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

British Columbia’s brawl with Alberta over the Northern Gateway pipeline and refusal to sign a national energy strategy may be harbingers of battles to come over natural resource developments that are driving the Canadian economy but drawing unprecedented criticism for their environmental impacts.
 
The petroleum, forestry, mining and electricity sectors are expected to generate hundreds of billions of dollars of investment and hundreds of thousands of direct and indirect jobs across Canada over the next few decades.
 
The northern Alberta oilsands, British Columbia’s lucrative shale gas plays, petroleum and potash in Saskatchewan, the Ring of Fire mineral deposit in Northern Ontario, Quebec’s massive Plan Nord resource project and offshore petroleum riches in the Arctic and Atlantic Canada — all are part of the country’s eye popping resource bounty.
 
The Harper government has already identified natural resource development as a priority, and recently announced sweeping changes to expedite approvals and allow it to make final decisions on pipeline projects deemed in the national interest. Read the rest of this entry »

 The Vancouver Sun, a broadsheet daily paper first published in 1912, has the largest circulation in the province of British Columbia.

Guest editorial from the Montreal Gazette

Matthew Coon Come has proven himself to be no pushover when it comes to defending the interests of his people.
 
Grand chief of Quebec’s Grand Council of the Crees and a former national chief of the Assembly of First Nations, he has been an outspoken activist in the assertion of aboriginal rights, gaining an international reputation for his efforts in the process.
 
Therefore it was saying something when Coon Come effusively hailed as a landmark achievement the agreement signed last week between the Quebec government and the Cree Grand Council on resource development, land management and regional governance in the James Bay territory.
 
The deal covers an area of 330,000 square kilometres, roughly the size of Italy. As a result of it, the municipality of James Bay will cease to exist and be replaced by a regional authority jointly governed by aboriginal and non-aboriginal residents of the territory. 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.

VANCOUVER — There’s a lot of talk in British Columbia these days about Enbridge Inc. and its challenges advancing its Northern Gateway pipeline project.

But Roger Harris offers something extra to the conversation. From 2008 to 2010, the one-term BC Liberal MLA for Skeena was working for Enbridge, mostly as a vice-president of aboriginal and community partnerships. He says he left, by mutual agreement, because he advocated a broader approach to engaging with communities and stakeholders than the company was interested in.

Now, the consultant to business, government and first nations says Gateway may be beyond saving – though he continues to believe in shipping Canadian energy to foreign markets.

Is it reaching the point where this project is going to be a non-starter? If Enbridge continues to do probably a number of things, [this project] has the potential to meet the legal threshold and, with the current federal changes to the environmental assessment, the political threshold that would allow someone to say, ‘You will get a permit to build this. It will have some conditions on it, but here it goes.’ Read the rest of this entry »

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

The provincial government will spend a billion dollars over the next five years, but the viability of the project remains a question 

After two decades of keeping a low profile in the province’s mining sector, the Quebec government is coming back strong, giving itself a lead role in Premier Jean Charest’s Plan Nord to develop the mineral and other resources of northern Quebec.
 
Ressources Québec, a new state investment arm, is being entrusted with $1 billion in the next five years to invest in Plan Nord mining ventures and future oil and gas plays through a fund called Capital Mines Hydrocarbures. It will be headed by Jacques Daoust, who remains president and CEO of the expanded Investissement Québec.
 
With growing interest in Quebec’s deposits of iron ore, nickel, rare earths, gold and even diamonds, the province has increased its mining royalties.
 
And to aid mining and mineral processing, Quebec will pay $30 million toward a study on extending Gaz Métro’s natural gas distribution network to Sept Îles, a major Plan Nord hub. Quebec is also supporting a proposed new $5 billion rail link from Sept Îles north to the new mining zone, to be built by CN and the Caisse de dépôt et placement du Québec. Read the rest of this entry »

 http://www.montrealgazette.com/index.html
 
Dramatic increase in domestic and foreign investment in iron-ore projects fuelling port’s renaissance

A Klondike-type fever is gripping this port city facing a spectacular, semi-circular bay located more than 900 kilometres east of Montreal on the North Shore of the St. Lawrence River. The great catalyst, however, is not gold but a dramatic increase in domestic and foreign investments in iron ore projects, notably with a view to supplying the vital commodity for steel mills in China.
 
In short, in this relatively remote area of Quebec, a sleeping giant has awakened – signalling the ascension in the near future of Sept Îles as Canada’s second-biggest port after Vancouver in terms of volume. It is already the leading mineral port in North America.
 
Money is pouring from steel producers into the substantial, still-unexploited iron ore deposits in what geologists identified long ago as the Labrador Trough centred on Schefferville, nearly 800 kms north and connected to Sept Îles by a single rail line.
 
It all symbolizes a virtual economic renaissance following a long period of decline ushered in by mine closures in Schefferville in the 1980s and a collapse in demand from world markets. Read the rest of this entry »

www.mineweb.com

AngloGold has forced itself to think differently about deep level mining and this, they are hoping, will spawn an operating section employing the new technology by end 2013.

JOHANNESBURG (Mineweb) - When Apple launched the iPad, it didn’t just alter the numbers spinning about on its profit line, it changed the technology industry.
 
And if AngloGold Ashanti executive vice president of business strategy, Canadian engineer, Mike MacFarlane is to be believed the gold digger is looking to do something similar to deep level gold mining.
 
Since 2010, the group has been looking for ways to leverage old technology in new ways to mine gold even deeper than the current depths around 4kms. And, it is now aiming to introduce a new operating section at AngloGold by the end of 2013 that moves away from the conventional drill and blast methodology to one where the ore bearing reef is extracted with modified raise bore drills.
 
The raise bore drill, called an Amtek, is currently undergoing testing and is sourced locally in South Africa from a company called Atlantis. Read the rest of this entry »

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

If Christy Clark, premier of British Columbia, hoped that picking a fight with Alberta would help improve her dismal standing in the polls, the latest numbers are bound to be disappointing.

The new poll, by Forum Research, shows that the B.C. NDP would win 79 of the 85 seats in the provincial legislature if an election were held today. Ms. Clark’s Liberals, who rank barely ahead of the moribund provincial Conservative party, would be reduced to four seats.

Such bleak figures must be particularly galling to Ms. Clark given that another recent poll shows almost 60% of voters agree with her opposition to the Northern Gateway pipeline, which is at the heart of the dispute with Alberta. The survey by Angus Reid found that 35% of respondents were dead set against the pipeline under any conditions, while 24% could be swayed – i.e. bought off – if Ms. Clark succeeded in extorting billions of dollars from Alberta in exchange for dropping her opposition.

It appears that B.C. voters are just fed up with the Liberals, who have been in power for more than a decade, and aren’t going to change their minds in the absence of extraordinary circumstances. Read the rest of this entry »

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.

It might seem that for Canada, the commercial stakes in China have never been higher. Same goes for our European and American peers, all eager to crack a Chinese market of burgeoning affluence.

The Tangier Lobster Co. of Nova Scotia, whose seasonal workforce ranges from 14 to 22 employees, is determined to boost Chinese exports to compensate for a drop in sales to a U.S. mired in economic malaise.
 
And Stephen Harper seeks a greater degree of Canadian economic sovereignty with his relentless promotion of the proposed Northern Gateway pipeline, connecting Athabasca’s tar sands with booming markets in Asia. Oil sales to China would help break our dependence on the U.S. as sole buyer of our petroleum exports.
 
Yet, while it’s difficult not to marvel at a rapid industrial revolution in the world’s largest country, I fear we exaggerate China’s potential. Read the rest of this entry »

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.

The small northern B.C. town of Smithers, population 6,000, is thousands of kilometres from Battle Creek, Mich. But the spill from an Enbridge Inc. pipeline that dumped 840,000 gallons of heavy crude oil into Michigan’s Kalamazoo River on July 25, 2010 was very much on the minds of people in Smithers when Ottawa’s regulators came to town.

“There will always be a question in our minds,” Mayor Taylor Bachrach this week told the federal hearings on a pipeline to carry Alberta oilsands crude to supertankers on the B.C. coast.

“Will this be the day that we turn on the radio and hear that there’s been a pipeline rupture and that oil is gushing into the Morice River or the Copper River or the Kitimat River?”

“And people in Kitimat Village and Hartley Bay will wonder, is this the day that a tanker runs off course and hits the rocks?” Bachrach asked the three-person panel. Read the rest of this entry »

The Daily Press is the city of Timmins broadsheet newspaper.

As the canvas wraps were pulled from the statuesque figures mounted on marble plinths on Saturday, the sun glinted gold on the bronzed faces of the three men whose triumph laid the foundation for the Timmins we know today.
 
Benny Hollinger, Sandy McIntyre and John “Jack” Wilson are three names that every Timmins resident knows, they are genesis, and finally, 100 years after their discoveries, they stand large as life in front of the Timmins Museum: National Exhibition Centre.
 
“This is a very, very important event when you think about 100 years of Timmins and the next 100 years of Timmins,” said city Mayor Tom Laughren. “Back in 1908, when these gentlemen came here, what was here in Timmins?”
 
The group of onlookers, comprised of interested residents and members of the Wilson and McIntyre (Oliphant) families, took a moment to ponder the mayor’s question. “I have pictures in my office of this city in the 1920s and ’30s,” he said. Read the rest of this entry »

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

Global mining companies’ multi-billion dollar spending plans will be under scrutiny in the coming weeks when Xstrata and others look set to post their first decline in profits since 2009, hit by falling prices and high costs.
 
Stubbornly high costs and the impact of softer demand on the price of key commodities like iron ore have squeezed margins. Brazil’s Vale posted its worst second-quarter result in two years, while Anglo American saw interim profits drop by more than a third.
 
With the impact of weaker prices largely factored in, analysts say they and investors will be focused instead on companies’ cost-cutting plans. In particular, they will be looking at the impact of a deteriorating environment on the timing of major projects like BHP’s $20 billion expansion plan for Port Hedland in Australia or Olympic Dam in South Australia, one of the world’s largest mines.
 
BHP has already backed away from an $80 billion five-year spending plan announced in 2011, and has since signalled it would review its project pipeline and focus on cutting costs. Read the rest of this entry »

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

The leader of the Ontario Green Party wants to see the Ring of Fire area in northwestern Ontario developed, but done so in an environmentally responsible manner that takes into account First Nation interests and gets the best bang for the buck.
 
“We are not opposed to development in the Ring of Fire, but we have concerns with the way the current government approaches it, and there’s even greater concerns with what Progressive Conservative Leader Tim Hudak wants to do,” said Mike Schreiner, during a visit to Sudbury.
 
Schreiner said the Liberal government is not getting the job done with Ring of Fire in three areas : Development planning, First Nation involvement, and how the resource will be processed. He said the Conservatives would permit the mineral-rich Ring of Fire area to be developed too quickly and with little environmental oversight.
 
“Before any development takes place, we need to have comprehensive long-term land use planning in place that includes all groups and stakeholders,” he said. Read the rest of this entry »