January 11, 2012 – Republic of Mining

[Solid Gold Resources vs. Wahgoshig F.N.] Court, government threw junior miner “under the bus,” company claims – by Northern Ontario Business staff (January 11, 2012)

January 11, 2012

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.

A Thornhill, Ont. junior miner has come out swinging against an Ontario Superior Court decision that temporarily halted exploration in northeastern Ontario.

Solid Gold Resources fired back at Justice Carol Brown’s Jan. 3 ruling to side with the Wahgoshig First Nation in granting an injunction to temporarily halt exploration at the company’s Legacy gold project.

Solid Gold was ordered to stop its activity for 120 days while the company and the Ontario government pay for a third party mediator to begin a consultation process. The First Nation claimed it was not consulted on exploration activity and that the area in question holds significant cultural and archaeological values.

The company declined an interview request, but in a statement company president Darryl Stretch called the court’s ruling “plainly wrong on many levels.”

Éléonore could be the next Val d’Or [Quebec mining] – by Kevin Dougherty (Montreal Gazette – January 11, 2012)

January 11, 2012

http://www.montrealgazette.com/

The prospecting mission led by Premier Jean Charest and Quebec City Mayor Régis Labeaume to promote Charest’s Plan Nord struck gold Tuesday in the wilderness of northern Quebec, visiting the site of the Goldcorp Inc.’s Éléonore gold mine.

Labeaume, who led a delegation of about 25 Quebec City-area business people and who made his personal fortune in the mining business, said Éléonore is “opening up a new mining region in Canada.”

“It is major, major, major,” he said. Guy Belleau, director of the $2.2-billion mining project, set to begin production of 600,000 ounces of gold yearly in 2017, went further.

“The Plan Nord is Éléonore,” he said in a presentation to the business delegation, political leaders and representatives of the Cree First Nations who count on landing about half the 700 construction jobs and 400 mining jobs Éléonore will generate.

Pipeline rhetoric is a radical attack on due process – Globe and Mail Editorial (January 11, 2012)

January 11, 2012

The Globe and Mail is Canada’s national newspaper with the second largest broadsheet circulation in the country. It has enormous influence on Canada’s political and business elite.

The proposed Northern Gateway pipeline is a good idea, to judge from the information available thus far. But the regulatory process should go ahead and hear all concerns in an evenhanded way, as that process was designed to do. The federal government’s warnings about foreign influences and “environmental and other radical groups” are exaggerated.

Canada needs to trade with diverse markets, and China will have a huge appetite for oil for a long time to come. The pipeline, transporting petroleum from the Alberta oil sands to Kitimat, B.C., where it can be loaded on to ocean tankers, would serve the Asian market. Better access to international markets (not only through Gateway) could add $131-billion to this country’s gross domestic product between 2016 and 2030, and $27-billion in tax revenues, a paper published by the University of Calgary’s School of Policy studies argues.

Natural Resources Minister Joe Oliver was circumspect when he spoke with this newspaper’s editorial board in late October.

Our ecological treasure is the issue with Northern Gateway – by Gerald Butts (Globe and Mail – January 11, 2012)

January 11, 2012

The Globe and Mail is Canada’s national newspaper with the second largest broadsheet circulation in the country. It has enormous influence on Canada’s political and business elite.

Gerald Butts is president and CEO of World Wildlife Fund Canada.

The hearings to decide the future of the Great Bear Sea and Rainforest got off to quite a start this week. Big oil, foreign intrigue, a grassroots uprising, duelling polls, angry ministers – this one has all the makings of a blockbuster. But the fervour obscures the heart of the matter: whether and under what conditions we should permit supertankers and a bitumen pipeline in one of the last intact temperate coastal rain forests on Earth.

I suspect most Canadians would be surprised that the proposed route of the Northern Gateway pipeline bisects this ecological treasure. Pipeline proponents would rather frame this issue around developing an Asian market for oil sands bitumen – and the allegedly nefarious U.S.-based interests who would prevent us from doing so – than have a science-based debate about the real risks associated with getting it there by this route.

‘Foreign money’ is a hypocritical diversion – by Jeffrey Simpson (Globe and Mail – January 11, 2012)

January 11, 2012

The Globe and Mail is Canada’s national newspaper with the second largest broadsheet circulation in the country. It has enormous influence on Canada’s political and business elite.

It has been rich, even comic, to listen to the Harper government blasting away at “foreign money,” “radical groups” and Hollywood movie stars for interfering in the environmental review of the Northern Gateway pipeline that’s just starting.

Of course, such people and their money have entered the fray in Canada. It isn’t the first time (think of U.S. interventions against cutting old-growth forests in B.C.) and it won’t be the last. We live in a global world, and we share a continent with the U.S. (and Mexico) where one country’s decisions can affect the continent and planet.

Think back to last year, and the ones before that. TransCanada Pipelines sought U.S. approval for the Keystone XL pipeline to ship oil from Alberta’s tar sands to refineries on the Gulf of Mexico. Regulatory hearings were required. Ultimately, the State Department (read: President Barack Obama’s administration) had to decide.

As review begins for Gateway pipeline, a warning from wary first nations – Nathan Vanderklippe (Globe and Mail – January 11, 2012)

January 11, 2012

The Globe and Mail is Canada’s national newspaper with the second largest broadsheet circulation in the country. It has enormous influence on Canada’s political and business elite.

KITAMAAT VILLAGE, B.C.— Not far from the dark waters that could one day carry supertankers of oil-sands crude to the Pacific Ocean, the pitched battle over the Northern Gateway pipeline took a very public stage as opponents called on God and salmon to fight a project they see as dangerous.

Over the next two years, the federal review panel assessing the $6.6-billion proposed Enbridge Inc. pipeline will travel to dozens of communities, on the route and off it, and hear from the thousands who have asked to speak.

On Tuesday, the first day of public hearings, the three-person panel arrived in Kitamaat Village, a Haisla community on the shores of Douglas Channel. Although Ottawa has invoked the spectre of foreign-funded radicals plotting to derail the project, the real fight was here, in coastal communities where the Exxon Valdez spill still resonates and many first nations communities fear the consequences of a pipeline on their traditional territory and local waters.