VALE STATEMENT REGARDING RELEASE OF USW LOCAL 6500 INVESTIGATION INTO 2011 FATALITIES AT STOBIE MINE

For Immediate Release

SUDBURY, February 29, 2012 – Vale today released the following statement from Kelly Strong, Vice President, Mining & Milling (North Atlantic Operations) and General Manager, Ontario Operations, regarding the United Steelworkers Local 6500 investigation report into the deaths of Jason Chenier and Jordan Fram in June 2011:

“We received the union’s investigation report this morning and are in the process of reviewing it very carefully.

The USW document contains serious allegations, and calls for the government to consider laying criminal charges against the Company and individuals. As a result of this, we are not able to discuss the specific allegations contained in the report.

While a detailed review is ongoing, our preliminary reading of the report indicates that there is no new factual information that our investigation team had not considered. There is, however, a distinct difference with how the USW has chosen to interpret and draw conclusions from those facts. 

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Got a dog in that fight [Ring of Fire Economic Potential] – by David Robinson (Northern Ontario Business – February 27, 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.  

Dave Robinson is an economist with the Institute for Northern Ontario Research and Development at Laurentian University. drobinson@laurentian.ca 

There is a battle going on for a big chunk of Northern Ontario. On one side is the global economy, desperate for minerals, desperate to minimize costs and leave behind as little as possible. On the other side are a handful of Northern communities hoping to leapfrog from being a 19th-century fur colony to being a highly educated, highly productive, self-governing 21st century society.

It is a David and Goliath struggle over how the value of Northern resources will be shared. And we have a dog in the fight, as they say in the southern U.S. We really need the Indians to win this one.

There are two selfish reasons to support the people of the Far North as they struggle to get some control of development in the region. The first is elementary economics. The more value stays in the Far North, the more will stay in the rest of the North.

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Riches for all from Ring of Fire, says Thunder Bay mayor – by Shawn Bell (Wawatay News – February 27, 2012)

This article came from Wawatay News: http://www.wawataynews.ca/

“There are enough riches in the Ring of Fire basin for
everyone here, including First Nations,” said Thunder
Bay mayor Keith Hobbs. “The riches in the Ring of Fire
are enough to make Ontario a have-province.”

Representatives from the City of Thunder Bay and Fort William First Nation have joined together to call for government investment in infrastructure around the Ring of Fire.

The city and the First Nation say they are working towards making Thunder Bay and northwestern Ontario a mining hub, like the Sudbury region.

“There are enough riches in the Ring of Fire basin for everyone here, including First Nations,” said Thunder Bay mayor Keith Hobbs. “The riches in the Ring of Fire are enough to make Ontario a have-province.”

Hobbs said the city is still pushing to host Cliffs Resources processing facility, despite acknowledging that Thunder Bay is not the favourite to get the plant or the estimated 300-500 jobs it would bring.

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Lobbying pays off, mayor says – by Wayne Snider (Timmins Daily Press – February 29, 2012)

The Daily Press is the city of Timmins broadsheet newspaper.

Minister to alter Abitibi River Forest restrictions

A three-day lobby effort is proving worthwhile for Timmins and Northeastern Ontario.

Mayor Tom Laughren wrapped up his trip to the Ontario Good Roads Association convention in Toronto on Tuesday. He had an opportunity to meet with two more cabinet ministers and their representatives prior to returning North.

“Timmins issues have been very well received,” Laughren reported in a phone interview from the OGRA meetings.

Earlier in the week, Laughren had a session with Municipal Affairs and Housing Minister Kathleen Wynne. He followed that up on Tuesday by meeting with MPP Mario Sergio (Liberal — York West), the parliamentary assistant to Wynne.

One Timmins-specific topic the mayor brought to the attention of the ministry was the city’s housing shortage.

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Dalton McGuinty blames the dog for eating his province – by Kelly McParland (National Post – February 28, 2012)

The National Post is Canada’s second largest national paper.

It’s human nature to want to avoid admitting mistakes, and the bigger the mistake, presumably, the bigger the temptation to escape the blame.

Far easier to blame someone or something else, preferably some force beyond one’s control. I couldn’t do my homework because the dog ate my notes; sorry I missed the deadline but there’s a traffic jam on the highway; I remembered your birthday but the package didn’t arrive in time; I wouldn’t have ruined the economy but the dollar is too high.

That last humdinger was offered Monday by Ontario Premier Dalton McGuinty in a bid to slough off responsibility for the economic mess now confronting the province he has led for the past eight years. Politely invited by Alberta’s Premier Alison Redford to lend support to her province’s effort to defend its oil industry — which has been a key reason Canada has avoided recession  — Mr. McGuinty responded with a churlish refusal. Instead he sought to explain away Ontario’s slow slide into debt and deficit as the result of a stronger currency.

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For Alberta, Dalton McGuinty becomes a fresh bogeyman – by Lorne Gunter (National Post – February 29, 2012)

The National Post is Canada’s second largest national paper.

There’s an old, never-fail strategy in Alberta politics: When your government is in trouble on the eve of an election, pick a fight with Ottawa. Almost nothing rallies Alberta voters around their provincial government like a dust-up with the feds. The only thing better is when Ottawa starts the skirmish.

Alberta may as well not even have held its 1982 campaign. Coming the year after the Trudeau government imposed the National Energy Program on the province, the provincial Conservatives could have run tree stumps as their candidates in most constituencies and won. There were 79 seats in the Alberta legislature that year. The Tories won 75. They earned over 62% of the popular vote.

New Alberta Premier Alison Redford is at the head of a government in trouble (although, according to recent polls, not as much trouble as when she took it over last fall from the bumbling and unpopular Ed Stelmach). And a provincial election is expected this spring. But until Monday, it looked as though Ms. Redford wouldn’t have a central Canadian bogeyman to run against.

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Vale displayed “reckless disregard” for safety, [Sudbury] union report says; criminal investigation sought – by Carol Mulligan (Sudbury Star – February 29, 2012)

The Sudbury Star is the City of Greater Sudbury’s daily newspaper.

Jason Chenier spent his last days in early June as a supervisor at Vale’s Stobie Mine alerting management about the safety hazards related to excess water and other factors underground.

Chenier, 35, erected double guardrails at two levels of the mine to act as “shutdown signals” that the areas were unsafe.

The guardrails were removed under management’s direction and re-installed as many as three times in the next two days.

He e-mailed management with concerns about excess water in areas where employees were working.

On June 7, 2011, he e-mailed Vale management advising it “should not be dumping ore or blasting this ore until the water situation is under control.”

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Isolationism looks ugly on McGuinty – by Christina Blizzard (London Free Press – February 29, 2012)

http://www.lfpress.com/

Why did mining giant Xstrata move its smelter from Timmins
to Quebec? Because the price of electricity in that province
is a fraction of what we pay here….Bay St. was built on
resources like oil, mining and forestry….His latte-loving
lackeys are wrecking rural Ontario with their ruinous green
energy policies… (Christina Blizzard – Toronto Sun)

QMI Agency

Contrary to what Premier Dalton McGuinty said this week, this province has plenty of fossil fuel.

If a giant meteor crashed into his cabinet room today, crushing the dinosaurs there, a million years from now you could sink a well to their fossilized remains and pump out enough Ontario crude to finally pay for all those high-priced programs McGuinty has foisted on us.

Progressive Conservative Leader Tim Hudak accused McGuinty of “playing a game of envy” and “pulling other provinces down” Tuesday, slamming McGuinty’s refusal to back Alberta Premier Alison Redford in her request that this province get more vocal in its support of oilsands development.

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