Southeast Alaska lawmakers are joining tribal and municipal governments, calling on the federal government to stop – at least temporarily – British Columbia’s mining activities in transboundary watersheds.
Southeast Alaska’s major river systems – the Taku, Unuk and Stikine – originate in British Columbia. Those transboundary watersheds are peppered with mineral claims, active mines and shuttered former mining operations.
Los Angeles, California, the US – Construction is under way at the Thacker Pass lithium mine in northern Nevada after a federal court denied opponents’ requests for an injunction. Lithium Americas, a mining company headquartered in Vancouver, Canada, said in a news release this month that workers were drilling at the site and building infrastructure, including water pipelines.
General Motors, which wants United States lithium for electric vehicle batteries, announced earlier this year that it would invest $650m in Lithium Americas if the mine cleared legal and regulatory hurdles.
It’s an energy source that helped open the west. But coal mining has left scars on the Alberta landscape: abandoned mines and open pits where energy producers are now prospecting something new.
“Sites like this don’t really exist in a lot of places,” said Blain van Melle, the executive vice president of Alberta business at TransAlta. “This is really unique. We like to refer to it as a unicorn.” Metallurgical coal was discovered at Tent Mountain in the early 1900s. Small-scale mining made way for the first open cut pit in 1948.
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.”
Two activist shareholders with ‘substantial’ holdings in Azimut Exploration (TSXV: AZM) have accused the junior of “squatting” on some of Quebec’s most prospective lithium lands.
Coloured Ties Capital (TSXV: TIE) and privately held Bullrun Capital this week issued a second open letter to Azimut’s founder, president and CEO Jean-Marc Lulin, accusing the geologist of refusing to acknowledge or engage with them about its detailed exploration plans for its James Bay lithium portfolio.
Committee intends to hold public hearings in Timmins on Wednesday, April 5, and in Sudbury on Thursday, April 6.
A provincial committee studying proposals to make the opening of new mines easier and quicker will hold hearings in Sudbury and Timmins next month. The Standing Committee on the Interior will be meeting to consider Bill 71, An Act to amend the Mining Act.
The committee intends to hold public hearings in Timmins on Wednesday, April 5, and in Sudbury on Thursday, April 6. Those who wish to be considered to make an oral presentation on Bill 71 are required to register by noon on Monday, March 27.
Taylor C. Noakes is a public historian and independent journalist.
If railways are so strategically vital to the economy that the federal government is encouraged to use “every tool at their disposal” to prevent a strike, then the time has come to renationalize Canadian National.
From 1919 to 1995 CN was publicly-owned for the simple reason that a national railway network was so strategically important to the nation’s economy it simply could not be left in the hands of the private sector. Railways are no less vital today, and the climate emergency will only make them that much more valuable.
https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/north/
Supreme Court found that consultation with First Nation over Metallic Minerals’ project was inadequate
The Yukon government is appealing a court decision that quashes the approval of a mining project near Mayo, Yukon. It’s the latest in an ongoing dispute between the territorial government and the First Nation of Na-Cho Nyäk Dun (FNNND) over a project in the First Nation’s traditional territory.
The First Nation filed a petition to the Yukon Supreme Court in 2021, soon after the Yukon government gave the green light to Vancouver-based Metallic Minerals Corp.’s project. The quartz exploration project is to happen over 10 years on 52 claims located north of Mayo.
‘It’s all about connecting our critical mineral producers in the North’ with manufacturers in the South – Pirie
ST. THOMAS — Volkswagen’s announced plans to establish a battery cell plant in Southern Ontario is good news for Northern Ontario, says Mines Minister and Timmins MPP George Pirie. “If we’re going to secure our supply chain (for the electric vehicle industry) we have to get the minerals out of the ground in Northern Ontario,” Pirie told The Daily Press.
“Nickel is a critical mineral, copper, niobium, rare earths, lithium – we’ve got them all. There are four huge low-grade deposits in the Timmins vicinity including Canada Nickel … It’s a hugely exciting time.
(Kitco News) Investors are embracing the gold market amid the quickly escalating banking contagion fears. Strong demand for the precious metal is keeping prices at 5-week highs Wednesday.
The banking sector roiled Wednesday as shares of Credit Suisse — a Swiss bank with extensive U.S. and global operations — tumbled 31% before paring back declines to 20%. This was the biggest one-day selloff on record and managed to drag European and U.S. stocks down.
Ian Madsen is the Senior Policy Analyst at the Frontier Centre for Public Policy.
Prime Minister Justin Trudeau recently visited the Saskatchewan Research Council’s experimental rare earth refining facility in Saskatoon to tout his government’s efforts to promote rare earth discovery, development, and extraction, along with the refining advances SRC has achieved.
He and his ministers have been ‘talking up’ this critical mineral drive for quite a while, but their efforts have shown little success thus far – for reasons they would rather not discuss.
https://www.mining-technology.com/
The Goliath gold complex is expected to produce 90,000oz of gold a year on average over its 13-year mine life.
The Goliath Gold Complex is a mining project proposed to be developed in north-western Ontario, Canada, by mineral exploration and development company Treasury Metals.
The complex comprises three deposits, namely Goliath, Goldlund and Miller, which are located on different land packages. A pre-feasibility study (PFS) for the Goliath Gold Complex project was completed in February 2023. The project is estimated to require an initial capital expenditure of C$335m ($248m). The PFS indicated an annual average production capacity of 90,000oz of gold over the project’s 13-year lifespan.
The 1858 gold rush brought sweeping change, and sealed a grim future for Indigenous people.
Gold, Grit, Guns is an extraordinary book that focuses on the lives of four prospectors and their mixed fortunes in the B.C. gold rush of 1858. Their diaries vividly describe the expense and hard work it took just to reach an unclaimed gravel bar, and then to find the flakes and nuggets of gold it might contain. In the process of getting rich, or more likely going broke, they also began the breaking of an ecosystem and an economy thousands of years old.
The year 1858 was a pivotal one for the western regions of British North America: it saw the transformation of “New Caledonia” into the Crown colony of British Columbia (soon to merge with the colony of Vancouver Island).
JCK Online
Imagine two round brilliant-cut diamonds displayed side by side. Each is 1 ct. in size, F color, VS2 clarity. One is a natural, mined diamond and the other is lab-grown. Most retailers have been taught that beyond their disparate origins, the diamonds are chemically, optically, and physically identical, and that’s the message they’ve conveyed to consumers.
“For years, the trade has repeated these sentiments: that lab and natural diamonds are indistinguishable from each other,” says Lindsay Reinsmith, chief operating officer and director of sales at Ada Diamonds, a lab-grown, direct-to-consumer diamond brand based in San Francisco.
https://www.northernontariobusiness.com/
Canadian mine developer wants to fast-track two Northern Michigan deposits into production on Superior’s south shore
A Quebec exploration company is making moves toward developing a copper mine in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan. Highland Copper has two deposits situated at the base of the Keweenaw Peninsula, on the south shore of Lake Superior, and is looking to fast-track them into production in the next few years.
In laying out its strategy last week, the Longueuil, Que.company said it will decide by early 2024 whether to greenlight construction of its Copperwood Project, the first and smaller of its two deposits.
