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The roots of inequality: Mining profits soar, but Africans are still poor – by Yao Graham (Embassy Magazine – November 14, 2011)

This column was first published by Embassy, Canada’s foreign policy newsweekly. http://embassymag.ca/

Yao Graham is the co-ordinator of Third World Network-Africa, a pan-African policy research and advocacy organization based in Accra, Ghana.

Profits have ballooned in recent years, but African states haven’t seen their fair share. It’s time to look beyond the woefully inadequate compensation of voluntary corporate social responsibility actions by mining firms in Africa.

In 2009, African heads of state adopted the African Mining Vision. Its key objective is the transformation of Africa’s mining sector into a catalyst of broad-based growth and development and a key component of a diversified, vibrant and globally competitive, industrializing African economy.

The vision foresees Africa moving away from being a source of unprocessed minerals, towards the production of value-added goods from its mineral resources. It also recognizes that the governance of Africa’s mining sector must improve. It must become more environmentally friendly, more inclusive in sharing its benefits, more socially responsible and be accepted by surrounding communities.

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Webequie says its still open for Ring of Fire business – by Shawn Bell (Wawatay News – November 24, 2011)

 

This video was posted on You Tube by the Matawa First Nations on November 7, 2011. It is about the Ring Of Fire development and effects on the communities of the Matawa First Nations in Northwestern Ontario. While this You Tube posting is not connected to the Webequie article, it does provide some background content and puts the recent Matawa political opposition to the Ring of Fire in perspective. – Stan Sudol

Wawatay News is Northern Ontario’s First Nation Voice with offices in Sioux Lookout, Timmins and Thunder Bay.

Rifts in the Matawa First Nations’ opposition to mining in the Ring of Fire were on display Nov. 23 as Webequie First Nation held a press conference to announce that Matawa does not speak for the people the community.

Webequie Chief Cornelius Wabasse presented a community position statement calling for companies interested in developing the Ring of Fire to negotiate directly with the community, not through organizations such as Matawa.

“Matawa Tribal Council is not a decision-making authority for Webequie First Nation, Wabasse said. “Webequie will determine our own community-led process to guide industry, government and commercial groups through the process of working collaboratively.”

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Study of second proposed Ring of Fire mine underway – by Shawn Bell (Wawatay News – November 18, 2011)

Wawatay News is Northern Ontario’s First Nation Voice with offices in Sioux Lookout, Timmins and Thunder Bay.

As the controversy over the environmental study of a proposed Ring of Fire mine drags on, another proposed mine in the Ring of Fire has started a similar environmental assessment process. The environmental assessment for Noront Resources’ proposed Eagles Nest mine kicked off Nov. 15 with the opening of a 30-day public comment period.

The Canadian Environmental Assessment Agency (CEAA) decided to do a comprehensive study, the same process chosen for Cliffs Natural Resources’ proposed chromite mine.

CEAA spokesperson Celine Legault said that the agency determined there was no need for the Noront project to be subjected to a more intensive Joint Review Panel (JRP) assessment. “At any time during the study the (federal) minister of environment can refer the assessment to a Joint Review Panel,” Legault said.

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Congo’s plethora of resources translates only to misery – by Peter Koven (National Post – November 26, 2011)

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

Amid the biggest boom in the history of the copper market, the country with the richest reserves heads to the polls in two days with almost nothing but misery to show for it.

Monday’s election in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) should be a joyful event: It is only the country’s second democratic election since 1960, and the first that is being run without massive support from the international community.

Unfortunately, the DRC remains a test case for a country that has failed to benefit from its tremendous natural resources. Despite an estimated US$24-trillion of mineral wealth, poverty is still at unacceptable levels: The Congo recently ranked last among 187 countries in a human-development report from the United Nations. Sectarian violence and rape remain commonplace in the eastern part of the country, and the government has come under fire for alleged corruption and mismanagement. The election has shone a light on these issues, but analysts worry about violent outbreaks no matter who wins.

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China keen on importing Canadian crude – by Florence Tan and Judy Hua (National Post – November 26, 2011)

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

SINGAPORE/BEIJING – China is set to embrace Canada’s offer of more crude, heating up competition with the United States as the world’s top two oil consumers jostle to secure supplies and meet ravenous demand.

Shipments from a politically stable country such as Canada will be a welcome diversification of supply sources as top consumers make plans to deal with a supply shock if tensions in the Middle East escalate and choke off Iranian exports, barely a year after markets coped with a disruption from Libya.

“There is no oil that we can’t process,” an official at Sinopec, Asia’s largest refiner, said, declining to be identified as he is not authorized to talk to the media. “With 30 refineries, there will be some that can use Canadian crude.”

China is an ideal client for Canada in Asia as it has the ability to process a wide range of crude and its appetite continues to grow. The Canadian heavy sour grade, which will be shipped to Asia, has API gravity of 19 to 22 degrees and contains around 3% sulphur. Most Asian refineries process crude of 30 degrees API.

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Will Sellwood see its second boom with a [Ring of Fire] chromite smelter? – by Rita Poliakov (Sudbury Star – November 26, 2011)

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

You can still find the town of Sellwood on Google Maps. It’s not much of a map though, with one long street and a small marker off to the right, in the middle of a patch of nothingness. The site itself isn’t all that different.

About 20 km from Capreol, on a long, potholed road, there’s a sign marking the Moose Mountain Mine site, which, if all goes well, may one day host a ferrochrome production facility for Cliffs Natural Resources.

Other than some construction work (workers are grinding rocks into gravel), the site is a rocky wasteland, filled with ponds that probably started off as open pit mines and orange-tinted rocks that hint at iron deposits.

But in the early 1900s, Sellwood was a town of promise. “Sellwood was going to be the iron ore capital of the world,” said Stu Thomas, president of the board of directors of the Northern Ontario Railroad Museum in Capreol.

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[Sudbury’s Laurentian University] LU gets big bucks – Star Staff (Sudbury Star – November 25, 2011)

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

Laurentian University’s School of Engineering got a new name and a huge financial boost Thursday. Stan Bharti, chairman and CEO of Forbes & Manhattan, Inc., announced a $10-million gift for the engineering school.

In recognition of the donation, Laurentian University president Dominic Giroux said the university will rename the school in the Bharti family’s honour.

“We have very fond memories of the many years during which we lived and raised our family in Sudbury, and wanted to give back to the community,” Bharti said in a statement. “Our family is very proud of the momentum at Laurentian University.

“We wanted to be part of it and encourage other families with an affinity for Northern Ontario or the mining sector to support The Next 50 Campaign.”

The donation is part of the Sudbury Families initiative, bringing the total raised for Laurentian’s The Next 50 Campaign to $48.6 million.

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Sydney Tar Ponds to get a facelift – by Emily Jackson (Toronto Star – November 25, 2011)

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

Sydney, N.S., will soon boast its own version of Central Park, with one small caveat — it will be built on top of a former hazardous waste site. The park will mark the final phase in the $400 million cleanup of the Sydney Tar Ponds, pools of toxic waste caused by more than 100 years of runoff from a steel plant.

Controversies surrounding the cleanup will linger for years, but all parties involved seem excited to move on from the toxic mess and finally transform the space into something positive. “At the end, the community was tired of fighting about the actual cleanup mechanism,” said Cape Breton Regional Municipality Mayor John Morgan.

The polluted sludge was mixed with cement, covered with an “impermeable” cap, and then buried under the soil where the park will be built. While people argued if this was the best way to remediate the waste (many wanted it to be burned), there has been very little bickering over what to do with the land once it’s actually clean, Morgan explained.

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TEAMSTERS CANADA NEWS RELEASE: McGuinty government urged to kill plans to ship ‘Ring of Fire’ refinery work to China

Canada NewsWire

U.S. multinational Cliffs Natural Resources says it will seek exemption to Ontario Mining Act to ship raw chromite overseas, but Teamsters wants the government to tell foreigners that if you ‘mine it here, then refine it here or keep it in the ground’

OTTAWA, Nov. 25, 2011 /CNW/ – Queen’s Park will squander huge potential benefits of the so-called “Ring of Fire” mining discovery in the James Bay lowlands if it allows the lion’s share of raw materials to be siphoned off and sent to China for refining, says the head of Teamsters Canada Rail Conference Maintenance of Way Employees.

“A senior executive of Cliffs Natural Resources told CBC news this week that it plans to ship much of the raw chromite to Asia for refining and will seek an exemption to the Ontario Mining Act because the law prevents materials mined in Ontario being refined outside Canada,” says William Brehl, president of the union representing maintenance workers on several short line railways in Northern Ontario that may carry Ring of Fire minerals.

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MINING WATCH CANADA NEWS RELEASE: Report Details Unacceptable Impacts from Deep Sea Mining by Canada’s Nautilus Minerals

For a copy of the report see: http://www.deepseaminingoutofourdepth.org

(November 24, 2011: Port Morseby, Ottawa, Melbourne) The Centre for Environmental Law and Community Rights in Papua New Guinea (PNG) and MiningWatch Canada and have released a new report called “Out of Our Depth.” It details serious environmental and social impacts expected as a result of unprecedented mining of the ocean floor in PNG.

Canadian mining company Nautilus Minerals Inc. (Nautilus) plans to extract gold and copper from the floor of the Bismarck Sea in 2012 at its Solwara 1 project. The project will mine active and inactive hydrothermal vents at 1.46 kilometres under the sea. Thousands of these vents over an 11 hectare area will be destroyed. Possibly the origins of life on earth, these high-temperature underwater vents host unique species, most of which have not yet been identified or studied.

The underwater mine site is located close to coastal communities that rely heavily on sea food for diet and income. The project is raising alarm among these directly affected communities, as well as among PNG citizens who question the environmental process that led to the licensing of the project.

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Canadian asbestos production suspended – by Andy Blatchford (Globe and Mail – November 25, 2011)

Montreal— The Canadian Press – Canada’s once-mighty asbestos sector has ground to a halt for the first time in 130 years, as production of the controversial fibre has stalled in both of the country’s mines.

A shutdown this month marked a historic milestone for the Canadian asbestos industry, which at one time dominated world production and led to the construction of entire towns in Canada. Proponents of the industry insist it’s way too early write the obituary on Canadian asbestos; they’re hoping to start digging again as soon as the spring.

But for now, amid all the noisy political debates and a dramatic anti-asbestos news conference Thursday on Parliament Hill, Canadian production has quietly and suddenly stopped.

Work halted earlier this month at the Lac d’amiante du Canada operation in Thetford Mines, Que., which followed a production stoppage at Jeffrey Mine in Asbestos, about 90 kilometres away. The future of both mines is unclear.

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Long-time Sherritt chief Ian Delaney to retire – by Brenda Bouw (Globe and Mail – November 25, 2011)

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.

Ian Delaney, the “Smiling Barracuda” of Bay Street who transformed Sherritt International Corp. into a multifaceted mining company with reaches into Cuba and Madagascar, is stepping down, again, as its CEO.

The 68-year-old business maverick, who still exchanges notes with Fidel Castro and shrugs off his ban from the United States, said he can comfortably relinquish the chief executive officer’s role now that his successors are primed to take over during what he sees as a prolonged period of market volatility.

“They are all firing on eight cylinders, they don’t need me,” Mr. Delaney said in an interview on Thursday after announcing his retirement effective at the end of the year, three years after being “drafted” back to the position. He will be replaced by chief financial officer David Pathe on Jan. 1.

The provocative former Merrill Lynch investment banker will remain as chairman of the diversified Toronto-based resources firm he won control over in a hostile proxy contest in 1990, turning it into Canada’s largest coal producer and the largest independent energy producer in Cuba.

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NEWS RELEASE: Another record year with total mining investment [in Quebec] close to $3 billion in 2010

Québec, November 22, 2011 – The mining industry is soaring from one all-time high to the next. It had a record investment of $2.92 billion in 2010, up an unheard of 43% from 2009. This was the seventh straight year of increase in total mining investment with each of the last three years crossing the threshold of $2 billion.

The same level of investment by Québec mining companies is forecast for 2011. This was revealed in the newsletter Mines en chiffres 2010 released today by the Institut de la statistique du Québec.

The mining triangle formed by the regions of Abitibi-Témiscamingue, Côte-Nord and Nord-du-Québec continues to reap the lion’s share with 95% of total investment. However, Abitibi-Témiscamingue remains the primary mining region, the only region having broken the barrier of $1 billion in 2010 ($1.42 billion), i.e. 48.6% of the overall amount.

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SAMSSA’s Dick DeStefano Interviews Republic Of Mining’s Stan Sudol about Northern Ontario’s potential

A November 24, 2011 $10 million gift to Laurentian's Engineering School from Stan Bharti, (centre holding cheque) chairman and CEO of Forbes & Manhattan, Inc. confirms Sudbury's status as Canada's pre-eminent centre for mining education, reseach and production.

 

        Dick DeStefano is the Executive Director of Sudbury Area Mining Supply and Service Association (SAMSSA). destefan@isys.ca This column was originally published in the December, 2011 issue of Sudbury Mining Solutions Journal.

Stan Sudol has one of the most active mining logs in North America: www.republicofmining.com It has recently been added to a Top Ten Mining Blog list by Australian Mining magazine. We asked Stan for his comments and views on Northern Ontario Mining and its technology cluster.

SAMSSA has been monitoring the mining sector for nine years now and with the exception of the crash in September 2008,  the sector continues to grow. Why?

China, India and many other industrializing and urbanizing economies will continue to grow and place enormous demands on mineral production and the supply and service suppliers. We are still in a commodity super-cycle that will last much longer than previous ones. However, commodity super-cycles have temporary downsides as we saw in 2008.

China is witnessing the largest rural-urban migration in the history of mankind. Hundreds of millions of new middle-class consumers need all sorts of products and infrastructure services that can only be made with the minerals we dig out of the ground in Sudbury and Northern Ontario.

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Development, protection; [Ontario] Far North Act clarifies land use planning – by Michael Gravelle (Thunder Bay Chronicle-Journal – November 21, 2011)

Michael Gravelle is Ontario’s Minister of Natural Resources and MPP for Thunder Bay-Superior North.

AS the minister responsible for implementing the Far North Act, I can tell you that I truly believe it is the foundation of a remarkable and, frankly, unprecedented land use planning process that will benefit the North.

While our government moves forward in its work with scores of First Nation communities, I do acknowledge that there is still a lot of misunderstanding and opposition, and I believe that it is my responsibility to address this.

Most people would agree that good planning leads to good development which creates good jobs and a strong economy. The fact is that jobs and investment are coming to the Far North, and the benefits of that will be felt by both First Nations communities and the Northern Ontario communities that will become important transportation hubs and supply and service providers.

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