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Ontario confronts pinched new normal – by Carol Goar (Toronto Star – April 9, 2014)

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.

Ontario Finance Minister calls on MPPs to think beyond the election cycle, then contradicts his own advice.

We can stop waiting for the recovery. It has come and gone. We’ve moved from the old normal of steady economic growth, with jobs that paid enough to live on and rising wages; into a new normal of fitful growth, global uncertainty, constrained government revenues and a long, slow exodus of 2 million baby boomers from the workforce.

This was the picture painted by Finance Minister Charles Sousa in his long-term report on the Ontario economy, presented to the legislative assembly last week.

Over the next 20 years, he expects cyclical ups and downs, shock waves from abroad, brief windfalls at home and new technologies that will change the economic landscape. But the overall trajectory will be flatter than it has ever been in our lives.

To put that in numbers, Ontario’s economy will grow at an average annual rate of 2.1 per cent a year between now and 2035. That is slower than the rest of Canada (2.2 per cent), slower than the United States (2.4 per cent) and slower than the global average (3.1 per cent). “We need to start thinking beyond election cycles,” Sousa told MPPs.

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Quebec’s Plan Nord Promises A Mining Boom – by Daniel Tencer (Huffington Post Canada – April 8, 2014)

http://www.huffingtonpost.ca/

The business community — both inside and outside Quebec — breathed a collective sigh of relief Monday night when Philippe Couillard’s Liberals won a formidable majority government.

But for the resource sector, the defeat of the Parti Quebecois means more than just the removal of the risk of a separation referendum. It means the imminent acceleration of a massive mining development plan that will see an area in northern Quebec twice the size of France — a full 72 per cent of Quebec’s land — transformed over the next quarter century.

It’s called Plan Nord, and it was initially introduced in 2011 by the previous Quebec Liberal government of Jean Charest, whose successor, Pauline Marois, scuttled the project when the PQ came to power. Now the plan is back. Couillard made a slightly revised version of the plan a central part of his electoral platform.

“We’re putting most of it back as it was, because it was an excellent plan of sustainable development for Quebec,” he said, as quoted at Forbes. “Unfortunately the Parti Quebecois basically killed it when they came into office. They have a hostile attitude towards the mining industry, and private activity in general, so it wasn’t long before the signal was sent that this was over.”

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ANALYSIS-South Africa’s platinum strike will hasten restructuring – by Ed Stoddard and Jan Harvey (Reuters Africa – April 8, 2014)

http://af.reuters.com/

JOHANNESBURG/LONDON, April 8 (Reuters) – As a strike by South African platinum miners enters its eleventh week, the likelihood that employers will bow to demands for better pay is receding and a drastic overhaul of the loss-making industry is looking more inevitable.

Faced with the tough bargaining stance of the Association of Mineworkers and Construction Union (AMCU), the companies appear increasingly likely to close or sell mines that are bleeding cash while they lie idle.

Before the strike began, around half of the country’s platinum shafts were losing money because of rising energy and labour costs and waning demand for the metal, used mainly in jewellery and in catalytic converters for cars.

To pacify AMCU, Anglo American Platinum, Impala Platinum and Lonmin would have to double entry-level pay over the next three years to 12,500 rand ($1,200) a month – a demand they flatly refuse. The industry has idled some production to shore up margins, but held back from tougher cuts for fear of a political backlash that could compromise its wider interests.

But the miners’ strike, the longest and most damaging in South Africa in decades, has now cost the industry over $1 billion in lost revenue and there is a growing sense that the companies have little to lose.

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Veolia Pushes Into Water Treatment at Mines Amid Tougher Rules – by Tara Patel (Bloomberg News – April 8, 2014)

http://www.bloomberg.com/

Veolia Environnement SA (VIE), Europe’s largest water utility, seeks to more than double sales to the mining industry to $2.1 billion by 2020 amid water scarcity and tougher environmental rules.

The added revenue would come from orders to treat water and waste from extraction industries as well as helping to boost energy savings at sites, the Paris-based utility said.

“The more the mining industry booms, the more mines are being located in areas where there are water shortages,” Chief Executive Officer Antoine Frerot said today at a press conference. Tougher environmental rules are also creating business for Veolia.

The CEO has sought to cut Veolia’s debt and narrow its global focus while at the same time targeting contracts with industry which can carry higher profit margins than municipal water agreements. The utility seeks to increase revenue and some measures of profit this year following a turnaround plan marked by asset sales and management changes.

“Water issues can be key, they can put projects on hold,” Christopher Howell, global director of mining and metals at Veolia, said today at the press conference. Mining companies are coming under increasing pressure from indigenous populations over water rights.

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Excerpt from Boardroom Games: You’re Fired! – Mining Boards: Local and Foreign Adventures – by Peter Crossgrove

To order a copy of From Boardroom Games: You’re Fired, click here: http://amzn.to/1pA7i7q or here: http://bit.ly/OYexer

For a three part BNN interview with Peter Crossgrove, click here:

http://watch.bnn.ca/#clip1071973

http://watch.bnn.ca/#clip1071974

http://watch.bnn.ca/#clip1071978

Excerpt from “Boardroom Games: You’re Fired!” – Mining Boards: Local and Foreign Adventures

Sudbury-born Peter A. Crossgrove and another partner invested in Interior Door, a private company that became Masonite, a public company sold to KKR for $3.2 billion in 2004. Peter’s mining and boardroom experiences are indelibly etched real-life scenarios—humorous and thought provoking. Having served on close to seventy mining, corporate, and not-for-profit boards, armed with a sense of humour, dignity, dogged determination, and humility, Peter has challenged boardroom antics and relationship intricacies with the skill-sets and values he was raised with.

Early Barrick Days

In the early Barrick days, Barrick Gold was originally called American Barrick so it would be listed higher in the newspaper stock pages and easier to find by investors. The original company was United Sysco and the CEO was Bob Fasken. Bob’s COO was Bob Smith. I knew them both well. I used to fly up with them in the company’s Turbo Beaver to Griffith Island, an island off Wiarton in Georgian Bay, to shoot pheasant and chucker partridge. We were members of the Griffith Island Club in Georgian Bay.

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New Potash CEO takes reins amid tough landscape – by Rachelle Younglai (Globe and Mail – April 8, 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.

Potash Corp. of Saskatchewan Inc. made the surprise appointment of a new chief executive officer with no fertilizer experience as the miner trudges through one of its most difficult periods in its history.

Jochen Tilk, the former chief executive of Inmet Mining Corp., has worked in the Canadian mining industry for more than 25 years and is recognized as a skilled operator who built his company into a respected metal producer.

But Mr. Tilk is unknown in the potash industry, where a handful of players have held sway over prices for decades and built their market share through negotiated deals with fast-growing economies like China and India.

He will become CEO as the Saskatoon-based company struggles to adjust to lower potash prices after Russian-based producer OAO Uralkali ended a partnership with its Belarus rival, a cartel-like arrangement to sell the fertilizer. Before the breakup, the Russian-Belarussian union along with Potash Corp. and its North American equivalent called Canpotex Ltd. controlled 70 per cent of the global potash market.

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REUTERS SUMMIT-Mining investor says Congo is cleaning up its act – by Peter Jones (Reuters India – April 8, 2014)

http://in.reuters.com/

(Reuters) – Democratic Republic of Congo has improved its business environment but plans to raise mining taxes could deter investors in a country where massive infrastructure challenges remain, the CEO of a major foreign miner said.

Pieter Deboutte, manager of the Fleurette company that holds Israeli billionaire Dan Gertler’s mining and oil interests in Congo, said Prime Minister Augustin Matata Ponyo had made progress in tackling corruption and improving government administration.

Congo has huge deposits of gold, diamonds, copper, cassiterite and coltan that attract investors from across the globe but has been unable to lift its 60 million people out of poverty due to mismanagement, graft and conflict in its east.

The country ranks 154th among 177 nations on Transparency International’s corruption perceptions index. Ponyo, who served for two years as finance minister before taking over as premier in 2012, has won praise from investors and multilateral lenders for curbing inflation and the national debt.

“Ponyo has done a good job introducing more strictness in government,” Deboutte told the Reuters Africa summit. “There is corruption everywhere – and of course it is here – but everything is professionalising now.”

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Let’s not forget we [Canada mining] need help too – Russ Noble (Canadian Mining Journal – April 2014)

Russell Noble is the editor for the Canadian Mining Journal, Canada’s first mining publication.

There was a story on the evening news recently about Prime Minister Stephen Harper flying off to somewhere and it showed him climbing the stairs to his plane with his parting view to us as usual, but what really caught my attention was that he really looked like he didn’t want to go.

Head down, one hand on the rail as he trudged up the stairs and when he got to the top, not even a turn and a waive. He just got on and the door closed. Again, he looked like he was muttering to himself: “Why me, why do I have to go there again. They don’t understand me and I hate the food?”

Anyway, unlike other foreign trips where he’s often hand-in-hand with his wife Laureen as they climb the stairs, turn, smile and waive, then board the plane, this time the Prime Minister looked weary and dragged out; fed up with travelling.

In fact, I bet if someone asked him what he’d rather be doing than flying for eight or 10 hours with an entourage of staff and various other invitees, including the Press, he’d probably say: “Nothing.”

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2014 Prospectors and Developers Association of Canada (PDAC) Award Winners Videos [ALL VIDEOS IN THIS SINGLE POSTING]

2014 PDAC Bill Dennis Award: Fission Uranium’s Ross McElroy

http://www.pendaproductions.com/ This video was produced by PENDA Productions, a full service production company specializing in Corporate Communications with a focus on Corporate Responsibility.

This award, named for a former president of the association, honours an individual or team of explorationists who have accomplished one or both of the following: made a significant mineral discovery; made an important contribution to the prospecting and/or exploration industry.

Ross McElroy is the recipient of this year’s Bill Dennis Award for a Canadian mineral discovery or prospecting success. McElroy was selected for leading Fission Uranium’s (TSXV: FCU; US-OTC: FCUUF) team of geologists in the one of the biggest uranium discoveries in northern Saskatchewan’s Athabasca basin region in recent years.

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PROSPECTING FOR CHANGE: Barriers and Proposed Solutions for Northwestern Ontario Explorers (October 2013)

Industry Roundtable

Overview

A number of mining and exploration companies operating in Northwestern Ontario “NWO” have identified that they are experiencing significant barriers in advancing projects. In an effort to promote NWO as a jurisdiction that supports and encourages responsible natural resource development, industry members facilitated a forum for discussion.

A roundtable discussion with executives and professionals from the mining industry was held on September 16th, 2013 in Thunder Bay, ON and was facilitated by the office of the Thunder Bay Economic Development Commission. The primary objective of the discussion was to identify barriers exploration and mining companies are experiencing in advancing projects in NWO, and to outline solutions for overcoming the same.

Although representatives from all stages of the mining cycle were invited to attend, the participants were primarily comprised of exploration companies with projects at an advanced stage of exploration. All projects discussed are subject to Ontario regulations, policies and standards.

The roundtable agenda items discussed:

1. Ontario Mining Act – Plan and Permits (Exploration) & Mineral Development
(Advanced Exploration and Closure Plan Process)
2. CEAA/MOE

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Potash Corp. takes dramatic U-Turn with new CEO hire Jochen Tilk – by Peter Koven (National Post – April 7, 2014)

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

To many people, Bill Doyle is Potash Corp. of Saskatchewan Inc.

His bombastic personality and eternally optimistic outlook played a key role in bringing the sleepy fertilizer industry to the attention of investors. His oligopolistic practices were a model for the sector. His strategy and vision never wavered, even when BHP Billiton Ltd. came knocking with a $40-billion offer. And his 15-year tenure as chief executive is the longest of anyone among Canada’s 30 most valuable publicly-traded companies.

It is simply impossible to think of Potash Corp. and not think of Mr. Doyle. The 64-year-old is a rock star within the fertilizer business, a friend or a frenemy of absolutely everyone, be they customers, investors or rival producers. They all have stories to tell about Bill Doyle, the industry’s quintessential promoter and senior statesman.

Yet despite all of Mr. Doyle’s success, Potash Corp. has gone in a very different direction with his replacement. Indeed, the company has hired someone who is his opposite in almost every way. Jochen Tilk is a disciplined, conservative executive known for his strong operational skills. Unlike Mr. Doyle, he has avoided the limelight and has never spouted conspiracy theories on investor conference calls.

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Minerals ‘aren’t going anywhere’ (Thunder Bay Chronicle-Journal – April 8, 2014)

Thunder Bay Chronicle-Journal is the daily newspaper of Northwestern Ontario.

Given the depressed state of metal prices, they could be forgiven for feeling a little morose. But the Ontario Prospectors Association says it expects to attract more than 300 participants today and Wednesday to its annual Thunder Bay mines and minerals symposium.

And the mood should be upbeat, despite price drops in key metals like copper and gold. “You get a bunch of prospectors, geologists and junior miners in one room and you can’t help feeling optimistic,” OPA executive director Garry Clark remarked Monday from his Thunder Bay office.

“I think people are cautiously optimistic about the market’s ability to raise money for exploration,” Clark added.
“The minerals (in the ground) aren’t going anywhere.”

Last year’s event attracted about 500 participants, but that was before metal prices crashed and many companies — including major Northwestern Ontario industry players like Barrick Gold and Cliffs Natural Resources — downsized or halted operations.

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Vale worker killed, 1 injured – by Carol Mulligan (Sudbury Star – April 8, 2014)

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

Investigations into the Sunday death of 36-year-old millwright Paul Rochette at Vale’s Copper Cliff Smelter Complex have only begun, but it’s believed he died of head trauma after a piece of equipment malfunctioned in the casting and crushing plant about 6 p.m.

The president of United Steelworkers Local 6500 said a large piston called a moil, that was crushing ingots of nickel copper treated in the smelter and on the way to matte processing, released from an area that would have been under pressure.

While reports are preliminary, Rick Bertrand said it appears the industrial mechanic died instantly at the scene.
Greater Sudbury Police Service had not released Rochette’s name, but friends and family were posting on Facebook that he had been killed on the job.

A second millwright, 28, was injured and found unconscious at the scene, and was taken to hospital where he was in stable condition Monday. The smelter was shut down Sunday, and the Ministry of Labour and Greater Sudbury Police Service were called in. The ministry has control of the scene and is conducting an investigation, as are police, USW and Vale.

Bertrand said he couldn’t believe it when he received word Sunday that a member had been killed and another seriously injured on the job.

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PoV: Grits tried to fool us, but ONTC gets reprieve – by Brian MacLeod (Sudbury Star – April 6, 2014)

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

It’s impressive to watch the magnitude of the climb down the Ontario government is doing on the Ontario Northland Transportation Commission. To what end remains to be seen.

Northern Development and Mines Minister Michael Gravelle announced Friday that four divisions of the ONTC–buses, the Polar Bear Express, rail freight and refurbishment services –will continue to be government-owned and run. At issue is almost 1,000 jobs in the North, nearly 600 of which are based in North Bay.

In March 2012, the Liberals said the sale of the ONTC was a necessity that would save $266 million over three years. This would be needed to achieve some of the far-reaching cost-savings required to balance the province’s budget by 2017-18. The Drummond Report briefly alluded to the ONTC, advising that its services “could be provided more effectively and efficiently through private-sector involvement.”

The North was expected to do its part in budget savings and the ONTC was a heavily subsidized operation. Hence the storied Northlander passenger train between Toronto and Cochrane ended in September 2012. But two things happened. There was a massive and sustained revolt along the Highway 11 corridor, especially in North Bay –a Tory-held riding that was once Liberal– and in Timmins.

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INTERVIEW-China’s economic problems not serious, miner Antofagasta says – by Alexandra Ulmer and Fabian Cambero (Reuters India – April 7, 2014)

http://in.reuters.com/

SANTIAGO, April 7 (Reuters) – China’s economic problems are minor and are unlikely to trigger a crisis in the world’s biggest metals consumer, the chief executive officer of Chilean miner Antofagasta Minerals Plc told Reuters on Monday.

Copper prices fell to 3-1/2-year lows in March after a bond default by a Chinese company aroused fears about credit problems in the country. Prices have since steadied, though investors remain wary of slowing growth rates in the Asian giant.

Mining industry veteran Diego Hernandez, who used to head Chilean state copper producer Codelco and base metals at BHP Billiton, brushed aside major fears about the health of the buyer of 40 percent of the world’s copper.

“We think the Chinese economy is fairly solid,” he said during an interview in his office in Chile, the world’s top producer of the red metal, as part of the CESCO/CRU copper conference. “It may have some problems, but they’re minor.”

Still, the copper market could tilt into a small surplus if new and expanded deposits come on line as promised, Hernandez said. Contributing to that would be the London-listed company’s own production, as first-quarter output was on target, Hernandez said.

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