The Sudbury Star, the City of Greater Sudbury’s daily newspaper. This column was published on February 23, 2011.

For an extensive list of articles on this mineral discovery, please go to: Ontario’s Ring of Fire Mineral Discovery

Cliffs Resources would save tens of millions in energy costs each year by opening its proposed chromite smelter in either Manitoba or Quebec, a Northern Ontario NDP MPP told the Ontario legislature Tuesday.

Howard Hampton, NDP MPP Kenora-Rainy River and former NDP leader, said that according to the Manitoba Hydro website, a company like Cliffs Resources would pay a monthly hydro bill of about $5.3 million a month (or $63 million a year) if it located the smelter in Ontario.

The same refinery located in Manitoba would pay a hydro bill of $ $2.1 million a month (or $26 million a year). The Quebec figures are $2.8 million a month, or $33.5 million a year, Hampton said.

“The real travesty in all of this is the fact that in Northern Ontario, we generate some of the cleanest and greenest electricity (mostly from falling water) at some of the lowest costs on the planet, yet we are not allowed to use that electricity at an affordable price to create jobs in Northern Ontario because of the McGuinty Liberals ‘made in Toronto for Toronto’ electricity policy,” Hampton said in a release. Read the rest of this entry »

The Thunder Bay Chronicle-Journal is the daily newspaper of Northwestern Ontario. This editorial was originally published on August 6, 2009.

For an extensive list of articles on this mineral discovery, please go to: Ontario’s Ring of Fire Mineral Discovery

NISHNAWBE Aski Nation (NAN) is to be commended for initiating a forum to explain the treaties that govern its people in relation to the rest of Northwestern Ontario. Generalized references to treaty rights have marked every disagreement over land and resources, but outside of band offices, a few academics and relevant government departments, most people don’t understand what was agreed to up to a century ago and more.

The passage of so much time has resulted in many interpretations about what treaties say and what was meant by those who signed them. In seeking to create “an understanding of the treaty relationship between First Nations and the greater society of Canada,” NAN Grand Chief Stan Beardy is conducting an important exercise.

Beardy offers the view that Treaties 5 and 9, governing NAN territory, are based on “peaceful co-existence.” Even a brief parsing of the federal government’s description of these treaties shows they were hard to come by. That being said, they are the law of the land for Indians and understanding them is more important than ever. Read the rest of this entry »

This article is from Goldcorp’s new Corporate Social Responsibility in-house publication called Above Ground. (Fall/Winter 2010 issue)

Shania Twain’s hometown is a hive of activity as Goldcorp does a clean sweep – enriching habitat, raising honeybees and creating trails.

In the 100-year-old city of Timmins, Ontario (the “City with a Heart of Gold”), resides another centenarian – Goldcorp’s Porcupine Gold Mines (PGM). Since its discovery in 1910, PGM is North America’s longest continually operating gold mine – a testament to the mineral richness of this region.

Hence the allure to companies over the century – some digging in then ducking out, others going bankrupt and too many leaving unsafe lands behind. Over 20 abandoned mines blighted the PGM site for decades, until Goldcorp acquired the complex in 2006 and committed to resurrecting the lands as wildlife habitats, nature trails, green fields and even a new and improved sliding hill.

“We are not just here to take the resources and not give back,” says Dave Bucar, Strategic Development Manager for PGM. “In the past three years, we’ve spent upwards of $24 million just on reclamation of properties that we may never mine again… but it’s our duty to go in and clean these up.” Read the rest of this entry »

Please click here to view the executive summary of the report: Ungeared for Growth

Deal activity to ramp up in 2011, while companies roll the dice on frontier markets

(Vancouver – 23 February, 2010) Canada’s mining and metals sector is set to heat up in 2011 with increased deal activity, more diverse buyer competition and a continued appetite for projects in frontier markets, according to Ernst & Young.

“Canadian M&A activity has made an incredible rebound with companies reaping the rewards of reinvigorated balance sheets and flushed with cash from high commodity prices – particularly gold and copper,” said Tom Whelan, Leader of Ernst & Young’s national Mining practice. “In 2010, a third of all global gold deals took place in Canada, with over half of all deals conducted by Canadian companies. The largest of these was Kinross Gold’s acquisition of Red Back Mining, valued at US$7.4 billion.”

Ernst & Young’s annual mining and metals transactions report, Ungeared for growth, finds that Canada emerged from 2010 as the preferred destination for transaction activity in the sector globally, ahead of the US, Australia and Brazil. Canada was also the most active acquirer last year, ahead of both Australia and China, and up from fourth place in 2009. Read the rest of this entry »

Founded in 2006 by James Murray, NetNewsledger.com offers news, information, opinions and positive ideas for Thunder Bay, Ontario, and for Northwestern Ontario. This column was originally posted on January 28, 201.  newsroom@netnewsledger.com

For an extensive list of articles on this mineral discovery, please go to: Ontario’s Ring of Fire Mineral Discovery

“Four and a half years ago, what was then Inco closed their copper refinery in Sudbury.
Today, they still take the ore out of the ground in Sudbury, but they ship it to Quebec
to smelt it there at half the cost. That’s exactly what is happening with Cliffs Natural
Resources. If they move to Manitoba or Quebec, they’ll pay half the cost of refining
the metal. There’s a real problem, a real issue, with hydro rates in Ontario.” (Howard
Hampton NDP MPP for Kenora-Rainy River)

Queen’s Park – NDP MP Howard Hampton was up in Queen’s Park on Tuesday. During a Member’s Statement, Hampton gave some examples of just how, in his words, “out of touch” the McGuinty Liberals are on hydro-electricity rates compared to Manitoba and Quebec. Hampton cited the decision by Xstrata Mining to close its copper smelter in Timmins last year and the decision by Inco (now Vale) to close its copper smelter in Sudbury four years ago.

“Both of these companies continue to mine the copper ore in Ontario, but both of them now ship the ore to smelters and refineries in Quebec to have the ore processed there because they save millions of dollars each year in hydro-electricity costs due to Quebec’s much lower industrial hydro rates,” Hampton said.

Hampton noted that Xstrata was paying hydro bills of $70 Million/year at its Timmins smelter, and now is paying less than half that amount in Quebec ($33.5), but the shutdown of the smelter in Timmins meant the loss of over 2000 direct and indirect jobs in the community. Read the rest of this entry »

Lisa Wright is a business 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. This article was originally published February 18, 2011.

Chalk it up to the luck of the Irish but Aaron Regent has already marked a number of golden milestones this year, both personal and professional.

For starters, he just passed the two-year mark as chief executive of the world’s largest bullion producer, Barrick Gold Corp., amid a red-hot gold market.

He also turned 45 last month. And recently it was revealed the Dublin-born, Calgary-bred executive is the top-paid CEO in Canada, raking in $24.2 million in 2009.

True to form, Regent remains low-key about it all. “It’s been a busy two years for us,” he says, with an accent that hints of both old country and new. Read the rest of this entry »

I suppose there are lots of peoples who would have relished the scene one morning last month, when Viola MacMillan went through the same routine that every junkie, impaired driver or pederast goes through when he’s booked into Toronto’s smelly old Don Jail. Viola is a mining promoter, one of the greatest, a wiry little 62-year-old who’s made millions on the market – and there she was in a blue prison smock, getting searched by a big matron and fingerprinted by a very solicitous cop.

Viola had just been convicted of a practice that is almost as common, but just as illegal in Canada, as contraception: wash trading. If you own lots of stock in a company, you can simply buy and sell large blocs back and forth to yourself through nominee accounts that you’ve established with your obliging broker. All these non-transactions register on tape, the stock goes up and the suckers start buying. Then, when you’ve run your stack up to a suitably larcenous level, you sell. End of market.

This, it’s alleged, was what Viola did with a stock called Consolidated Golden Arrow during the Texas Gulf Sulphur madness in 1964. In two hours one morning, she ran the stock from 25 to 65 cents, then pulled out and took her profit. But for Viola and her promoter husband George, Golden Arrow was only a sort of appetizer. Read the rest of this entry »

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. This article was published in the February, 2011 issue.

Sudbury diamond polisher sparkles

Would you believe that one of the largest diamond cutting and polishing facilities in North America is in Sudbury? While consumers view the stunning array of diamonds in the jewelry display cases, Crossworks Manufacturing Ltd., a cutting and polishing manufacturer headquartered in Vancouver, is busy working behind the scenes.

This unassuming, low-profile Sudbury facility prefers to fly under the radar because of the nature of its business and the millions of dollars of product with which it deals. Thirty of its 32 employees in Sudbury came from Vietnam and have a minimum of 10 years experience, further emphasizing the value of the product and the importance of accuracy.

Crossworks’ two Canadian cutting and polishing factories survived the global financial crisis that left other diamond manufacturers bankrupt. It now has the only cutting and polishing game in the country. Read the rest of this entry »

This article was originally posted on the http://www.businessweek.com/ website on January 23, 2010.

Jan. 24, 2011 (Bloomberg) — For only the third time since the Industrial Revolution, the world may be entering a long-term growth cycle that will lift all economies simultaneously, driving bond yields and commodity prices higher.

The depth and scope of the expansion will be a focus for discussion at this week’s annual meeting of the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland. Evidence of a broadening global recovery will enable U.S. Treasury Secretary Timothy F. Geithner, investor George Soros and 2,500 political, business and academic leaders to shift their emphasis away from crisis- fighting.

With the economic and investment outlooks “much better” than in recent years, “people are talking about how to get back to business as normal and what comes next,” said Jitesh Gadhia, a delegate to the conference and the London-based senior managing director at Blackstone Group LP, which runs the world’s largest buyout fund.

Goldman Sachs Group Inc., PricewaterhouseCoopers LLP and London’s Standard Chartered Bank are among the financial companies sending executives to the meeting. Their economists predict a growth spurt in coming decades led by emerging nations that will be strong enough to boost developed countries. Read the rest of this entry »

Sudbury Mining Solutions Journal, a magazine that showcases the mining expertise of North Bay, Timmins and Sudbury. This article is from the June/2010 issue.

Ontario Mining Association president Chris Hodgson gave the Ontario Liberal government an A+ for its latest budget.

“We found it really encouraging that mining has been viewed as part of the solution for Ontario’s future,” Hodgson said. “We’re very pleased not just with the specifics, but also with the general tone that the government has taken toward mining.”

The province’s March 25 budget recognized that Northern Ontario’s mining sector plays an integral role in the economic development of the province. Mining in Ontario is a $10 billion business, provides the province with a $3.3 billion trade surplus and more than $600 million in corporate taxes annually.

“I think they realize we are a major benefit to the province, both in terms of the economy and society in general,” Hodgson said. “The spin-offs from developing mines are huge.” 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 article is from the September, 2006 issue.

For a guy who was supposed to end up in a ditch, Don McKinnon has done OK for himself. Northern Ontario’s most successful prospector, McKinnon began taking an interest in rocks while working in the bush as a woods superintendent for paper maker Kimberly-Clark.

He had an early taste of success in 1964, making more than $900,000 in a staking rush sparked by the discovery of the Kidd Creek copper-zinc deposit just east of Timmins. His real claim to fame, though, was his and partner John Larche’s key role in the discovery of gold at Hemlo on the North Shore of Lake Superior.

Born in Cochrane in 1929, McKinnon remembers having a talent for art and acting, but had no patience for sitting still. He and good friend Tim Horton co-starred in a school production of A Midsummer Night’s Dream, but both were, first and foremost, rink rats who played hockey every chance they had.

Tim ended up as an all-star defenceman for the Toronto Maple Leafs and the founder of the quintessentially Canadian coffee and donut chain. Read the rest of this entry »

The Thunder Bay Chronicle-Journal is the daily newspaper of Northwestern Ontario. This editorial was originally published on February 14, 2010.

For an extensive list of articles on this mineral discovery, please go to: Ontario’s Ring of Fire Mineral Discovery

BUSINESS CYCLES tend to raise and lower the economies of the communities in and around which they operate. Stable business benefits everyone, but even that comes with surprises.

Forestry is an example of an industry with an impressive track record that came up short when the recession deflated demand for its products. A U.S. recovery will eventually raise demand for lumber, pulp and paper, but never again to the same degree. The Internet has seen to that. Still, forestry is evolving with new products, including biomass to fuel the green energy revolution. Value-added opportunities continue to abound, if only they will be developed by entrepreneurs, encouraged by government.

Government is notoriously slow to react to the prospect – even the signs of change and there is a series of recurring jokes about how many studies there are at one time that seek to broaden the economy of Northern Ontario.

While that process drags on, there are new glimmers of hope for the North even as forestry flounders. Mining has always been the other big northern lynch pin and its own down time is apparently on the verge of a very big upswing. Two of them, actually. Read the rest of this entry »

The Thunder Bay Chronicle-Journal is the daily newspaper of Northwestern Ontario. This editorial was originally published on February 11, 2010.

For an extensive list of articles on this mineral discovery, please go to: Ontario’s Ring of Fire Mineral Discovery

IT WOULD be difficult to overstate the importance of the so-called Ring of Fire, a huge, horseshoe-shaped geological structure in the James Bay Lowlands of Northern Ontario. In just 30 months it has gone from a single drill hole to the probable jewel in the crown of a regional economic recovery.

The nearest communities to the ring of high-grade nickel-copper-platinum-palladium, chromite, vanadium and gold are the First Nations of Marten Falls and Webequie which are naturally angling to share the wealth. Much has been done to achieve that objective but lately, it appears the First Nations are not happy. An early partnership between Marten Falls and Noront Resources, the area’s key exploration company, for example, came apart this winter when the band council authorized members to block Noront planes from landing near their camps.

Everyone in Northern Ontario – most particularly First Nations anywhere near mineral deposits – must fervently hope that Marten Falls and Webequie don’t send companies packing from the Ring of Fire like another band further north did earlier. It cost Ontario taxpayers $5 million in company compensation, but the loss in this instance would be almost incalculable given the ring’s potential. Read the rest of this entry »

The Thunder Bay Chronicle-Journal is the daily newspaper of Northwestern Ontario. This editorial was originally published on November 24, 2010.

For an extensive list of articles on this mineral discovery, please go to: Ontario’s Ring of Fire Mineral Discovery

AS ONTARIO continues its onerous but ultimately necessary march toward cleaner air it is stepping into increasingly difficult territory. Its so-called green energy proposals are proving costlier all the time, and while no one should expect to reduce greenhouse gases and begin to reverse climate change without complications, Ontario seems to be making things more difficult for itself than it needs to.

This realization can be seen in every retreat from and change in its green energy policy, most recently to offer rebates on soaring electricity bills and alter an ill-thought-out time-of-use pricing plan.

Consumers are enraged at the proliferation of charges over and above basic electricity while lucrative contracts signed with alternative energy suppliers seem unnecessarily rich, given the fact that demand for electricity is going nowhere but up. Read the rest of this entry »

The Thunder Bay Chronicle-Journal is the daily newspaper of Northwestern Ontario. This editorial was originally published on August 6, 2009.

For an extensive list of articles on this mineral discovery, please go to: Ontario’s Ring of Fire Mineral Discovery

IT’S time that Natural Resources Minister Donna Cansfield sat down with Nishnawbe Aski Nation leaders and come to some sort of an agreement on the Far North Act. NAN’s Grand Chief Stan Beardy has blasted the provincial government over a perceived lack of consultation regarding Bill 191, which will set aside 225,000 square kilometres as a protected area within NAN First Nation homelands.

“Without (NAN’s) consultation, accommodation or consent,” Beardy stated, the legislation will effectively lock down the land to prevent First Nations – among the poorest people in Canada – from achieving economic independence by preventing the development needed to build healthy communities and help strengthen the Ontario economy.

While the government has launched committee meetings on the legislation, NAN says there are no hearings set for communities in the far North portion of the province, the ones most affected by the legislation.

The closest the Standing Committee on General Government gets to the far North is at the Sioux Lookout and Thunder Bay hearings. Read the rest of this entry »