www.mining.ca

The Mining Association of Canada (MAC) is a national organization of the Canadian mining industry.  The organization comprises companies engaged in mineral exploration, mining, smelting, refining and semi-fabrication.  Member companies account for the vast majority of Canada’s output of metals and major industrial minerals.
 
Based in Ottawa, the Mining Association of Canada was originally incorporated as “Canadian Metal Mining Association” under the Companies Act of Canada with Letters Patent granted on January 16, 1935.

MAC’s mission is to promote, through the collective action of members, the growth and development of Canada’s mining and mineral-processing industry, for the benefit of all Canadians. The Association’s broad functions are to promote the interests of the industry nationally and internationally, to work with governments on policies affecting minerals, to inform the public and to promote cooperation between member firms to solve common problems. The MAC works closely with provincial and other industry groups across Canada and in other countries.

The primary role of MAC is the presentation of industry information and views to the federal government. Over the years, ongoing representations have been made to succeeding governments and parliamentary committees.

MAC believes that a constructive business environment in Canada depends on public understanding of Canada’s major industries.
The organization also provides information about the mining industry to the media and to schools, libraries and other publics. Aside from responding to many enquiries, MAC has an extensive publications program.

 Paul Stothart is vice president, economic affairs of the Mining Association of Canada. He is responsible for advancing the industry’s interests regarding federal tax, trade, investment, transport and energy issues.

During the past five years of strong growth in mineral prices, the mineral exploration community in Canada has been facing an increasingly difficult challenge — namely, how to find resources in promising northern regions where underlying mineral data is either weak or non-existent.

The federal government has been under-investing in its geological mapping responsibilities for some 20 years, with annual spending declining from $98 million in 1988 to $50 million in 2007. This decline has been equally dramatic at the provincial and territorial government levels. One interesting consequence of this neglect is that some 73 per cent of Nunavut, for example, is unmapped or poorly mapped and, at present investment levels, the first full mapping of the territory would not be finished for 80 years.

Given such a weak foundation of data, private companies are less able to undertake effective exploration programs. While exploring for minerals is, to some extent, akin to “searching for a needle in a haystack,” it is the public policy investment in basic geological survey work that allows those accessing the data to at least find where the haystacks are. In view of the high level of interest in diamonds, uranium, base metals and other northern resources, one must question the public good served by this pattern.

Questions of national sovereignty in the North are also raised by this under-investment.

Read the rest of this entry »

Marilyn Scales is a field editor for the Canadian Mining Journal, Canada’s first mining publication. She is one of Canada’s most senior mining commentators.

Let’s start with the really good news. Agnico-Eagle Mines of Toronto has declared its 27th consecutive annual cash dividend. The payment of US$0.18 per common share will be made on March 27, 2009, to shareholders of record as of March 13, 2009. 

Hearing from an optimistic miner in these times is very good news, indeed.

“Agnico-Eagle enters 2009 with a strengthened balance sheet and the expectation that over the next 15 months we will complete the construction of three more gold mines. We also anticipate further increases in gold reserves and resources in 2009 as we continue with an extensive exploration program on our large gold deposits”, said Sean Boyd, vice-chairman and CEO. “We also look forward to providing the results of our ongoing studies on four internal production growth opportunities that give the potential to enhance our superior growth beyond 2010,” he added.

Agnico is in the enviable position of doubling its gold output next year and doubling it again to 1.2 million oz in 2010. Cash costs are expected to be less than US$300/oz in 2010, and only US$320/oz from 2010 to 2018. 

Read the rest of this entry »

This article was first published in Northern Ontario Business, a newspaper that has been providing northerners with relevant and insightful editorial content, business news and information for over 25 years.

Students around the world may soon be viewing and discussing Ground Rules, an educational film detailing the positive side of mining, crafted by Science North and commissioned by equipment giant Caterpillar.

Dan Hellige, manager of safety and sustainable development with Caterpillar’s global mining group, says the movie was necessary so as to highlight the more positive elements of the sector. “I have a niece, who in the Fifth Grade, read
Al Gore’s book, An Inconvenient Truth, in the classroom so they’re really only getting the one side of the story a lot of the time about what’s going on with industry and business,” says Hellige.

“We felt like it was a good time to tell the other side of the story, especially for the mining industry’s efforts and what they put in.”

Read the rest of this entry »

Norm Tollinsky is editor of Sudbury Mining Solutions Journal, a magazine that showcases the mining expertise of North Bay, Timmins and Sudbury. This column was originally published in December, 2008 edition.

ntollinsky@sudburyminingsolutions.com

Euphoria pretty well summarizes the state of the mining industry in 2008 and the mood in the Ontario mining cluster of Sudbury, Timmins and North Bay. Our cover story this issue provides an overview of the capital investments, the spending on exploration and the impact of all this activity on the region’s mining suppliers. It’s a head-spinning story, but anyone who has ever been on a roller coaster ride or has been in the mining industry for more than five years knows that life and commodity prices don’t always follow an upward trajectory.

The last time the world’s mining community gathered at MINExpo in 2004, nickel was selling for a little more than $5 a pound. It peaked at more than $20 in early 2007 and remained above $12 until May, when it started to slide. At press time, it was holding steady at a still respectable $8.

Storm clouds caused by the sub-prime mortgage crisis, rising oil prices and the woes in the auto industry notwithstanding, commodity prices are holding their own and the mining industry continues to invest. Read the rest of this entry »

Norm Tollinsky is editor of Sudbury Mining Solutions Journal, a magazine that showcases the mining expertise of North Bay, Timmins and Sudbury. This column was originally published in December, 2008 edition.

ntollinsky@sudburyminingsolutions.com

Writing headlines for a quarterly mining journal can be a risky proposition. Such was the case with the headline, “Ontario firing on all cylinders,” emblazoned across the front page of our September 2008 issue. The story accompanying it trumpeted an exhaustive list of mine development projects and record-breaking spending on exploration. It went on to illustrate the effects of all of this activity on mining suppliers, the housing market and the wear and tear of the region’s roads.

“The general consensus,” the story noted, “is that the current supercycle, fuelled by the ascendance of China and several other rapidly developing economies, will endure for decades, with a few ups and downs along the way.”

Read the rest of this entry »

To: The Honourable Dwight Duncan
Minister of Finance
c/o Budget Secretariat
Frost Building North, 3rd floor
95 Grosvenor Street
Toronto, Ontario, M7A 1Z1

Dear Minister Duncan

The Ontario mining industry has enjoyed — until recently — one of the most prosperous and lengthiest periods of its history of making contributions to the society and economy of this province.   However, the current economic circumstances which are dominating the news are providing challenges for individuals, companies, entire industries and governments alike. 

Mining operates in the real world of global markets.  When commodity prices fall, companies must reduce spending to be in line with existing market realities.  That is why we have seen companies trimming budgets and capital expenditures and in some cases shutting down production.  Junior mining exploration companies are finding it difficult – if not impossible – to raise capital as are mineral producers.

The mining industry in Ontario has gone from full speed ahead to produce and sell mineral products around the world to a moving forward by navigating more cautiously through changing economics and shifting markets.  The precipitous fall in the prices of Ontario’s main mineral products illustrates this point.

Read the rest of this entry »

This article was provided by the Ontario Mining Association (OMA), an organization that was established in 1920 to represent the mining industry of the province.

The Ontario Mining Association´s pre-budget submission encourages the government at Queen´s Park to make strategic investments in the mineral sector to promote future economic development.  “The Ontario mining industry has enjoyed — until recently — one of the most prosperous and lengthiest periods of its history of making contributions to the society and economy of the province,” said OMA President Chris Hodgson in a letter to Ontario Finance Minister Dwight Duncan.  “However, the current economic circumstances which are dominating the news are providing challenges for individuals, companies, entire industries and governments alike.”

The letter outlined massive decreases in the market prices of Ontario´s key mineral commodities — nickel, gold, copper, zinc, silver and palladium — of between 50% and 80% over the past year.  Companies have reacted to slides in the prices of their products with production cutbacks, temporary mine closures, workforce reductions and revised business plans.  “Mining benefits all regions of Ontario and given this outlook of difficult economic times and harsh business climates, it is increasingly important for the industry to work with government to ensure that programs, regulation and legislation sustain mining investment and employment in the province,” said Mr. Hodgson.

“At this time, the OMA would like to encourage the government to make strategic investments in the mining sector to promote future economic development and take action to improve the competitive position of the industry in the world,” he said.  The type of strategic investments the OMA is recommending include geological mapping, advancing human resource development and education, skills enhancement and training for Aboriginals, incentives for Research & Development, smarter regulatory systems, enhanced infrastructure development including the electricity system and exploration incentives.

Read the rest of this entry »

Sudbury’s labour movement had its official birth on March 10, 1944, with the certification of Mine Mill Local 598, after a tumultuous gestation that was not without bloodshed. According to local labour lore, the triumph of union organizers after decades of failure stemmed directly from an equally historic and bitter defeat only a few years earlier: the crushing of the Mine Mill certification strike in the Kirkland Lake gold camp during the winter of 1941-42.

Several of the union’s key organizers headed south to Sudbury following the failure of the four month strike at the fabled Golden Mile in the hopes of snatching victory from the jaws of defeat, and, in the event, they succeeded beyond their wildest dreams.

The 11,000 hardrock miners, mill, smelter and refinery workers who became trade unionists that March were the newest members of a union with a long and storied history in the hardrock mining camps of North America. Founded originally as the Western Federation of miners in 1893, the union was renamed the International Union of Mine, Mill and Smelter Workers (IUMMSW) in 1916, but it was known to friend and foe alike as simply “The Mine Mill”.

Read the rest of this entry »

Submitted to the Inord Working Paper Series, June 30, 2000

Jennifer Keck, Ph.D. Associate Professor – School of Social Work

Mary Powell, Ph.D. Associate Professor – Department of Political Science

Laurentian University, Sudbury, Ontario

Getting Active in the Local ‘we were part of a generation that stood up for our rights’

Like most of the men they worked with, the majority of the women were not radical. They were prepared to challenge conventional gender prescriptions to earn a man’s wage but few of them considered themselves feminists or were interested in broader political struggles. Still, few of the women remained untouched by the militancy of mining work culture and the impact of women’s movement in the 1970s. It was not long before a small number of women emerged who were willing to hold the company and the union- to the original promise that they would be treated the ‘same as men’ and receive ‘equal treatment and opportunities.’

Women became active with the union under much the same conditions as new male workers. They were recruited early, often after complaining about conditions on the shop floor, and put on health and safety committees at the various plants. The first two women union stewards took office in 1975; women were also elected as delegates to the Ontario Federation of Labour convention the following year. While the union gave early support for the women to become active, there was generally more support for the women working on traditional union issues than there was for their attempt to challenge differences based on gender. This was probably not surprising given the large number of male workers and the union’s traditional support for the family wage.

A women’s committee was established in 1977 to address this problem. One of the organizers challenged the company and the union in an article that appeared in the union’s newsletter, The Searcher: “Over the last three years women have had to prove themselves to the company and the union. As women workers we share and support the concerns and struggles of our brothers… Now we want to be active so we can have a voice in our local… that is not our privilege, it is our right.’(22)

Read the rest of this entry »

Submitted to the Inord Working Paper Series, June 30, 2000

Jennifer Keck, Ph.D. Associate Professor – School of Social Work

Mary Powell, Ph.D. Associate Professor – Department of Political Science

Laurentian University, Sudbury, Ontario

While there was little publicity about the issue, sexual harassment was another reminder that the women were ‘different’ workers. Sexual harassment demonstrates the complex relationship between sexuality and the paid workplace and is one of the ways men used sexuality to maintain masculine dominance in the workplace. Harassment took many forms. Sometimes it involved foremen or shift bosses. One woman was assigned extra work shovelling asphalt after she refused the invitation to go to her foreman’s camp after work.

Another woman described a more threatening situation that involved a shift supervisor: “he would say to me, okay come with me and he would take another guy and bring us to this god forsaken place where no-one’s ever going to work there because it’s full of dust and muck and he’d say, oh, I forgot to get the tools and he’d send the guy down, then he’s left alone with me and he’d try rubbing his private area against my knee and I told him, if he appreciates talking in a deep tone he wouldn’t do it ever again. But then he tried calling me at home and asking me if I would meet him and I told him I’m not desperate for company and that I don’t sleep with a pig.”

While sexual harassment by supervisors was serious because management had more control over the women’s working conditions, women often found it difficult to deal with harassment by co-workers. This was a contentious issue with both men and women. Part of the problem was that masculine work culture was already highly sexualized before the women entered the workplace.

Read the rest of this entry »

Submitted to the  The Institute of Northern Ontario Research and Development (INORD) Working Paper Series, June 30, 2000

Jennifer Keck, Ph.D. Associate Professor – School of Social Work

Mary Powell, Ph.D. Associate Professor – Department of Political Science

Laurentian University, Sudbury, Ontario
Getting Started: ‘You got dirty and tired but you showered… and the pay was good’

Like their male co-workers the women began as process labourers. The work involved shoveling, sweeping, hosing down dirty areas and in some cases painting and unloading supplies. The women responded to the first day with more than the usual apprehension.

“You have no idea what to expect… when we first walked in we saw these flotation cells and they’re all bubbling and its seems like it’s really hot, it was very scary… walking over the grating and looking down three floors…I had never seen this kind of machinery in my life.”

It took awhile to get used to the heavy machinery and the noise, dirt and smell of an industrial work environment.

“In the mill it was really dirty, from the time you walked in you were dirty. Like I got dirty just looking at it. There was a smell of lime, varsol and sometimes when the gas was coming in you’d have to sit in the lunch room. Lots of noise. It’s like nothing in your experience… it’s not like walking into an office cause everybody knows what an office looks like.”

Read the rest of this entry »

Submitted to the  The Institute of Northern Ontario Research and Development (INORD)Working Paper Series, June 30, 2000

Jennifer Keck, Ph.D. Associate Professor – School of Social Work

Mary Powell, Ph.D. Associate Professor – Department of Political Science

Laurentian University, Sudbury, Ontario

The Women: ‘It was good money and I thought I could do the job’

It was just sort of a competition one day. Why don’t you go and apply and so I did. I just went at the beginning of the day and stood in line with all the men and all that. They would either say that we are hiring or we are not. … you would get some strange looks too. Here you are standing in this line with all these men… but actually there was quite a few women in the line.

While their hiring was of historical significance few of the women who applied in 1974 were interested in being the first women to break new ground for women in mining. Like the men, they were motivated first and foremost by the prospect of a ‘good job’ at Inco and its promise of better pay, benefits, and job security.

The women heard about the jobs from family, friends and the media. News that Inco was willing to hire women was widespread: ‘I don’t know anyone in that small community who hadn’t heard that Inco was hiring.’ While some women thought they would be the only ones interested in such work, they were surprised to find that there were hundreds of applicants.

Everyone seemed to be talking about the fact that Inco was going to open their doors and I thought here I am almost 5’8″ a 160 pounds strong and I’ll just go and apply… the woman behind the counter said I suppose you think you are one of the first… then she preceded to show me file cabinets full of applications… hundreds and hundreds… I would have imagined thousands of applications were in.

Read the rest of this entry »

Submitted to the The Institute of Northern Ontario Research and Development (INORD) Working Paper Series, June 30, 2000

Jennifer Keck, Ph.D. Associate Professor – School of Social Work

Mary Powell, Ph.D. Associate Professor – Department of Political Science

Laurentian University, Sudbury, Ontario

Introduction

In 1974 Sue Benoit was a single mother with a five year old daughter living in Levack, a small mining community located outside of Sudbury, Ontario. After leaving an abusive marriage she was living with her parents and working as a cashier at the local grocery story. She worked long hours for low pay: “That was rough because the total pay to take home was seventy dollars a week and I had to pay $25 for the babysitter and $25 for rent. You’d have to be there at eight and the store didn’t close until six and then you’d usually have to balance the tills… by the time you got home it was seven o’clock. It was hard, really hard with a baby.” When she heard that Inco was hiring women for hourly rated blue collar jobs at the Levack mill for the first time since WWII: “it was just like heaven.”

It was an historic occasion when Benoit and other women were hired as blue collar workers at Inco. While the women were not the first generation of women to enter the mining industry, they were the first to enter as permanent workers. With the exception of a brief period during WWII, it was illegal in Ontario for mining companies to hire women at surface operations. The law was changed in 1970.(2)

Between 1974 and 1976 the company hired 100 women for hourly rated jobs at the company’s surface mining operations in Sudbury. The company’s decision was significant because it opened up highly paid, unionized jobs in an industry that was historically closed to women. Access to these jobs had a particular significance for women in a local economy dominated by a single industry- mining- and a labour market shaped by the hiring practices of two multinational mining companies. At the time Inco was the community’s largest and most prestigious industrial employer and its workers earned one of the highest industrial wages in the country.

Read the rest of this entry »

Three well-known Canadian mining financiers and philanthropists have agreed to donate their time and support to the latest Canadian mining industry social cause. In a “Dragon’s Den meets The Apprentice” format, Frank Giustra, Rob McEwen and Eric Sprott have agreed to meet with the winners of a MEET THE MINING MOGUL contest being organized by the WOMEN IN MINING to support a CDN$250,000 fundraiser for microlending in South Africa. (See biographies below.)

Rob McEwen, who is CEO of US GOLD, comments about his reason for supporting this fundraiser: “I believe in the concept of instilling confidence, causing people to believe in themselves and to strive towards financial independence. Microlending exists for that purpose.” Contest winners will be announced during the International Women in Mining Reception on March 3, 2009, at the Prospectors & Developers Association of Canada Convention in Toronto.

The major initiative, launched today by the Women in Mining (WIM) networks (www.women-in-mining.com) in Toronto and Vancouver, aims to raise $250,000 by March 2009 to benefit impoverished people in South Africa. WIM’s latest corporate social responsibility initiative builds on its successful fundraising campaign for breast cancer research, raising over $232,000 in 2007 primarily from private donations and companies in the mining industry.

The 600 members of WIM are seeking donations to The Townships Project, a registered Canadian charity that supports microfinance institutions (MFIs) in township areas in South Africa.

Read the rest of this entry »