May 8, 2011 – Republic of Mining

The Thunder Bay Chronicle-Journal is the daily newspaper of Northwestern Ontario. This editorial was originally published on May 6, 2011.

“Second, Harper is anxious to encourage economic activity and the
North’s Ring of Fire mining development is just the sort of success
story he admires and will want to brand Tory blue. …

… Make FedNor independent again, give it a northern minister like
Rickford, and let the Conservatives practise the efficient government
that they preach.” (Chronicle-Journal Editorial – May 6, 2011)

AMONG the theories floating around after this week’s election is that, besides a split between left and right and another between Quebec and the rest of Canada, the results suggest a form of class distinction between urban and rural Canada.

One such example is Ontario where much of the south, including wealthy Toronto and its suburbs and the burgeoning technology centres, voted Conservative while the North mostly picked the NDP.

A superbly tailored Tory campaign convinced economically-conservative minded voters to choose the offer of stability while large sections of the have-not hinterlands opted to register their disapproval of Conservative and Liberal approaches by supporting the social democratic message of Jack Layton and the NDP.

Mining Weekly is South Africa’s premier source of weekly news on mining developments in Africa’s most important industry. Mining Weekly provides in-depth coverage of mining projects and the personalities reshaping the mining industry. In order to advance Mining Weekly’s objective of positioning itself as a leading global provider of mining news, a full-time correspondent is based in Toronto, Canada and another in Perth, Australia.

If you look at it carefully it’s not a wave, it’s a tsunami. [Chinese urbanization] …
I see, for the long term, this scenario of scarcity to remain for at least five years …
I don’t believe producers will have capacity to cope with this huge movement in
urbanisation, people need raw materials…” (Tito Martins, CEO Vale Canada Ltd.
and Executive Director, Base Metals – May 6, 2011)

TORONTO (miningweekly.com) – The world’s second-biggest mining company, announcing record first-quarter profits, on Friday said a “tsunami” of Asian urbanisation would lead to shortages in iron-ore supply at least until 2016 as miners failed to keep pace with demand.

Basic materials executive Tito Martins said that debt problems in the US and Europe would not change this. “It’s a big wave coming. If you look at it carefully it’s not a wave, it’s a tsunami. The earthquake started maybe 10, 15 years ago, when China started moving huge quantities of people from the countryside to the city,” he commented on a conference call.

Martin echoed comments that Anglo-Australian miner Rio Tinto made earlier this year that China had accomplished a magnitude of industrialisation over the past two decades that had taken the Western World 250 years to accomplish.

Will the [Harper] Tories please the [Ontario] North? – The North want in! – (Thunder Bay Chronicle-Journal – May 6, 2011)

Asian demand ‘tsunami’ to buoy commodity prices – Vale [Canada CEO Tito Martins predicts] – by Matthew Hill (Miningweekly.com – May 6, 2011)