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Vale Steve Wood Speech to Sudbury Area Mining Supply and Service Sector (SAMSSA) – August 9, 2011

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.

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The coming Ontario dark age – by David Robinson (Northern Ontario Business – August 2011)

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.

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Riches to rags tale of Bre-X exec [John Felderhof] – by Betsy Powell (Toronto Star – August 10, 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.

The geologist who made millions by selling Bre-X stock before the company became embroiled in one of the biggest mining frauds in history says he is penniless but happy growing vegetables in the Philippines.

“Rich and poor,” shrugs John Felderhof, “as long as I can put food on the table.” Felderhof, 71, is in Toronto this week for what he calls the bizarre experience of “defending my defence lawyer,” Joseph Groia.

Four years ago, with Groia as his counsel, an Ontario Court judge acquitted Felderhof, who had been Bre-X Mineral’s vice-chairman in charge of exploration, of illegal insider trading and issuing false press releases after a trial that stretched over seven years.

The Law Society of Upper Canada, which regulates lawyers in Ontario, alleges Groia, 56, committed professional misconduct by failing to conduct himself in a civil manner while acting as Felderhof’s counsel.

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Commentary About “Mining Marshall Plan for Northern Ontario” – by Fred Haavisto (Sault Ste. Marie Community Forester)

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. 

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Staying the course [Vale’s Sudbury investments] – by Harold Carmichael (Sudbury Star – August 10, 2011)

The Sudbury Star, the City of Greater Sudbury’s daily newspaper. hcarmichael@thesudburystar.com

“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.

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Canadian resource companies looking like winners – by Peter Koven (National Post – August 9, 2011)

The National Post is Canada’s second largest national paper. Peter Koven is their mining reporter.

During the last recession, Canadian resource companies got a painful reminder of the need to maintain healthy balance sheets. And their current prudence means their shares are unlikely to collapse to the extent they did in 2008 and 2009 if a new recession takes hold, experts say.

Canada’s mining and oil and gas firms have been virtual models of fiscal responsibility over the last two years. Despite an environment of sky-high commodity prices, they have mostly been content to accumulate cash and avoid the high-risk acquisitions that would put their balance sheets at risk.

“I can’t think of any established producer that’s cash-hungry right now in our space,” said David Garofalo, chief executive of HudBay Minerals Inc.

That risk-averse approach was far less common in the months and years leading up to the 2008 meltdown, when multi-billion dollar, all-cash deals were the norm in the resource sector.

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HudBay sells Guatemala mine to stick to mining techniques it knows well – by Mary Gazze (The Canadian Press – August 8, 2011)

http://www.canadianbusiness.com/

TORONTO – HudBay Minerals Inc. (TSX:HBM) sold a promising nickel mine in Guatemala to focus on Canadian and Peruvian projects the company can develop using mining techniques it has been using for more than eight decades.

Analysts said Monday the sale was a long time coming because the Guatemala project had a different geology than HudBay’s other mines and prospects.’ “We have been expecting a sale of the project for some time – admittedly,” said TD Newcrest analyst Greg Barnes .

“We are somewhat pleasantly surprised that management was able to secure a price for the project that is very close to the value for the asset.” Late Friday, Toronto-based HudBay announced the sale of its 98 per cent stake in the Fenix project to global miner Solway Group for US$170 million.

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Plan calls for Northern resources to stay here – by Ron Grech (The Timmins Daily Press – August 9, 2011)

 The Daily Press, the city of Timmins newspaper. Contact the writer at news@thedailypress.ca.

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.

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If it is mined in Ontario, process it here, Horwath says – by Tanya Talaga (Toronto Star – August 9, 2011)

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.

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Commodities expected to play catch-up – by Brenda Bouw (Globe and Mail – August 8, 2011)

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.

Commodity stocks have been hit harder than the price of the products themselves during the recent rout on global markets, a sign that commodities have further to fall as fears of another recession intensify.

Investors need only refer back to the last global recession to see how the sharp drop in mining, agriculture and energy stocks eventually led to a slump in prices for commodities such as copper, potash and oil.

While commodities have held up relatively well in recent days, in comparison with their related stocks, analysts say that could change if the market freefall continues.

“It is not unusual for falls (or rises) in the prices of commodity-related equities to be of a different magnitude to falls (or rises) in the prices of the commodities themselves. But over time, relative price fluctuations have tended to come out in the wash,” John Higgins, senior markets economist at Capital Economics, said in a recent report.

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Gold Mania in the Yukon – by Gary Wolf (New York Times Magazine – May 11, 2011)

http://www.nytimes.com/

When I first met Shawn Ryan and Cathy Wood, in 2005, they were living with their two young children in a small cabin outside Dawson City, at the northernmost end of the paved road system in Canada’s Yukon Territory. It was a beautiful site in the summertime, with clear water lapping the banks of the Klondike River and the sky still bright at midnight. But the sun hit their roof for the last time each year in early December and didn’t show up again for six weeks. Temperatures in the dead of winter could reach 50 below zero. Wood sometimes feared that their children would freeze. Back then Ryan and Wood already knew they had found gold, but they didn’t have proof.

Recently, I went to see them again in their new home in Whitehorse, the territorial capital, and I sat with Ryan one night as he talked business over the phone. His right arm was stretched around the back of his head, holding his BlackBerry to his left ear. “Those guys were at 6 cents a share last year, now they are over a buck, and they got nothing,” he said. “When you look at it, it’s like a hundred claims.” The shares Ryan was talking about belonged to a mineral-exploration company, one of his many competitors. The claims are mining claims, a government license to extract minerals from a 50-acre patch of wilderness. To Ryan, a hundred claims is pathetic. He and Wood own more than 35,000 claims. “We just passed Luxembourg, and over the summer we’ll be the size of Samoa,” he continued, describing just one of his projects. Credible estimates of the amount of gold still buried in his properties run to the billions of dollars.

Ryan is the king of a new Yukon gold rush, the biggest since the legendary Klondike stampede a century ago. Behind this stampede is the rising price of gold, and behind this price is fear. As the Federal Reserve keeps interest rates very low to stimulate the economy, gold bugs make nightmarish predictions that loose money and a huge federal deficit will crush the value of the dollar and bring ruinous inflation.

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CIA eyed Canadian economy, mining during Cold War – (CTV Edmonton – The Canadian Press – August 7, 2011)

http://edmonton.ctv.ca/

OTTAWA — The CIA secretly painted Pierre Trudeau as a politician torn between being a leader of the Third World and a genuine player with global industrialized nations, declassified records show.

The January 1982 assessment of the Liberal prime minister’s ambitions is among several detailed — and until now virtually unknown — analyses of the Canadian economy by the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency.

Through the U.S. Freedom of Information Act, The Canadian Press obtained more than a dozen CIA reports that explore various aspects of Canadian commerce, industry and technology during the Cold War era.

The assessments reveal a keen interest in Canadian affairs on the part of an agency better known for waging a covert war against East Bloc spies in the decades leading up to the 1989 fall of the Berlin Wall.

CIA analysts pored over almost every available map of Canada, scrutinized Canadian mineral production, pondered Japanese interest in Alberta’s tar sands, catalogued shipping trends and kept an eye on Canadian dealings with the Communist world.

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NEWS RELEASE: Mining Industry Payments to Canadian Governments Increased by 65% in 2010

OTTAWA, Aug. 4, 2011 /CNW/ – The Mining Association of Canada (MAC) today released its annual report on the level of payments made by the mining industry to Canadian governments.  The report, prepared by ENTRANS Policy Research Group, details the direct revenues that accrue to government from the industry in the form of corporate taxes, royalties and employee income taxes.

“The mining industry makes a significant contribution to Canada’s economy each year,” noted MAC’s President and CEO Pierre Gratton, “ranging from capital investment, stock market activity, Aboriginal community jobs and training, and northern development.  The level of payments made to governments detailed in this study is another useful measure of this contribution, particularly valuable because these revenues are used to support health care, education and other critical government services.”

Highlights from the report include:

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Asbestos killed my father. Now my mother is sick – by Heidi von Palleske (Globe and Mail – July 28, 2011)

 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.

Globe and Mail -Facts and Arguments

When I was a child, I went to a Christmas party at the factory where my dad worked. There was a Santa and presents. My siblings and I went along with the other children on a tour of the factory.

I didn’t care about the machinery or how it worked. I only marvelled at the fairy dust in the air and how it seemed to sparkle when the light hit it. To me, it was magical, not something that would be a carrier of death.

Death has its own sound. It is the rattle of my mother’s lungs as she struggles for air. The purring sound she makes when the breath finally finds its way in. The rasp of her voice as she speaks.

My 79-year-old mother is dying. She’s dying just as my father did four years ago. There is no way to slow the process. No hope for a cure. There is no relief. Once mesothelioma is discovered, it is already too late.

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No Avon for Yukon’s Bard [Klondike’s Robert Service] by Tristin Hopper (National Post – July 30, 2011)

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

Robert W. Service never witnessed the Klondike Gold Rush.

In 1898, thousands of goldseekers were sailing to Alaska by steamship, hiking over the Chilkoot Trail, paddling rickety rivercraft up the Yukon River and cramming into tent cities in Dawson City. Wild West-style gunfights were erupting in coastal Alaska. Red-coated Mounties were risking death and dismemberment in the harsh northern wilderness. Grizzled prospectors were striking it rich under the maddening midnight sun.

The Bard of the Yukon, meanwhile, was here in British Columbia’s Cowichan Valley – milking cows, shoveling manure and swatting at mosquitoes. “They say he was in plays, but he wasn’t very good,” says a clerk at the Cowichan Valley Museum in Duncan, B.C.

It was a far cry from the tobacco-chewing, pistol-packing cowboy life Service had expected. In 1896, the 22-yearold former Scottish bank clerk boarded a steamer to Canada with a pistol, a sombrero and visions of Buffalo Bill-style glory. A cringe-worthy photograph from the time shows Service striking a gangsterish pose with a clay pipe.

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