May 15, 2011 – Republic of Mining

Check Against Delivery

Thank you, Al for that introduction.

The Ministry of Municipal Affairs and Housing is pleased to partner with FONOM for this conference and to continue to support the important work FONOM does. I want to thank the City of Timmins for hosting this conference. Timmins, Sudbury and the rest of Northern Ontario have a lot in common.

We are determined and resilient. We know what it’s like to live in a resource-based economy and the ups and downs that brings. When it comes to Northern challenges, nobody knows more than our government exactly what that means.

Luckily, we have a strong seven-member Northern caucus and our government has done what previous governments have not: ensure there are three cabinet ministers from Northern Ontario – with two being from North-eastern Ontario.

Northern Ontario has a very strong voice around the cabinet table, and this voice influences everything our government does. We are passionate advocates for you, and I’m proud of that advocacy.

The Globe and Mail is Canada’s national newspaper with the second largest broadsheet circulation in the country. It has enormous impact and influence on Canada’s political and business elite as well as the rest of the country’s print, radio and television media.

A handful of people shuffle into the community hall in Kimmirut, Nunavut, a tiny outpost on the southern coast of Baffin Island. It’s early December, and the small group shakes off the cold winter air and settles into folding chairs to hear a presentation about something completely foreign to Baffin Island – a railway.

“I have never seen a railway before,” a woman named Joannie tells the gathering, according to minutes of the meeting. “Could you give a better idea of what the train will look like?”

Nobody else has seen a railway on Baffin Island either. No one has built one this far north, anywhere. But now – thanks to an insatiable global demand for minerals, and climate change that has opened up northern shipping routes – a rail line across part of Baffin Island is about to become a reality.

It’s also a sign of things to come. Places like Baffin Island have always held a treasure trove of minerals, but low commodity prices, coupled with the high cost of operating in the Arctic, left many deposits undeveloped. With prices for nearly every mineral now soaring, however, mining’s last frontier has become financially viable. And with temperatures climbing because of global warming, mining in the Arctic has become logistically possible as well, because sea lanes stay open longer due to thinner ice and railways can operate year round.

Ontario Municipal Affairs and Housing Minister Hon. Rick Bartolucci’s Keynote Speech to Federation of Northern Ontario Municipalities Conference – (Timmins, Ontario – May 12, 2011)

A railway to Arctic riches: economic boom, environmental threat? – by Paul Waldie (Globe and Mail – May 14, 2011)