June 11, 2011 – Republic of Mining

Nine orders issued to Vale [Sudbury mining deaths] – by Carol Mulligan (Sudbury Star – June 11, 2011)

June 11, 2011

The Sudbury Star, the City of Greater Sudbury’s daily newspaper. cmulligan@thesudburystar.com

McPhee said the emphasis is not on production, but on taking a “compassionate
approach” in dealing with employees who worked with and knew Fram and Chenier,
and are traumatized by their deaths. … “The emphasis is on employees.”
(Cory McPhee – Vale VP Corporate Affairs)

The Ministry of Labour has issued nine orders — three of them stop-work orders — at Vale Ltd.’s Stobie Mine where two miners were killed Wednesday evening after a run of muck — or broken rock — descended on them.

The ministry, Vale, United Steelworkers and Greater Sudbury Police Service are all involved in the investigation into how the accident that killed Jason Chenier, 35, and Jordan Fram, 26, occurred.

Vale spokesman Cory McPhee said the company is complying with all orders and co-operating with the Labour ministry any way it can. The accident site is frozen, but production could resume soon in the rest of the mine where about 400 people work.

McPhee said the emphasis is not on production, but on taking a “compassionate approach” in dealing with employees who worked with and knew Fram and Chenier, and are traumatized by their deaths.

Stolen beer and other tales from Timmins pioneer times – by Karen Bachmann (The Daily Press – June 10, 2011)

June 11, 2011

The Daily Press is the newspaper of record for the city of Timmins. Karen Bachmann is the director/curator of the Timmins Museum and a local author.

HISTORY: Jack Andrews shares stories from working at well-known stopping place along the famous Porcupine Trail

Jack Andrews was an early pioneer in the Porcupine Camp whose story was collected by Magne Stortroen and the Porcupine Camp Historical Society.

Andrews was born in Renfrew County in 1885 and came to work firstly in Englehart in 1907. He ventured north to Cochrane in 1910 but, seeing “nothing to suit me,” he went back to Kelso and worked for J.B. Crawford and Alfred Reamsbottom. In our third and final installment of oral histories, Jack Andrews recounts what it was like to work at a “stopping place” along the famous Porcupine Trail.

“We were in a favourable spot because we were just half-way between Kelso and Porcupine. And we got a lot of trade on that account. The train used to stop at Kelso in the evening and the stages would load up and start to Porcupine.

Making Change: A Northern Ontario Declaration – by Livio Di Matteo (Jun 10, 2011)

June 11, 2011

Livio Di Matteo is Professor of Economics at Lakehead University in Thunder Bay, Ontario. Visit his new Economics Blog “Northern Economist” at http://ldimatte.shawwebspace.ca/

Next week’s summits in Thunder Bay and Sudbury still seem to be suffering from divergent points of opinion as to what their purpose is. On the one hand, the province has billed it as a Think North II Summit which implies yet another consultation. Northwestern leaders as embodied by the Joint Task Force (JTF) see it as a Regional Economic Planning Zone Pilot Project Summit and some of their background reports suggest they are looking for more devolution of decision making authority. Perhaps the JTF is not making its point strongly enough because it is not being very assertive in its language.

At the risk of coming across as yet another academic postulating from their ivory tower, let me suggest that perhaps at next week’s Think North II Summit in Thunder Bay there needs to be a change in thinking on the part of the region’s leaders. Rather than enjoy a couple of days off from their day jobs savoring snacks and participating in yet another facilitated consultation that generates more reports as an input into yet another consultation, it is time for our political leaders to make a difference. Rather than sit through yet another workshop whose questions have been designed by Queen’s Park, the participants to this conference should take a page out of history, find a tennis court to gather on, and make a Northern Declaration that:

The peoples of Northern Ontario, making common cause to ensure a better future for our children in this land we call home, have come together in partnership to speak and act with one voice. We assert that Northern Ontario constitutes a distinct economic, social and geographic space within Ontario as embodied by its historic development.

New Vision for Northern Ontario – by Livio Di Matteo (Jun 8, 2011)

June 11, 2011

Livio Di Matteo is Professor of Economics at Lakehead University in Thunder Bay, Ontario. Visit his new Economics Blog “Northern Economist” at http://ldimatte.shawwebspace.ca/

Next week is the Think North II Summit designed to bring together decision makers and opinion leaders in yet another consultation emanating from the one Northern Growth plan to rule them all that was forged and tempered in the fires of Queen’s Park by the Ontario government. According to the recent update from the Ministry of Northern Development and Mines, The Think North II Summit is “an opportunity for northerners to be actively engaged in shaping the framework for regional economic planning areas in Northern Ontario” and will feature hands-on workshops on “crafting a vision for regional economic development planning in Northern Ontario” as well as create “strategies for collaboration.”

There will even be the obligatory S.W.O.T. analysis to identify the strategies, weaknesses, opportunities and threats of the “change” represented by regional economic planning. The “threat” of change is a particularly amusing concept given that this entire process continues a process of consultation that has been ongoing for decades with not much change. To date, the major obstacles to change in the North have been the policies of the provincial government itself which have hampered the ability of the region to take charge of its own development. Never mind regional economic planning, a regional government for the North with power over economic and resource matters is decades overdue.

Our world needs more Peter Munks – by Margaret Wente (Globe and Mail – June 11, 2011)

June 11, 2011

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. mwente@globeandmail.com

Some parts of the world are nastier than Canada. Peter Munk should know. He came from one.

Mr. Munk is the founder and chairman of Barrick Gold Corp., the world’s largest gold miner. From the day he landed in Toronto from war-torn Europe, he has loved this country with a passion. “I arrived in this place not speaking the language, not knowing a dog,” he says. He was 18 – an alien, a foreigner, a Jew in a funny-looking suit. In Europe, people were living in the ruins, like rats.

The young refugee presented himself at Lawrence Park Collegiate, where nobody had seen a foreigner before. He expected to be shunned. Instead, the principal took him to a sun-filled classroom, where, unbelievably, boys and girls studied together. At lunchtime, everybody streamed into the cafeteria, where a trestle table groaned with meat, bread and milk. “The amount of food in that place could have fed any city in Europe for a whole day,” he recalls. Kids began asking him home, where their parents invited him to raid the fridge.

For Mr. Munk, this generosity became a metaphor for Canada. “People here don’t ask about your origins,” he says, “only about your destiny.”

Today, the company that he founded is embroiled in controversy, and Mr. Munk himself has come under vicious attack. Billionaires and mining giants will never be exempt from criticism, nor should they be. But these attacks are so toxic, they demand a response.