https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/north/
Ten months after an abrupt adjournment, discussions on the expansion of a mine on Baffin Island is set to resume.
The Nunavut Impact Review Board is reconvening its meetings to assess an expansion at the Mary River Mine in the northern Qikiqtaaluk region in Nunavut.
The mine is about 176 kilometres southwest of Pond Inlet. It’s one of the most northern mines in the world, according to the Baffinland website.
Stephen Buffalo is president of the Indian Resource Council; Ken Coates is a senior fellow at the Macdonald-Laurier Institute.
Canada’s new minister of finance, Chrystia Freeland, has mused about the need to reinforce the green economy. The suggestion has some Canadians energized and excited; others are nervous and concerned. Count Indigenous Peoples in both categories.
Indigenous people understand and support taking steps to reduce the country’s carbon footprint. At the same time, many Indigenous communities have worked exceedingly hard to carve out an appropriate place in one of Canada’s most important economic sectors.
Since its election in 2015, the Trudeau government cancelled the Northern Gateway Pipeline, banned oil and gas exploration in the Arctic and oil tankers off the British Columbia coast, brought in complex environmental assessment processes, and appeared to actively discourage investment in the industry.
CNW GROUP – ABITIBI-TÉMISCAMINGUE, QC, Sept. 14, 2020 /CNW/ – Canada’s forest sector continues to be an important source of employment across the country, including in rural, remote and Indigenous communities. That is why the Government of Canada is investing in projects to equip Indigenous communities with tools to build greener businesses and promote further economic opportunity in the forest sector.
Parliamentary Secretary Paul Lefebvre, on behalf of the Honourable Seamus O’Regan, Canada’s Minister of Natural Resources, today announced $620,738 in funding allocated to two projects in northern Quebec:
A $100,000 investment to the Kebaowek First Nation for a training program that provides one-on-one guidance across a whole range of timber harvesting skills. This program will increase economic development and grow forestry businesses, creating additional full-time employment opportunities within the community.
Deputy Prime Minister Chrystia Freeland is preparing to enact a sweeping set of retaliatory tariffs later this week on U.S. aluminum products, according to several sources familiar with the situation.
U.S. President Donald Trump announced last month that he was re-imposing 10 per cent tariffs on Canadian primary aluminum, effective Aug. 16, saying surging volumes were a threat to national security after having lifted his original tariff in 2019.
Freeland promised to retaliate after a 30-day consultation period, and now, sources inside and outside the government, say Canada plans to impose 10 per cent tariffs on about $3.5 billion worth of U.S. aluminum and aluminum-containing products, effective Wednesday.
https://www.theglobeandmail.com/
Energy giant BP is predicting fossil fuel consumption will shrink for the first time in modern history, with peak oil demand now likely in the world’s rear-view mirror.
The forecast in the company’s 2020 Energy Outlook, released Monday, says that global economic activity will partly recover from the COVID-19 pandemic over the next few years, but “scarring effects,” including work-from-home edicts, will lead to slower growth in energy consumption.
While the overall demand for energy will grow, the supply will change: The role of fossil fuels will decrease while renewable energy will increase, the report says.
DARWIN, Australia — The caves, set deep in a desert gorge, had yielded a treasure trove of artifacts tracing Aboriginal people’s long history in Australia: a 28,000-year-old kangaroo bone sharpened into a blade; a 4,000-year-old plait of human hair believed to have been worn as a belt.
Underneath the caverns sat millions of dollars’ worth of high-grade iron ore, in a country where mining is king.
In May, the minerals giant Rio Tinto decided to blow up the caves to get at the riches below. But on Friday, it became clear that Australia’s most powerful export industry had met a force it could not bulldoze: the global movement for racial justice.
(Bloomberg) — The nuclear industry has been stalled for years now, struggling to compete with cheaper forms of power and viewed as suspect ever since the accidents at Fukushima, Chernobyl and Three Mile Island.
Only two reactors are being built in the U.S., in Georgia, and they are years behind schedule and weighed down by cost overruns and political opposition.
But now there’s a race to take nuclear power in a radically different direction in a bid to revive the industry. Companies around the world, including NuScale Power LLC in the U.S., China National Nuclear Corp. and Russia’s Rosatom, are developing a new generation of reactors, with some designs that will be more than 90% smaller than the hulking facilities that have dominated the industry for decades. One model can even fit into a single-family house.
https://northernontario.ctvnews.ca/
TIMMINS — He’s a member of parliament, a musician and an author. Timmins-James Bay MP (NDP) Charlie Angus has written a new book–his eighth–and this time, it’s focussed on the town of Cobalt which he calls ‘the cradle of Canada’s mining industry.’
It’s not out yet, but he said he’s already signed a deal with a national publisher.
“We’re going to see this town play I think and an important role. (Cobalt) is a mineral that should not be the blood mineral and a mineral of such toxic environmental damage but a mineral that could actually lead us to a better and cleaner digital future,” said Angus.
https://www.northernontariobusiness.com/
Rickford challenges Ottawa to step up on cost sharing Ring of Fire infrastructure
Mining has a place in Justin Trudeau’s green agenda in restoring Canada’s economy.
The prime minister called IAMGOLD’s Cote Gold Mine development “a model” for Indigenous engagement that Ottawa would like to see replicated across the country.
“This is part of reconciliation,” said Trudeau during a Q & A with reporters at the Sept. 11 sod-turning for the mining company’s $1.8-billion open-pit gold project outside Gogama.
https://www.theglobeandmail.com/
At some point, Elon Musk will hop into one of his SpaceX rockets and set up shop on Mars. His goal is to colonize the red planet as well as fill every road and highway on Earth with his electric Tesla cars, for he is a man with galaxy-sized ambitions.
No doubt he will leave an enormous statue of himself behind so that any investor in the distant future who misses his glorious presence can kneel before it, kissing the bronze feet of the dope-smoking executive who turned a low-volume maker of money-losing cars into a company worth more than all its competitors combined.
Well, he did for a few moments. The question is whether those moments will return, given Tesla’s outlandish, gravity-defying valuation. This week, Tesla shares finally cracked after one of the most stupendous rallies ever seen in the tech sector.
https://www.thesudburystar.com/
It was a beautiful, sunny morning to break ground at IAMGOLD’s new open pit gold mine about 20 km southwest of Gogama.
On Friday, local First Nation leaders, MPPs, and municipal leaders from Sudbury, Gogama and Timmins, joined Premier Doug Ford and Prime Minister Justin Trudeau at the company’s new Côté Gold site to show their support for a project that is expected to create hundreds of jobs and contribute billions to the economy.
“The opening of this mine is a prime example of how the Ontario government can help businesses grow and create jobs by cutting red tape and removing regulatory roadblocks, without cost to taxpayers,” Ford said.
In July, Elon Musk, the founder of Tesla, issued an unusual public challenge to the world’s mining industry. Commenting during an investor presentation, he dangled the prospect of a “giant contract for a long period of time” to the firm that could supply responsibly-mined nickel.
Nickel is not particularly in short supply. According to a June report by Australia’s Macquarie Bank, previously forecast deficits in nickel for this year until 2025 are now expected to turn into narrow surpluses. This is partly owing to the impact of Covid-19 disease which has dented consumption more than supply, the bank said.
Availability, however, was not behind Tesla’s request. In a world of improving environmental, sustainability and governance (ESG) standards, it’s peace of mind that’s harder to source than minerals.
https://www.northernontariobusiness.com/
A Sudbury lithium hunter with a two large, rich deposits in northwestern Ontario thinks it has the chops to be a major supplier to the North American battery market.
Frontier Lithium has launched a preliminary economic assessment (PEA) of a mine and processor for its PAK Lithium Project, north of Red Lake, to examine becoming a “vertically integrated” producer of lithium hydroxide chemicals, the company said in a Sept.9 news release.
Since 2013, the company has outlined two spodumene-bearing lithium deposits, two kilometres apart, that outcrop at surface. Frontier said it’s amenable to low-cost, open-pit mining. Lithium hydroxide is used in batteries for electric vehicles and cell phones.
Bill Trafford is president of the Livingstone Landowners’ Group., which represents landowners and supporters of the Livingstone-Porcupine area in southwest Alberta.
In his piece in the Calgary Herald on Aug. 26, Robin Campbell, president of the Coal Association of Canada, asks that the true facts about coal mining become known. Unfortunately, in his article, Mr. Campbell ignores multiple inconvenient truths.
He writes as if the Vista decision was the only coal mine that Ottawa decided to review. More accurately, there will now be reviews of two proposed mines, one in Alberta and one in B.C.
Battery metals, which are used in modern energy efficient electrical products, are playing an increasingly important role in climate change mitigation and the shift towards a lower carbon-intensive future.
Battery metals, including lithium, vanadium, copper, cobalt, nickel, lead and graphite, are increasingly used in larger-scale battery storage products and in components used to transmit and distribute electricity.
Two key factors in the green energy transition are technology development and the roll-out of renewable-energy solutions, energy storage devices and electric vehicles (EVs), with solar- and wind-derived electricity generation the frontrunners in terms of green energy production.
