March 1, 2013 – Republic of Mining

Dark Matter: Could physics’ next biggest mystery be solved in Sudbury? – by Kate Allen (Toronto Star – March 1, 2013)

March 1, 2013

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.

Science experiments like PICASSO and DEAP-3600 are trying to resolve one of the universe’s biggest scientific mysteries

The hottest thing in science today is cold. It’s also invisible, though it still manages to be heavy.

Dark matter — the mysterious stuff that physicists believe makes up a quarter of the universe but which no one has been able to directly detect — is having what the style world would call “a moment.” At this year’s American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) annual meeting, the Fashion Week of science, dark matter talks were the Marc Jacobs fall collection: devotees crammed themselves into darkened rooms to get a glimpse of the Next Big Thing.

“I’ve been saying for a couple years now that the 2010s will be the dark matter decade,” says Sean Carroll, a theoretical physicist at the California Institute of Technology. With the discovery last summer of what is almost certainly the Higgs Boson, dark matter is the next big mystery in physics — and experiments designed to detect it are just beginning to show fruit.

Some of the most exciting are sitting in a mine shaft two kilometres below Sudbury, Ont.

By 2014, the SNOLAB underground laboratory will have five different experiments searching for what physicists believe dark matter is made of: WIMPs, or Weakly Interacting Massive Particles.

NEWS RELEASE: Women in Mining Canada: 2013 Trailblazer Award Recipient – Samantha Espley

March 1, 2013

Toronto, Ontario – 28 February 2013

Women are significantly underrepresented in the minerals exploration and mining industry. Several studies have identified that women are discouraged by a lack of role models in senior management; prompting Women in Mining (WIM) Canada to initiate the Trailblazer Award to highlight successful women and encourage more women to explore a career in the minerals sector.

Samantha Espley has been selected as the recipient of the 2nd annual Trailblazer Award, which recognizes women who have taken personal career risks and helped to advance the careers of other women. The presentation will be made at the 6th annual Women in Mining International reception, on March 5, 2013 at the Metro Toronto Convention Centre during the annual PDAC conference. Over 400 people are expected to be in attendance.

Samantha’s career progression is definitely a remarkable and inspiring climb for women in mining. Graduating with an engineering degree 25 years ago, she worked with Dome Limited in Northern Quebec, Denison-Potacan Potash Corporation in New Brunswick, and then moved to Falconbridge Ltd. working both in their Quebec and Sudbury operations.

Since 1990, she has worked for Inco Ltd. (now Vale) where she has held roles of increasing responsibility, currently leading a multi-disciplinary group of mining and mineral processing engineers, geologists, metallurgists, technologists and other technical staff supporting Vale’s mining and milling operations in Sudbury.

The oil sands are an amazing story Canada’s not telling – by Todd Babiak (Globe and Mail – March 1, 2013)

April 5, 2015March 1, 2013

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.

Todd Babiak is co-founder of Story Engine, a strategy company based in Edmonton and Vancouver. His next novel, Come Barbarians, will be published in September by HarperCollins Canada.

How Green Was My Valley, the novel by Welsh writer Richard Llewellyn, is about a young man born into a village of black air, of strikes, of deadly explosions. At the end, you’re keen to accompany the hero, Huw Morgan, out of the coal mines.

More than 50 years earlier, Émile Zola had come to similar conclusions in Germinal.

The novelists and filmmakers who adapted these two works for cinema focused on people – particularly the miners. They were sad, happy, passionate, defeated, pure, compromised, creative, dull, intelligent, stupid.

That is, alive.

Coal Miner’s Daughter, Matewan and other stories, in novels and on screen, do not elevate coal mining into the higher reaches of human endeavour. Of course it’s dirty. But the activity of putting on a helmet and walking every morning into a pit so the world can turn on its furnaces in winter and its lights at sundown is noble. It’s something that thousands of interesting human beings do to help raise their children.

Tony Clement’s Ring of Bad Policy – by Peter Foster (National Post – March 1, 2013)

March 1, 2013

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

Ontario’s development restrictions are the real problem

Last week, Tony Clement announced that he would become the Federal government’s point man on the “Ring of Fire,” the area of the James Bay lowlands in Northern Ontario estimated to contain between $30 billion and $50 billion worth of mineral potential.

No dancing in the streets was recorded in any Northern Community.

Mr. Clement, President of the Treasury Board, was claimed to be a good choice because he already heads FedNor, the Northern Ontario regional development agency. You remember FedNor … No, actually, you probably don’t. Like all regional development agencies, it is worse than useless, unless you believe that bailing out obscure cheese factories — or indeed any business — is a good use of taxpayers’ money.

Perhaps Mr. Clement’s most significant association in the public mind is as the minister who used funds attached to the appallingly expensive 2010 G8/G20 meetings to install gazebos in his riding of Muskoka/Parry Sound. Muskoka may look like the North from the intersection of Yonge and Bloor, but from Cochrane or Thunder Bay it’s just a Toronto suburb.

Quebec drops in mining investment ranking amid concerns over political stability – by Peter Koven (National Post – March 1, 2013)

March 1, 2013

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

For the past decade, Quebec was considered one of the best places in the world for mining investment. Not so much anymore.

In the Fraser Institute’s latest annual rankings of mining jurisdictions, Quebec dropped out of the top 10, landing in 11th place. The province finished in first place from 2007 to 2010, and was fifth in 2012.

The drop was not a shock. Throughout last year’s election campaign, Premier Pauline Marois threatened the mining industry with higher royalties, a 30% super-profits tax and changes to Plan Nord, the province’s $80-billion northern development strategy. And her threats came shortly after former premier Jean Charest himself raised mining taxes.

No substantial changes have been announced by the Parti Québécois government so far, though they are being reviewed. The ongoing threat of them has been enough to rattle some mining executives.

“The respondents felt that political stability had deteriorated and that uncertainty about the enforcement of existing regulations had become more uncertain and negative,” survey director Kenneth Green said in an interview.

Miners look to Asia for partners and financing – by Pav Jordan (Globe and Mail – February 28, 2013)

March 1, 2013

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.

When Fortune Minerals Ltd. began courting capital markets to fund a giant coal project in British Columbia two years ago, chief executive officer Robin Goad knew he wouldn’t be sourcing the funds locally.

Canadian banks were saying Fortune should get long-term supply agreements with Asian customers before they were comfortable financing the $800-million project.

“Well, we thought, if we are going to have to get [agreements], why don’t we just partner with the guys who want the stuff,” said Mr. Goad, who sold a 20-per-cent stake in the Arctos coal project to South Korea’s Posco a year later, marrying Fortune’s need for capital to the giant steel maker’s need for the metallurgical coal to produce steel.

“We didn’t need a bank,” he said in a recent interview. The Posco deal marked a growing trend of Asian customers turning to Canada – where publicly listed companies control some 10,000 projects worldwide – to guarantee supplies of the commodities needed for their booming economies.