Premier McGuinty should consolidate the province’s scattered post-secondary mineral education programs at Laurentian University and establish a world-class centre of excellence – a Harvard of the Mining Sector.

In one visionary initiative, the Premier could give Sudbury an economic boost, help resolve mining skilled labour shortages, spend university funding more efficiently and be in sync with the recently published provincial report “Ontario in the Creative Age” by Richard Florida and Roger Martin of the Rotman School of Management.

Notwithstanding the current commodity slump, there is a demographic time bomb ticking in the mineral sector as the baby boomers get ready to retire. It is believed that 60% of geo scientists – the people who find new mineral deposits – in Canada will be 65 or older by 2015.

In early 2008, the Mining Industry Human Resources Council (MIHR) projected that mining industry yearly labour requirements face three scenarios: high-growth (9,200), no-growth (6,200), and industry contraction (4,600), until 2016.  These were only based on retirements.

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Author Colin Alexander was the former publisher of News of the North in Yellowknife, N.W.T., and was the senior consultant on education for the Ontario Royal Commission on the Northern Environment. Currently living in Ottawa, he is also a retired trader, broker, and systems developer, and author of Streetsmart Guide to Timing the Stock Market. His most recent book, Timing Techniques for Commodity Futures Markets, was published by McGraw-Hill in 2007, and is available here at www.amazon.com.

As Canada’s Nunavut territory approaches its tenth anniversary on April 1, we should look at the mismatch between resource investment and the Inuit human capital, and consider these points:

* Employers need skilled and motivated workers. But where in their own land are the Inuit geologists and mining engineers, doctors and marine biologists? Where are the electricians, plumbers, heavy equipment operators and chefs?

* The Inuit population almost doubled between 1981 and 2006, and unemployment is very high despite considerable over-manning in administration. However, there are far more jobs in Arctic and sub-Arctic Canada than there are Indians and Inuit of employable age. Xstrata’s Raglan nickel mine in Quebec’s Nunavik region has 500 jobs onsite, with just 16% filled by Inuit.

* Resource-related jobs mostly require real qualifications, not the preferential hiring of the unqualified. As a shift boss at the Giant gold mine in Yellowknife once told me, “Any time I give someone a break who doesn’t deserve it, I risk having an accident that kills us all.”

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