Where to brush up on your mine rehabilitation expertise – Lakehead University, Thunder Bay

This article was provided by the Ontario Mining Association (OMA), an organization that was established in 1920 to represent the mining industry of the province.

The Ontario Mining Association and the Canadian Land Reclamation Association (CLRA) are joining forces to hold the fifth annual Ontario Mine Reclamation Symposium and Field Trip.  This event is scheduled for June 20 and 21, 2012 at Lakehead University in Thunder Bay.

The seminar includes sessions on the geology and mining history of the Thunder Bay area along with understanding the chemical properties of peat bogs and blueberry soils on Northwestern Ontario.  An update on the development of restoration protocols at De Beers Canada’s Victor diamond Mine, located 90 kilometres west of Attawapiskat, will be presented.  These studies are expanding knowledge for reclamation activities in the Ring of Fire area, which is under development.

Another case study will centre on the evolution of closure planning and consultation at Barrick Hemlo Mines Williams gold property near Marathon.  Roger Souckey from Barrick Hemlo Mines and Shane Hayes of the Pic Mobert First Nation will be making this presentation.  Also, the decommissioning of Vale’s (Inco’s) Shebandowan nickel mine near Thunder Bay will be reviewed. 

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‘We are listening’[Ontario government to First Nations] – by Jeff Labine (tbnewswatch.com – May 20, 2012)

http://www.tbnewswatch.com/

The Ministry of Natural Resources won’t approve any land us applications from Cliffs Natural Resources applications until an environmental assessment has been completed.

Neskantaga First Nation Chief Peter Moonias wrote a letter to Minister of Natural Resources Michael Gravelle last week after he learned that Cliffs had requested land use and other permits to allow the company to start developing the area for construction. These construction projects included roads leading into the Ring of Fire site.

This application request followed the announcement that the company planned to build a chromite smelter near Sudbury causing outcry from First Nation communities that Ontario did not pursue proper consultation before making the decision.

Moonias, who earlier this week declared he was willing to die to stop the Ring of Fire development, said the MNR couldn’t go ahead with this application.

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Don’t capitulate to ‘New Age Bigotry’, invest in mining-Coxe – by Dorothy Kosich (Mineweb.com – May 22, 2012)

www.mineweb.com

A backroom political ban on investing in companies deemed impure by environmental NGOs is unfairly depressing the prices of some of the leading gold mining stocks, and hurting pension funds, Coxe says.

RENO (MINEWEB) –  Why would a pension fund not invest in a highly profitable long-duration mine (such as BHP’s Olympic Dam copper-gold-uranium deposit in Australia with a 40-year lifespan)?
 
In the May edition of Basic Points, respected global commodities analyst Don Coxe says pension funds are succumbing to political pressure, resulting in “more and more corporate pension funds…being impaled on their own funding swords due to inadequate investment returns.”
 
Coxe suggests that commodity stocks are “victims of a new form of persecution from two groups-those with contempt for capitalism, along with those who resent what mining, and oil and gas companies do for a living.”
 
“The original Luddites smashed the machines of the Industrial Revolution,” he observed.

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Thomas Mulcair’s ill-conceived war on the West – by Gillian Steward (Toronto Star – May 22, 2012)

The Toronto Star, has the largest circulation in Canada. The paper has an enormous impact on federal and Ontario politics as well as shaping public opinion.

CALGARY—NDP Leader Thomas Mulcair might as well have declared war on the West. That’s the way it sounded from this end of the country when a couple of weeks ago he told a CBC radio program that something needs to be done about rapid oilsands development.
 
According to Mulcair, it has artificially inflated the Canadian dollar and thereby delivered a bruising blow to central Canada’s export-dependent manufacturing sector.
 
Mulcair might as well have said that the western resource-based economy is the enemy of the eastern-based manufacturing sector and must be stamped out at all costs.
 
Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s team and the western premiers were quick to defend the West’s right to profit from its resource wealth. But the ensuing war of words created such a fog it obscured much more fundamental issues.

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