Institute – July 16, 2014)

http://northernpolicy.wordpress.com/

Many questions abound when it comes to the issue of mineral development in the Ring of Fire (RoF) region of Northern Ontario. These questions – which are top of mind for many in industry, government, academia – include concerns about who will pay for the necessary infrastructure and how it will be organized, planned, managed and implemented. All big issues. In a paper I recently wrote for the Northern Policy Institute on the topic, I suggest a properly-designed transportation Authority model could be more effective than a traditional Crown corporation to meet the infrastructure needs in the RoF.

The Authority model would maintain the same core elements as formulated in federal Airport/Port Authorities, but would obviously need to be tailored to fit the unique challenges of RoF development. An effective model would place the onus and risks on all the stakeholders and not just the provincial government and taxpayers, while maintaining elements of independence, inclusiveness, risk sharing, market-driven, political independence and legislated legally-binding powers.

Let’s step back for a minute. The Ring of Fire consists of an area in the northern part of the province near the Attawapiskat River, where large high-grade deposits of chromite, nickel, copper and other minerals have been discovered, currently valued from $60 to $100 billion dollars that can be mined over many decades.

The mineral resources in the area are remote and difficult to access with many conflicting and competing interests and costly infrastructure requirements. Stakeholders include nine First Nations in the region, various mining companies and the provincial and federal governments, making infrastructure needs – such as railway, road, power, pipeline and/or air facilities – a complex arrangement.

Read more

How a Rogue Geologist Discovered a Diamond Trove in the Canadian Arctic [Chuck Fipke] – by Carl Hoffman (Wired Magazine – November 28, 2008)

http://www.wired.com/

(Please note this profile was originally published in November 2008)

Behind an unmarked door in a faded business park outside Kelowna, British Columbia, in a maze of rooms crowded with desks, computers, and floor-to-ceiling shelves, Chuck Fipke sifts through 20-pound bags of dirt.

“We take samples, hey, from gravel and streambeds all over the world,” Fipke says. He sieves the earth, runs it through magnetic drums and centrifuges and electromagnetic separators. Then his technicians, working with scanning electron microscopes, separate out grains and mount them on postage-stamp-sized squares of epoxy. It’s painstaking work but worth the trouble. Fipke has learned to understand those grains of dirt, and that understanding has led him to diamonds.

Eighteen years ago, there was no such thing as a Canadian diamond — as far as anyone knew. Diamonds came mostly from Australia, Botswana, South Africa, Namibia, and Russia. De Beers mined 75 percent of the world’s output, much of it tainted by controversial “blood diamonds,” sold to fund African wars.

Today, Canada is the world’s third-largest producer, by value, of rough stones. In the Northwest Territories, BHP Billiton’s Ekati mine has been producing since 1998 and Rio Tinto’s Diavik mine since 2003. De Beers opened its first Canadian mine, at Snap Lake, in July — a confirmation that Canada is the new center of the world.

Read more

Barrick CEO Jamie Sokalsky to step down in management overhaul – by Peter Koven (National Post – July 16, 2014)

The National Post is Canada’s second largest national paper.

Barrick Gold Corp. is making sweeping changes to its senior management structure, appointing two presidents and announcing that chief executive Jamie Sokalsky will step down.

Executives Kelvin Dushnisky and Jim Gowans will become co-presidents of the company, while Mr. Sokalsky will leave as of September 15. CFO Ammar Al-Joundi is being given new responsibilities as senior executive vice president, and human resources head Darian Rich will take on a new role as head of talent management.

The surprise shake-up appears to be chairman John Thornton’s first big imprint on the company since Peter Munk retired in April and he assumed the top job on his own. Prior to that, he and Mr. Munk were co-chairmen.

Toronto-based Barrick, the world’s biggest gold producer, said this new management structure will help the company meet the “distinct demands and challenges” of the mining industry in the 21st century.

“These structural changes put an even greater emphasis on operational excellence, and will accelerate our portfolio optimization and cost reduction initiatives, while fostering a partnership culture both inside the company and externally,” Mr. Thornton said in a statement.

“Internally, that means our people will be financially invested for the long-term in Barrick’s success, and personally committed to a culture of teamwork that balances individual and collective responsibility and accountability.

Read more

Barrick Gold’s new chairman nixes CEO role, Sokalsky to resign – by Rachelle Younglai (Globe and Mail – July 16, 2014)

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.

Barrick Gold Corp’s chief executive off Jamie Sokalsky will resign in September, the company announced in a surprise management shake up that will nix the CEO role and promote two senior managers to the roles of co-president.

The move comes less than three months after Barrick’s new executive chairman John Thornton took the reins of the world’s largest gold producer and is a blow to Mr. Sokalsky, who was instrumental in steering the company through the toughest year in its history.

Mr. Sokalsky, who rose through the ranks at Barrick to become its chief financial officer, was appointed chief executive in 2012 when the company’s former CEO Aaron Regent was ousted amid a weakening share price.

In the following two years, he helped put Barrick on sounder financial footing by raising funds to pay down the company’s debt load, suspending a key gold project in the Andes and selling off underperforming mines.

Mr. Sokalsky’s pending departure is also a blow to many Barrick employees, as well as to the company’s founder Peter Munk, who had used his last annual meeting of shareholders in April to praise his CEO and say he was part of the team that would restore the company.

Read more

U.S.-Russia rift shaking up Canadian mining sector, for better and worse – by Peter Koven (National Post – July 16, 2014)

The National Post is Canada’s second largest national paper.

Escalating geopolitical tensions between Vladimir Putin and the West may be setting off tremors in Canada’s mining sector, with Russian backers withdrawing from North American assets, creating both big opportunities and major headaches for Canadian firms.

Toronto-based Corsa Coal Corp. announced Tuesday that it would purchase U.S. coal producer PBS Coals Ltd. for $60-million from Russia’s OAO Severstal — just a fraction of the $900-million purchase price that Severstal paid for PBS in 2008, which had already been discounted from a previous offer Severstal had made before the financial crisis struck.

“We think it’s a transformative deal for the company,” Corsa director George Dethlefsen said. Mr. Dethlefsen said that the Russian steel giant decided it no longer needs be vertically integrated on the coal side. Those issues made PBS expendable and gave Toronto-based Corsa a unique growth opportunity at the bottom of the coal market.

At the same time, however, Vancouver-based Mercator Minerals Ltd. is facing a dire financial position as a deal with Russian firm Intergeo MMC Ltd. appears to be on the brink of collapse.

Intergeo, which is controlled by flamboyant Russian billionaire Mikhail Prokhorov, agreed to buy Mercator last December, before the Ukrainian crisis, rescuing the company from liquidity problems. The deal would have given Intergeo ownership of Mercator’s Mineral Park mine in Arizona.

Read more

Vale Canada – by John O’Hanlon (BE Mining – July 16, 2014)

http://www.bus-ex.com/mining

Nickel in demand

The Vale do Rio Doce in Brazil is doubtless an idyllic place beauty as its name, valley of the peaceful river, implies. However the now more prosaically named Vale is a global company with which readers of Business Excellence are very familiar, most recently in our coverage of Vale’s coal mining operations in Mozambique – and indeed, Wales.

However since its 2006 acquisition of Canadian nickel mining operator Inco Vale has been a major player in Canada, where it now has a dozen mines and operational sites. To give an idea of the scale of the Canadian operations, now a wholly owned subsidiary of the Brazilian major, its base metals headquarters in Toronto alone employs 850 people at three sites that administer Vale’s countrywide operations and house the company’s technology development department. Base metals in this context covers almost everything apart from gold, silver and platinum, and definitely includes nickel.

Also in Ontario, though about 400 kilometres to the north of Toronto, Sudbury has enough untapped nickel deposits to support mining for decades to come. In total, Vale has six mines, a mill, a smelter and a refinery in Sudbury, making this one of the largest integrated mining operations on the planet, employing approximately 4,000 people. Raw materials from Vale’s Sudbury operations are shipped to The Port Colborne nickel refinery, a vast 360-acre complex on the shore of Lake Erie in southern Ontario. The refinery dates back to the early days of Inco nearly 100 years ago and employs 170 people in processing nickel, electrocobalt and precious metals, exporting finished nickel products throughout the world.

Read more

SA miners may be stung by BEE – by David McKay (Miningmx.com – July 16, 2014)

http://www.miningmx.com/

[miningmx.com] – SOMEBODY MUST HAVE put something in Peter Leon’s tea. Here he was, Webber Wentzel’s fiercely intellectual mining and energy leader, bestowing rare praise on the South African government’s 10-year regime of mining legislation.

“Let’s give credit where its due,” said Leon when asked to reflect on what had been achieved since the promulgation of the Mineral & Petroleum Resources Development Act (MPRDA) in 2004. “It’s created a junior mining sector that didn’t exist before 2004; it has stopped mining companies sterilising reserves, which is positive, and there’s much greater black ownership of the mining industry and in employment equity”.

“The industry has been deracialised. These are all positives,” he said, adding that he still remained critical of many other aspects of the legislative framework.

Certainly, there’s a view that without the MPRDA, the South African mining industry would have failed to respond as vigorously to the demands of the democratic era. Given the centrality of the sector to South Africa economically, this would have been lethargy of disastrous consequence.

Yet inevitably, with the finale of the mining charter around the corner, important questions are being asked as to the cost of the South African government’s efforts to engineer social and economic change by writ.

Read more

Liberals hedge on Ring of Fire promise – by Carol Mulligan (Sudbury Star – July 16, 2014)

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

Significant work is being done to establish a Ring of Fire development corporation and keep a campaign promise that it be done within 60 days of a Liberal government being elected.

But it’s not clear when the clock began ticking on that 60-day guarantee, says Michael Gravelle, who was reappointed Northern Development and Mines minister by Premier Kathleen Wynne.

Nor is it clear what exactly is meant by “establishing” the development corporation. Gravelle doesn’t know if the 60 days started when he was sworn in June 24 or when his government delivered its Throne Speech on July 3.

And he and his staff are working to determine what exactly will be in put place during the 60-day commitment.

“We are not there yet in terms of determining exactly what form it will take other than that we are grateful to have the opportunity to move this project forward and to have this kind of a timeline in place,” said Gravelle in a telephone interview Tuesday from Queen’s Park.

What matters is that he and ministry staff are working hard to set up the development corporation, conscious of the fact people are eager to hear how it will operate.

Read more

Too much time on your iPad? It can cause an allergic reaction – by Lindsey Tanner (Globe and Mail – July 16, 2014)

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.

CHICAGO — The Associated Press – Unexplained rash? Check your iPad. It turns out the popular tablet computer may contain nickel, one of the most common allergy-inducing metals.

Recent reports in medical journals detail nickel allergies from a variety of personal electronic devices, including laptops and cellphones. But it was an Apple iPad that caused an itchy body rash in an 11-year-old boy recently treated at a San Diego hospital, according to a report in Monday’s Pediatrics.

Nickel rashes aren’t life-threatening but they can be very uncomfortable, and they may require treatment with steroids and antibiotics if the skin eruptions become infected, said Dr. Sharon Jacob, a dermatologist at Rady Children’s Hospital, where the boy was treated. Jacob, who co-wrote the report, said the young patient had to miss school because of the rash.

The boy discussed in the Pediatrics report had a common skin condition that causes scaly patches, but he developed a different rash all over his body that didn’t respond to usual treatment. Skin testing showed he had a nickel allergy, and doctors traced it to an iPad his family had bought in 2010.

Doctors tested the device and detected a chemical found in nickel in the iPad’s outside coating.

Read more

The obscure metal that could solve solar energy’s conundrum – by Carl Mortished (Globe and Mail – July 16, 2014)

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.

On the fringes of global stock markets, fascination with materials continues and the latest obscure object of adoration is vanadium, a metal you may have never heard of but which is well known in the steel industry because it does the neat trick of making steel both stronger and lighter.

Add a couple of pounds of vanadium to a ton of steel and you double its strength, a formula that excites Largo Resources Ltd., a Toronto-listed miner that is only weeks away from opening a Brazilian mine that could supply almost a 10th of the worldwide vanadium market in two to three years time.

There are few sources of the metal; China is the big producer and consumer of vanadium, taking more than half of global output. South Africa and Russia currently account for the remainder. China’s hunger for construction steel laced with vanadium is expected to increase as the government grapples with poor building standards, exposed in recent earthquakes and civil engineering disasters.

Aircraft and automobile manufacturers are also falling in love with vanadium’s dual attributes of lightness and toughness. Boeing’s Dreamliner and the Airbus A380 each contain 100 tonnes of titanium-vanadium; Largo says demand for the alloy is rising by 6.5 per cent annually, despite a global steel glut.

Read more

How Greenpeace landed itself in serious legal trouble with its campaign against a forestry company – by Terence Corcoran (National Post – July 16, 2014)

The National Post is Canada’s second largest national paper.

For some time Greenpeace Canada has been mounting a campaign to bring SLAPP legislation into Canada, the idea being the corporations should be legally discouraged from taking legal action against aggressive environmental activists.

SLAPP stands for Strategic Lawsuit Against Public Participation, a concept swallowed whole by Ontario’s Liberal government, which produced a bill that would prevent a corporation from responding to defamatory statements made by groups such as Greenpeace. The green groups, after all, are said to be acting “in the public interest” and should therefore be above the laws of defamation that might prevent them taking on private corporate interests.

Well, Greenpeace just suffered a major defeat in Ontario court that goes way beyond the narrow confines of defamation and SLAPP legislation. In a decision Tuesday, an Ontario Divisional Court tribunal ordered Greenpeace Canada to pay $22,000 in legal costs to forest giant Resolute Forest Products. The court also ordered Greenpeace “to deliver its statement of defence within 10 days of this decision.”

That should be easy for Greenpeace, since it has been dragging its heels on the Resolute lawsuit for more than a year. It’s had plenty of time to prepare a response to Resolute’s numerous allegations and claims filed in Ontario Superior Court in May 2013.

Those charges were neatly summarized in the Divisional Court’s Tuesday decision. Resolute, in its statement of claim against Greenpeace:

Read more

The Queen of Diamonds Eira Thomas has turned her attention to gold – by Tryst Williams (Walesonline.com – July 13, 2014)

http://www.walesonline.co.uk/

Eira’s father Gren, born in wartime Swansea, formed the Aber Diamond Corporation (after his home of Abertawe) to make his big diamond finds

A millionaire Welsh miner’s daughter dubbed “The Queen of Diamonds” after her exploration work with her father made Canada one of the gem capitals of the world has now set her sights on gold.

Eira Thomas, 45, the only woman who can wear diamonds she discovered herself, is now chief executive of Vancouver based Kaminak Gold.

The company has just released a preliminary assessment showing desirable “high-margin low-risk” economics for its Coffee gold mine project in Canada’s legendary Yukon gold fields.

The report, by JDS Energy and Mining, says gold at Coffee is near-surface and importantly not too expensive to extract.

A statement from Kaminak said: “Total gold production over the life of the mine is expected at 1.86m ounces at a grade of 1.23 grams per tonne of gold, yielding operating cash flow of US $1.24bn and gross revenue of US $2.4bn.

Read more