Gold mining’s ‘Occupy’ moment – by Geoff Candy (Mineweb.com – December11, 2012)

http://www.mineweb.com/

Dissatisfaction with mining company performance is causing major institutional shareholders in mining equities to question the running of the companies in which they are invested and in some cases to demand changes in management direction – and personnel.

GRONINGEN (MINEWEB) – While the protesters that formed the heart of the Occupy movement in the US (and throughout the rest of the world) would most likely struggle to see any similarity between themselves and the fund managers and investors that buy and sell gold mining and exploration companies, one can’t help but notice a few parallels between the two.

Indeed, listening to the increasingly strident criticism of mining company management by the likes of BlackRock, Hallgarten & Co and US Global to name but three, it is not hard to imagine them siding with the 99% who want to see more of the money; disappointed as they are in the return they have so far received on their investment.

These investors feel disappointed in the management of the companies in which they have invested because they have, in many instances, failed to capitalise on the record rise in many commodity prices and, in particular gold prices and, as a result, like the Occupy protesters, have begun to make their dissatisfaction felt, albeit in a slightly more orderly fashion.

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Chinese miners asked to pay for Canadian jobs – by Lisa Laventure (CBC News – December 10, 2012)

http://www.cbc.ca/bc/

CBC investigation finds recruiters offering jobs to inexperienced miners

Labour brokers may be charging Chinese miners up to $16,000 for the chance to work in Canadian mines as temporary foreign workers, a CBC investigation has found.

The National visited a prominent recruitment agency in Beijing carrying hidden cameras. Investigators posing as miners learned that workers with minimal mining experience are being offered positions in Canadian gold, copper and potash mines.

Recruiters said that, once working in Canada, miners would be paid no less than $10 per hour. Permanent workers in Canada’s underground and surface mines are paid on average $25 to $30 per hour.

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Where Canadian ‘self-interest’ leads: The Congo example – by Yves Engler (Nelson Daily – December 11, 2012)

http://thenelsondaily.com/

Former Vice President of the Concordia Student Union, Yves Engler is a well-known left-wing journalist. His recenlty published book is called: THE UGLY CANADIAN – Stephen Harper’s Foreign Policy.

Thank you Julian Fantino.

The International Co-operation Minister caused a ruckus last week when he said that the Canadian International Development Agency should actively promote the country’s interests abroad rather than primarily focus on poverty reduction. Fantino defended “aid” that was given to groups partnering with Canadian companies building mines around the world. He said CIDA has “a duty and a responsibility to ensure that Canadian interests are promoted.”

While some commentators suggested the former Toronto police chief stuck his foot in his mouth, we should thank Fantino for his comments because they raise some important questions that Canadians seldom talk about.

How is Canadian foreign policy made? Which countries are we friendly towards and why? Which do we work against and why? What should be the primary purpose of Canadian foreign policy and aid?

As the author of five books on Canadian foreign policy, I know the answers to these questions can be controversial and complex. A short essay is certainly inadequate to properly address the subject.

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Stephen Harper’s decision on CNOOC finally gets the China connection right – by Charles Burton (Toronto Star – December 11, 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.

Charles Burton is an associate professor of political science at Brock University in St. Catharines, and is a former counsellor at the Canadian embassy in Beijing.

Prime Minister Stephen Harper has drawn remarkably little support from political commentators since he announced approval for the Chinese National Overseas Oil Corp. to buy Nexen Inc., but then banned any further sales of Canadian oilsands companies to state-owned firms, except in “exceptional circumstances.”

Responses to the two-part announcement have ranged from “baffling” to “incoherent” to even “an irresponsible farce.”

The federal government’s decision was a long time coming, and rightly so, as it will have enormous implications for Canada’s political economy for generations to come. China is undeniably an engine of future global prosperity, so a major policy decision like this — with far-reaching consequences for Canada’s economic relations with China — cannot be made lightly. Nor should it be based on partisan political considerations, because Canada’s national interest is very much at stake here.

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Harper government crafts Canada’s energy policy in Ottawa’s back rooms – Toronto Star Editorial (December 11, 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.

Prime Minister Stephen Harper is catching flak from both sides of the political spectrum as Canadians ponder the implications of his decision to let Chinese and Malaysian state-owned companies buy $20 billion worth of our oilsands industry. On the left, New Democrats complain the Tories have recklessly “rubber-stamped” a deal with no great benefit to Canada. Critics on the right fret that Ottawa will scare off investment with its murkily “incoherent” policy on acquisitions.

There’s truth to both criticisms. The Conservatives haven’t yet articulated a credible energy strategy, for all their obsession with the sector. They are making it up as they go, in back rooms, without benefit of Parliamentary debate or public input, as the Star noted on this page on Saturday. In this case they tossed a sop to China and Malaysia, without getting much in return, then decreed the rest of the oilpatch off-limits to other similar actors.

In Parliament on Monday Harper struck a populist pose, positioning his Tories as careful stewards of the public interest, as against the Liberals, who in the past reflexively waved through foreign investment, and the New Democrats who reflexively opposed it. It was a clever, if disingenuous posture. In reality, after ragging the puck for two years, the Tories took the path of least resistance.

At the end of the day Canadians are still left looking for a coherent energy strategy. The Tories have yet to enunciate a credible plan to develop the oilsands in a sustainable manner, and to address climate change.

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Still plenty of private cash for oilsands, natural resources minister says – by John Spears and Vanessa Lu (Toronto Star – December 11, 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.

If cabinet ministers from Canada’s big oil producing provinces are worried by the federal government’s new limits on foreign investment in the oilsands, they’re not showing it.

And a spokesman for Canada’s oil producers said the new policy provides some welcome clarity for the sector.

They all chimed in after federal natural resources Minister Joe Oliver told an industry meeting in Toronto there is still “plenty” of private sector money for the oilsands.

Last week, the federal government had slapped limits on how much foreign state-owned companies can invest, especially in oilsands projects. But it approved takeovers of Nexen Inc. by China’s state-owned firm CNOOC. It also allowed the takeover of Progress Energy Resources Corp. by Petronas of Malaysia.

After a speech to the Canadian Association of Petroleum Producers (CAPP), Oliver said the new rules won’t hurt the oilsands, as there is a “huge amount of capital available globally and quite a bit available inside our country.”

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Stephen Harper compromises on Nexen and everyone gets half a baby – by Andrew Coyne (National Post – December 11, 2012)

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

See, the thing about Solomon is, he never actually cut the baby in half.

Nevertheless, the prime minister’s split decision on foreign takeovers is being praised as Solomonic in some circles. But then, for some people cutting the baby in half — you can have the head and one of the shoulders, but the rest of it you get only in exceptional circumstances — is always the right decision. Because, you see, it’s a compromise, and compromise shows maturity, and maturity is the beginning of wisdom, and, well, it’s a compromise. God forbid he’d decided it on principle.

Aside from the baby-severing community, however, the reaction was, as you might expect, mixed. Perhaps the most memorable was Tom Mulcair’s devastating putdown, that the only clear winners from Harper’s decision to allow the sale of Calgary-based Nexen to China’s state-owned CNOOC were the “Nexen shareholders” — oh, them — in “Mr. Harper’s oilpatch.”

I wasn’t aware until now that it was Mr. Harper’s oilpatch. Still, you could make a case that, as of Monday, it is. The prime minister may not have gone so far as to dismiss Nexen’s shareholders, à la Mulcair, as some sort of bit players in the whole drama, but current and prospective owners of other oilsands firms should be on notice: they no longer truly belong to you. They are, at least in part, Stephen Harper’s.

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Alberta fears chill in oil sands investment – by Carrie Tait, Shawn McCarthy, Nathan Vanderklippe (Globe and Mail – December 11, 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.

TORONTO and OTTAWA and CALGARY — Alberta issued a chilly response to Ottawa’s new foreign investment rules, with senior ministers concerned that investment in the oil sands will slow now that wealthy state-controlled energy firms are essentially off-limits for more takeovers in the province.

Alberta Energy Minister Ken Hughes said the new rules may reduce foreign investment and drive up the cost of capital for companies developing projects.

“There is the potential now for less investment going into the oil sands,” Mr. Hughes told a conference in Calgary. The minister said he worries that Alberta is already a high-cost jurisdiction for producing crude, and the possible increase in financing costs could reduce the competitiveness of the oil sands.

Share prices of Canadian energy companies were largely stable Monday, in the wake of the government’s late-Friday announcement that greatly restricts the ability of foreign state-owned enterprises to acquire Canadian energy firms. Indeed, chief executives from some of Canada’s largest energy companies applauded the federal government’s new policies, arguing that companies will find other ways to accomplish their financing and development needs.

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North getting some attention – Thunder Bay Chronicle-Jouranl Editorial (December 11, 2012)

The Thunder Bay Chronicle-Journal is the daily newspaper of Northwestern Ontario.

SEVEN Ontario Liberals who want to lead the party came to a weekend debate in Thunder Bay, mainly to say how they’d do the North differently. Each of them had some proposal for a new degree of autonomy here. Each of them recognized that their party, and the others, have failed to tend to the North enough over the years and promised that, if selected to replace outgoing Premier Dalton McGuinty, things up here will be different.

We say “up here” because all of the candidates are from deep in southern Ontario and, naturally, have not had a lot to do with the North until now.

Now, they are turning their backs, to one degree or another, on what their government has done concerning Northern Ontario in order to convince Northerners that a Liberal party under their leadership will do things better. It will provide the North with more decision-making, a bigger share in its own resources and more attention to lingering issues of social inequality. Despite this region’s long sense of alienation from Queen’s Park, each of them suddenly understands the North. And yet all of them have been cabinet ministers, some as recently as October. What’s changed?

Their personal aspirations. Whereas they used to be concerned with their own ridings and their particular cabinet responsibilities, now they must think of Ontario as a whole. Now, the North matters.

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Miners comb through new Canadian investment rules – by Pav Jordan, Shawn McCarthy (Globe and Mail – December 11, 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.

TORONTO, OTTAWA — While the energy sector is sifting through Ottawa’s new takeover rules, the mining industry is abuzz about paragraph No. 6.

That’s the line in the Industry Canada policy statement last week that revised guidelines for investments by state-owned enterprises (SOEs), showing it will monitor transactions by SOEs throughout the Canadian economy and not just in the oil sands.

“It is easy to see how they might expand this to mining under the rationale given in the sixth paragraph that they will be looking at SOE investment broadly in the Canadian economy,” said Sander Grieve, co-chair of the mining group at Toronto law firm Fraser Milner Casgrain LLP. “We’ll be watching very closely.”

Canada announced the changes on Friday as it gave the green light to two controversial acquisitions by Asian companies of domestic oil and gas producers, the $15.1-billion (U.S.) bid by China’s CNOOC Ltd. for Calgary-based Nexen Inc., and the $6-billion (Canadian) acquisition by Malaysia’s Petronas of Progress Energy Resources Corp.

It also warned that takeovers of Canadian oil sands business in particular would only be deemed of net benefit on an exceptional basis.

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