http://www.kamloopsthisweek.com/

As the Ajax mine battle heats up, it offers an interesting case study in the use of propaganda and rhetoric to persuade we ignorant masses toward particular points of view.

And, because billions of dollars are at stake for a huge multi-national mining company and the quality of life is potentially at risk due to the mine’s location perched on and above Kamloops, emotions and passions are running high.

The “yea-sayers” are accused of seeing only the pot of gold sitting in the midst of environmental armageddon. The “fear-mongerers” with their Chicken Little notions simply don’t understand it’s “jobs, jobs, jobs” that will keep Kamloops moving forward. In the midst of all this, two recent and rather low-key events caught my mind’s eye.

A few months ago, a suggestion by Pierre Gratton, the president of the Canadian Mining Association, that Kamloops has the “potential to become the hub of the mining industry for Western Canada” tweaked my curiosity as it seemed a rather lofty claim. Read the rest of this entry »

http://www.montrealgazette.com/index.html

GAZETTE Environment Reporter

QUEBEC – If the Charest government was hoping to avoid criticism by quietly announcing the relaunch of Quebec’s controversial asbestos industry on the Friday before a holiday weekend, it might have miscalculated.
 
In the month following the June 29 announcement that Quebec would loan $58 million to help reopen and expand the Jeffrey Mine in the town of Asbestos, newspapers across Quebec and Canada have run editorials and columns condemning the decision. The wisdom of staking public money on this project has come under question, and last week an international scientific organization of epidemiologists joined the call for a global ban on asbestos.
 
In April 2011, the Liberal government had promised to provide a guarantee on a $58-million loan to the project’s proponents — Westmount businessman Baljit Chadha and Jeffrey Mine president Bernard Coulombe — if and when they could come up with $25 million in private investments to enable the reopening of the mine.
 
The government is now providing a direct loan rather than a guarantee, and critics charge that’s because no financial institution would loan the money, even with a government guarantee. Read the rest of this entry »

http://www.montrealgazette.com/index.html

Regime based on profits, not value of minerals is better for Quebec: report chief

MONTREAL – Quebec’s mining royalty regime offers the “competitive structure” best suited to the province, according to a study likely to fuel provincial election debates.
 
The consulting firm KPMG LLP and the law office of Fraser Milner Casgrain LLP unveiled Tuesday “an analytical framework” they say permits an objective evaluation of mining royalty regimes around the globe. “There is no ideal regime,” Renault-François Lortie, KPMG partner and director of the study, told reporters.
 
But, all things considered, “the structure of the current regime is the right one” for Quebec. “We think that a regime that is based on profits compared to one based on the value of the minerals is better suited to the mineral characteristics and level of production costs in Quebec,” Lortie said.
 
Quebec’s current royalty scheme of 16 per cent royalty on the profits of each mine is relatively high, said Lortie, noting that the study does not address whether the rate of 16 per cent is ideal for Quebec. Read the rest of this entry »

http://www.nugget.ca/

Rising hydro costs threaten to devastate industry in Ontario, says Nipissing MPP Vic Fedeli. The Progressive Conservative energy critic warns that the global adjustment portion of hydro bills, which covers long-term supply agreements, conservation initiatives and solar and wind generation, could cripple the province’s manufacturing sector.
 
“It’s almost too far gone. And if the trend continues there will be no manufacturing in Ontario,” said Fedeli. He blames the government’s FIT (Feed-in-Tariff ) program, which offers guaranteed prices for energy produced through renewable sources such as solar and wind.
 
Fedeli says the guaranteed prices are ridiculously high at the expense of hydro customers who are paying the difference through the global adjustment fee on their hydro bills. Fedeli says the FIT program was aimed at kick-starting private investment in renewable electricity generation. But he says the provincial Liberals didn’t consider the consequences and that the growing costs will become too much for businesses to bear.
 
John Spencer, vice-president of operations for PGI Fabrene Inc. in North Bay, has said global adjustment now represents about 55% of the company’s monthly hydro charges and has grown exponentially since 2006 when it accounted for far less than 10% of the bill. Read the rest of this entry »

 http://www.bnn.ca/

Kinross Gold Corp. ousted chief executive Tye Burt and replaced him with its executive vice-president of corporate development as Canada’s third-largest gold miner contends with a slumping share price. J. Paul Rollinson will take the top job and replace Burt on the board of directors, effective immediately.
 
Kinross shares are down nearly 47 percent in the last year, with the stock closing at $8.01 on Wednesday, before the management change was announced. 

Kinross thanked Burt for his seven years as head of the miner and listed a number of notable achievements during his tenure, including a “significant upgrade” of assets, and a “substantial increase in gold resources and production.” But, the miner also said its board had determined that a change in leadership was essential.
 
“…Board has determined that in view of current market and industry fundamentals, stakeholder interests will best be served by an executive management team focusing on the implementation and oversight of the comprehensive capital and project optimization process that was announced by the Company on January 16, 2012,” it said in a statement. Read the rest of this entry »

www.mineweb.com

With the firing of Tye Burt, a second North American gold company head has rolled in less than two months. Is a 3rd cranium in the offing?

RENO (MINEWEB) -  One can anticipate that more than a few folks will shed no tears at the departure of Tye Burt as Kinross CEO.
 
Burt was so unpopular by the end of his seventh year at the helm of Kinross, that, by the end of last month, he inspired the “Tye Burt NEEDS to be FIRED” website, with the oracular address, www.firetyeburt.com.
 
Several months after a nearly $3 billion write-down, Kinross’ board finally listened to a growing chorus of unhappy shareholders and analysts and fired Burt Wednesday. He was replaced as CEO by J. Paul Robinson, Kinross’ former executive vice president, corporate development.
 
As the Kinross board axed its former Caesar, it also praised him, acknowledging “Mr. Burt’s many corporate achievements” including a significant upgrade of the company’s portfolio to nine mines and five development projects in six nations; the building of a “much stronger balance sheet” which allowed the company to pay a semi-annual dividend; and generating “a substantial increase in gold resources and gold production while also improving the overall grade of such production.” Read the rest of this entry »

http://www.timminstimes.com/

Copies of the book can be ordered online at: www.bootleggold.net.

Local author releases new book on high-grading.

For the City of Timmins having been around 100 years, there has to be a thousand stories about high-grading in this city. High-grading, also simply known as stealing gold from the mines, has been going on in Timmins since the day the big mines opened.

It’s no wonder that a local writer has finally made an effort to do some reputable research on the topic and come up with a few of those stories.

Kevin Vincent has authored Volume One of Bootleg Gold, a close look at the impact of high-grading on the gold mining industry here in Timmins, Ontario, — one of the world’s foremost gold mining camps. He has been working on the story and gathering research for 25 years. Vincent has done his homework, starting with exclusive interviews with the late Gregory Evans, the venerable Timmins lawyer who went on to become chief justice of the Supreme Court of Ontario. Read the rest of this entry »

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

Gwynne Dyer is a London-based journalist whose articles are published in 45 countries.

Russian television contacted me recently, asking me to go on a program about the race for Arctic resources. The ice is melting fast, and it was all the usual stuff about how there will be big strategic conflicts over the seabed resources — especially oil and gas — that become accessible when it’s gone.
 
The media always love conflict, and now that the Cold War is long gone, there’s no other potential military confrontation between the great powers to worry about.
 
Governments around the Arctic Ocean are beefing up their armed forces for the coming struggle, so where are the flashpoints and what are the strategies? In the end I didn’t do the interview because the Skype didn’t work, so I didn’t get the chance to rain on their parade. But here’s what I would have said to the Russians.
 
There are three separate “resources” in the Arctic. On the surface, there are the sea lanes that are opening up to commercial traffic along the northern coasts of Russia and Canada. Under the seabed, there are potential oil and gas deposits that can be drilled once the ice retreats. And in the water in between, there is the planet’s last unfished ocean. Read the rest of this entry »

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.

Canada’s third-largest gold company, Kinross Gold Corp., has abruptly replaced its chief executive officer, the second high-profile dismissal of a major gold company president since June.

Kinross shares are trading at about a third of their value of one year ago. The company said on Wednesday that J. Paul Rollinson, who was executive vice-president of corporate development, would replace Tye W. Burt as chief executive officer. Mr. Rollinson has also replaced Mr. Burt on the Kinross board of directors.

The company cited “current market and industry fundamentals,” among the reasons for the change, which comes amid investor discontent over a massive writedown at the company earlier this year.

Mr. Burt led Kinross to the largest acquisition in the company’s 19-year history in the summer of 2010, when it bought Red Back Mining Inc. for $7.1-billion. The deal won it possession of the massive undeveloped Tasiast gold deposit in Mauritania, but it also brought headaches as the company was forced to write down $2.49-billion on the project (the biggest loss in its history) amid soaring costs and changing project parameters. Read the rest of this entry »