October 14, 2012 – Republic of Mining

B.C.’s low-wage migrant coal mining jobs send us back to the future – by Thomas Walkom (Toronto Star – October 13, 2012)

October 14, 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.

Early on in the 20th century, the silver and gold mines of Northern Ontario imported thousands of foreign workers. The mine owners said they were filling a labour shortage. But their real reason was to keep wages down.

So when native-born, anglophone miners went on strike in Cobalt or the Porcupine region, the owners shipped in French-Canadians. And when they went on strike, Finns were brought in and, after them, Ukrainians and Poles and Italians and Englishmen from Cornwall.

In every case, the point of the exercise was to bring in workers who were less likely to make common cause with those already there and who, therefore, would be willing to work for less.

It was an ugly time in our history and it gave rise to very ugly labour disputes. So it is depressing in the extreme to see employers, aided and abetted by the federal government, engage in the same discredited tactics.

The latest and most bizarre example comes from British Columbia where, as the Vancouver Sun has reported, four brand new coal mines in the province’s northeast are bringing in just under 2,000 temporary Chinese migrants to do most of the work.

Rio Tinto wants to reopen union deal in Quebec – by Pav Jordan (Globe and Mail – October 13, 2012)

October 14, 2012

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.

Rio Tinto Alcan is in talks with workers about reopening a nine-year collective agreement at its aging Arvida smelter in Quebec, as the company battles stubbornly low aluminum prices hit by a global commodities slowdown.

Montreal-based Rio Tinto Alcan, the aluminum division of parent Rio Tinto PLC, said it met on Thursday with representatives of the 1,500-strong Canadian Auto Workers union at Arvida and related facilities, for preliminary talks about how to cut costs at the smelter.

The meeting, expected to be the first of several over coming weeks, came just days after London-based Rio Tinto, the world’s third-biggest diversified miner, said it would delay new project approvals in the near term because the business outlook has become less certain than it was even a few months ago.

“There are a number of headwinds that we are dealing with, but certainly with the metal where it is, today it is just under $2,000 on the [London Metal Exchange], it’s a pretty challenging environment,” said company spokesman Bryan Tucker.

Quebec ‘Non’ looms over west-to-east pipeline gambit – by Gordon Laxer (Toronto Star – October 14, 2012)

October 14, 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.

Gordon Laxer is founding director and former head of Parkland Institute at the University of Alberta.

October always brings shorter days, falling leaves and the bite of frost. This year, frost in Alberta is also coming from politics, as B.C. Premier Christy Clark digs in her heels over the proposed Northern Gateway oil pipeline to take bitumen from the oilsands to China.

In landlocked Alberta, oilsands operators are desperate to get their bitumen to the coast, any coast, to find the sweet spot of much higher international prices. Blocked by U.S. President Barack Obama from getting to the Texas Gulf coast by a temporary hold on the Keystone XL pipeline, corporate hopes quickly shifted to oil pipelines to the B.C. coast.

As B.C. opposition to oil pipelines rises, eyes turn east. Going east to bring sands oil west across the Pacific may seem like a slow boat to China. But Derek Burney and Eddie Goldenberg trumpet its advantages. The bitumen could flow over existing rights of way and have fewer regulatory hurdles.

Charting the future of crude oil – by Shawn McCarthy (Globe and Mail – October 13, 2012)

October 14, 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.

OTTAWA — The world’s oil map is being redrawn in ways that will pose major challenges to Canadian crude producers, energy consumers and governments.

North America is now the fastest-growing source of crude outside of OPEC, but virtually all the demand growth is in Asia. The refining industry in the developed world is aged and inefficient, and forced to compete with new mega-refineries in China, India and the Middle East. And consumers are buffeted by shifting market forces that will result in tremendous volatility in gasoline prices.

That’s the picture painted Friday by the International Energy Agency, the Paris-based agency that advises rich countries on energy markets.

And it goes a long way toward explaining the upheaval on the Canadian oil scene: the battles over proliferating pipeline projects; the trade-promotion trips by Prime Minister Stephen Harper and his ministers to China and India; and the huge interest by Asian state-owned companies in acquiring assets in the oil sands. It also sheds some light on the seemingly inexplicable changes in retail gasoline prices.