CA Aboriginal title judgment has serious mining implications – by Dorothy Kosich (Mineweb.com – June 27, 2014)

http://www.mineweb.com/

Canadian Supreme Court decision granting unprecedented authority to First Nations may mean trouble for mining on traditional lands.

RENO (MINEWEB) – Tsilhqot’in Nation v. British Columbia, 2014 SCC 44, a ground-breaking decision by the Canadian Supreme Court on a 20-year old dispute over Aboriginal communities land claims in British Columbia, has staggering implications for Canadian mining, especially for miners and explorationists who have failed to establish meaningful and positive working relationships with various First Nations groups.

The Tahltan Central Council of Dease Lake B.C. has already announced that it will prepare an Aboriginal title and rights claim against the Province of British Columbia and Fortune Minerals against the Arctos Anthracite Coal project for Mt. Klappan.

As of Mineweb’s deadline early Friday, Fortune Minerals had not published a comment regarding the Tahltan Nation’s decision to file an Aboriginal title and rights claim against the mining company.

The Supreme Court rendered its judgment on an appeal by Chief Roger William on behalf of the Tsilhqot’in Nation concerning 1990-1998 legal dispute which sought a declaration of Aboriginal title over 438,000 hectares in B.C.’s Cariboo-Chilcotin region after the BC government granted Carrier Lumber a license to cut trees in Tsilhqot’in territory. The trial on the matter convened in November 2012 and was heard over 339 trial days.

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RoFATA trainees aiming for Ring of Fire careers – by Rick Garrick (Wawatay News – June 26, 2014)

http://www.wawataynews.ca/

Better career options are the goal for many of the Matawa First Nations trainees currently pursuing Ring of Fire Training Alliance (RoFATA) Tier 2 and 3 training.

“(My goal is) to eventually get a really good career where I can support my family and move out of Thunder Bay into a different community,” said Caitlin Cheechoo, mother of a three-year-old son and one of about 60 Tier 3 RoFATA trainees who have completed about three weeks of their 12-week program at Confederation College in Thunder Bay.

“Right now, all together, we’re learning the math and English components and then we branch out to our own individual (pre-trades program).”

Cheechoo is focusing on the Pre-Trades Carpentry program, one of five programs offered through the Tier 3 RoFATA training. The other programs are: Pre-Trades Electrical, Pre-Trades Plumber, Pre-Trades Heavy Duty Equipment Mechanic and Pre-Trades Construction Craft Worker.

“I just like the hands-on working with everything,” Cheechoo said. Cheechoo’s long-term goal is to work in the Ring of Fire when it opens up for mineral development. “For now though, after the pre-trades program, hopefully (I will get) a job with carpentry and learn more,” Cheechoo said.

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Glencore tax bill on $15b income: zip, zilch, zero – by Michael West (Sydney Morning Herald – June 27, 2014)

http://www.smh.com.au/

Australia’s largest coalminer, Glencore, paid almost zero tax over the past three years, despite income of $15 billion, as it radically reduced its tax exposure by taking large, unnecessarily expensive loans from its associates overseas.

At up to 9 per cent, the interest rates on these $3.4 billion in loans were double what the company would have had to pay had it simply borrowed the money from the bank.

As it was claiming tax breaks in Australia on these inflated interest payments, the secretive Swiss-based multinational actually increased its lending to other related parties interest free. This may include its executives. Nobody from Glencore, which used to be called Xstrata, was available for comment despite repeated requests.

The aggressive tax avoidance tactics of Glencore Coal International Australia Pty Ltd have been identified in an independent analysis of the company’s accounts for Fairfax Media by an expert in multinational financing.

Along with the blatant irregularities in its borrowing and lending, the study also found a hefty increase in Glencore’s coal sales to related companies (up from 27 per cent to 46 per cent of total sales, with no explanation), indicative of transfer pricing – also known as profit-shifting – and an activity that appears to breach Section IVA of the Income Tax Assessment Act – the part that deals with schemes designed to comply technically with the law but whose ”dominant purpose” is really to avoid tax.

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Big boost for fights, leaders say – by Carol Sanders (Winnipeg Free Press – June 27, 2014)

http://www.winnipegfreepress.com/

Ruling upholds need for firms to get consent: chief

First Nations leaders in Manitoba fighting for their fair share of the land hailed Thursday’s Supreme Court of Canada decision as a victory. “This landmark decision only bolsters what we’ve been saying,” said Chief Arlen Dumas of Mathias Colomb Cree Nation.

In 2013, the First Nation issued stop-work orders to HudBay Minerals Inc. to stop the mining on band territory at Lalor Lake and Reed Lake and blockaded the road to the Lalor site. The First Nation, formerly known as Pukatawagan, issued a public declaration to all resource companies that its consent is required for any activity in its territory. On Canada Day, it issued a moratorium against all resource extraction in its territory to both the federal and provincial governments.

“We’re going to reissue stop-work orders and issue a declaration to HudBay and everyone else who’s operating illegally in our territory and remind them they are in violation of a Supreme Court decision and legalities need to be adhered to,” Dumas said by phone from the First Nation. “We’re going to continue to put pressure on them.”

HudBay later won a court injunction to stop aboriginal protesters from blocking access to two of its remote mines. The high court’s decision could have a huge impact in Manitoba for the Dakota and Sioux, who don’t have treaties and for Treaty 1, 2 and 3 First Nations, says a University of Manitoba law professor with 10 years’ experience in aboriginal law.

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RPT-After 125 years, Alcoa looks beyond aluminum – by Allison Martell (Reuters India – June 27, 2014)

http://in.reuters.com/

(Reuters) – Alcoa Inc, the company that helped create the aluminum industry more than a century ago, is reinventing itself as a manufacturer of specialized components for aerospace and automotive customers, including some that contain no aluminum at all.

The company’s deal for jet engine part maker Firth Rixson, which uses little aluminum, is its biggest move yet to escape the terrible primary aluminum market by crafting the parts its customers need, even if they are made of nickel or titanium.

It announced the proposed $2.85 billion deal to buy Firth Rixson earlier on Thursday. Alcoa talks constantly about expanding its downstream businesses, which sell truck wheels, aircraft parts and other goods. Now it is rebranding itself in ways that would have seemed unthinkable just a few years ago.

“We are really material-agnostic,” Chief Executive Officer Klaus Kleinfeld said in an interview on Thursday. “We love, internally, that we have fights over what is the right material, in front of our customers, together with our customers.”

From an upstart, this would be one thing. But Alcoa has been synonymous with aluminum since 1888, and it has a role in every part of the sector: mining bauxite, refining it into alumina and smelting alumina to create aluminum.

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Sudbury icon turning 50 – by John Lappa (Sudbury Star – June 27, 2014)

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

One man’s vision and tenacity to create an iconic landmark was revealed at a book launch at Dynamic Earth in Sudbury on Thursday.

Ted Szilva and his son, Jim, launched their book, The Big Nickel: The Untold Story, at the same location where the Big Nickel was erected and eventually shown to the public 50 years ago on July 22, 1964.

Ted Szilva’s dream to create the Big Nickel attraction was opposed by a number of people and groups, including the old City of Sudbury. “It was a constant fight with the city at the time,” Szilva recalled. “The bureaucrats were against it 100%.”

Then Sudbury Mayor Joe Fabbro, The Sudbury Star and the television station “backed me, so I overcame those obstacles day by day.” Szilva said he overcame his detractors because of his spirituality.

“I consider myself a spiritual man and I prayed on every obstacle that came about. I prayed on it and everything worked out,” Szilva said. Szilva said he came up with the idea of the Big Nickel as part of a centennial project for the city. His idea was rejected, but he continued on his own.

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Coroner looking to call inquests into Sudbury mining deaths – by Carol Mulligan (Sudbury Star – June 27, 2014)

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

The regional supervising coroner is looking to set dates for inquests into three deaths in Sudbury mines by early fall.

It will be weeks or even months after the dates are scheduled before the inquests are held, however, based on factors such as courtroom space and the availability of expert witnesses, said Dr. David Eden

Coroner’s investigators are compiling three briefs on the June 8, 2011, deaths of Jason Chenier, 35, and Jordan Fram, 26, at Vale’s Stobie Mine and the Jan. 29, 2012, death of Stephen Perry, 47, at Vale’s Coleman Mine.

The deaths of Chenier and Fram may be the subject of a single inquest, Eden said. That will be announced when the inquests are scheduled.

Chenier and Fram were killed at the 3,000-foot level of the century-old Stobie Mine when they were overcome by a run of 350 tons of muck. Perry was killed when a 14-ton piece of rock broke from the wall at the 4,215-foot level of the main ore body at Coleman.

The amount of evidence being collected for the three briefs is “substantial,” said Eden.

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Rio Tinto, Acron JV pushes ahead with Canadian potash project – by Silvia Antonioli and Karen Rebelo (Reuters U.K. – June 27, 2014)

http://uk.reuters.com/

LONDON/BANGALORE – (Reuters) – Global mining company Rio Tinto and Russian fertiliser producer Acron OAO are moving ahead with the development of the Albany potash prospect in Saskatchewan, Canada, Acron said on Friday.

In its first disclosure of the size of the discovery, Acron said the project area contained 1.4 billion tonnes of inferred resources within the mining caverns at an average grade of 31 percent potassium chloride (KCl). The company put the recoverable amount at 329 million tonnes of KCl.

“The next steps for the project include continuation of the environmental assessment and the pre-feasibility study,” Acron said in a statement.

Rio’s rival BHP Billiton has invested in a larger potash project in Canada, the $14 billion Jansen development, but has pushed back production until at least 2020, looking for the right time to enter the currently oversupplied market..

BHP’s Jansen has 5.3 billion tonnes of measured, or proven, resources with 25.7 percent potassium oxide and 1.3 billion tonnes of inferred, or assumed, resources.

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Pipeline prospects take a hit as Supreme Court grants land title to B.C. First Nation – by Dwight Newman (National Post – June 26, 2014)

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

Aboriginal communities’ land claims have become much more viable, making future resource development iffier

The Supreme Court of Canada has just released its latest take on the rules on Aboriginal title – and the first declaration of Aboriginal title in Canadian history. Its groundbreaking decision concerning the Tsilhqot’in Nation’s claims has the potential to reshape aspects of Canadian resource development more broadly. To understand why, we need to back up a bit to understand what the case has changed on Aboriginal title and why that matters.

Aboriginal title is the form of ownership Aboriginal communities hold over unceded lands that they regularly and exclusively used in the past. It is not identical to but is analogous to the fee simple title that private landowners hold, with the important difference that the courts have always considered Aboriginal title land to be collectively owned by a particular Aboriginal community.

The potential for Aboriginal ownership claims of this sort was first suggested by the Supreme Court of Canada in its 1973 decision in the Calder case. The addition of an Aboriginal rights section in the 1982 constitutional amendments committed Canada to such land rights being constitutionally guaranteed – with very little clear sense as to the implications that would result.

In the Tsilhqot’in case, which has been making its way through the courts over the past decade, the trial judge suggested that the test developed in past decisions was too strict and would unjustly reduce the scope of Aboriginal title to lands the size of “postage stamps.”

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First Nation land decision will affect Ring of Fire: NAN (CBC News Thunder Bay – June 27, 2014)

http://www.cbc.ca/news

Nishnawbe Aski Nation says a landmark court decision will significantly impact development of the Ring of Fire. The Supreme Court of Canada ruled Thursday that a BC First Nation has control over 1,700 square kilometres in its traditional territory.

NAN Grand Chief Harvey Yesno said the ruling sends a strong message that the government must recognize and respect Aboriginal title and deal honourably with First Nations.

“There’s a number of First Nations that are in land claims negotiations,” he said. “I’m hoping it’ll be a positive impact to settle or accelerate.” That includes the much-talked-about chromite-rich mining area known as the Ring of Fire, located in the James Bay Lowlands of northern Ontario.

“There’s no question that this ruling is creating, I think, a reason … to enhance the positions that First Nations have been taking,” Yesno said. Northern Development and Mines minister Michael Gravelle said the province will review the ruling.

But he noted there’s a significant difference between BC and Ontario because, unlike the Ring of Fire, the BC land in question doesn’t fall under a treaty.

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Aboriginal response to Supreme Court land ruling should be to move forward – by Peter Foster (National Post – June 26, 2014)

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

To imagine that aboriginal leaders are anything but shrewd negotiators would be to do them a severe disservice

Aboriginal leaders responded enthusiastically to Thursday’s Supreme Court landmark ruling on aboriginal land title. The case revolved around land claimed by the Tsilhqot’in Nation in an area of the B.C. interior around Williams Lake.

Grand Chief Stewart Phillip, president of the Union of B.C. Indian Chiefs, reported that the room where he and fellow chiefs heard the news was filled with “cheers and tears” and that everybody was “absolutely jubilant.” Chief Phillip went on to say: “This without question will establish a solid platform for genuine reconciliation to take place in British Columbia.”

What everybody wants to know is what the decision means for pipeline development through the province, and in particular for Enbridge’s Northern Gateway project to pump 525,000 barrels of day of diluted bitumen from the Alberta oil sands to Kitimat. Williams Lake is far to the south of the Northern Gateway route, but the decision has implications for aboriginal land claims throughout B.C. and indeed Canada.

Northern Gateway was approved last December by a federal Joint Review Panel, subject to 209 often arduous (and as William Watson pointed out on this page on Thursday, sometimes multi-part) conditions.

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Land claims court ruling reshapes resource sector nationwide – by Kathryn Blaze Carlson (Globe and Mail – June 27, 2014)

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 — Far beyond British Columbia, where a First Nation asserted its rights to ancestral land, proponents of resource development projects will now confront a changed landscape created by the Supreme Court’s decision in the historic case.

Governments and companies eyeing mining and pipeline projects in Ontario or fracking endeavours in New Brunswick, for example, could encounter emboldened aboriginal groups asserting land claims and a right to significant consultation or, if ownership is established, a qualified requirement for consent.

On Thursday, the country’s top court said aboriginals still own their ancestral lands if they didn’t surrender them through treaties, and that governments and companies must try to obtain consent from title holders for use of the land. Importantly, the ruling also said that where ownership is asserted but hasn’t yet been established, the government needs to consult with the aboriginal group and accommodate it where appropriate.

“Fundamentally, what the court is saying is that governments and companies have to take aboriginal rights seriously,” said former Liberal MP Bob Rae, the chief negotiator for the Matawa First Nations, which is in talks with Ontario about opening their traditional land to the massive Ring of Fire mineral development.

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Sudbury mine trucks ore to Timmins – by Len Gillis (Timmins Daily Press – June 26, 2014)

The Daily Press is the city of Timmins broadsheet newspaper.

TIMMINS – A one-year copper and nickel mining project in Sudbury will see several thousand tonnes of ore being trucked through Timmins to the the Northern Sun Redstone mill, south of the city. The mill is located in Eldorado Township and was the former Liberty Mines property.

It’s a good news story for Wallbridge Mining Ltd. which is now operating its first polymetallic mining operation, known as the Broken Hammer Mine, an open pit operation located in Sudbury.

It was in the spring that Wallbridge announced a custom milling agreement with Northern Sun’s Timmins operation.

Company president and CEO Marz Kord, well-known in the Timmins mining community, said the reason his company came to Timmins is because there was no custom milling available in Sudbury.

“The mills are at capacity in Sudbury. Secondly, our ore is a copper PGE (platinum group elements) ore, which is more amenable to a gravity concentrator. That’s what Liberty (Northern Sun) has.”

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NEWS RELEASE: WEEKEND TO END WOMEN’S CANCERS

TORONTO – On Sept. 6 and 7, 2014, a handful of women representing the Women in Mining Toronto network will walk 60 km in the Weekend to End Women’s Cancers, benefitting The Princess Margaret Cancer Centre, one of the top five cancer research centres in the world. They seek the support of CMJ readers.

The WIM Toronto team is one of the top fund raisers in the event’s 11-year history, walking every year since 2007 and raising almost $478,000 in support of research, treatment and services. In our best year, the branch raised over $200,000 and were the top team in the walk!

This year they have set their sights even higher. The goal is to raise more than a quarter of a million dollars, and lift the cumulative total to $750,000.

WIM Toronto relies on individual and corporate support. Every donation will help towards achieves their goal. All contributions are tax deductible.

Agnico Eagle Mines is throwing not only support but hard cash behind the team. Agnico and friends will match every $2 that WIM raises with another $1, until the $250,000 goal is reached. This helps everyone’s donation go farther!

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UPDATE 1-Brazil court revokes license for Canadian gold mine in Amazon – by Anthony Boadle and Nicole Mordant (Reuters India – June 27, 2014)

 http://in.reuters.com/

(Reuters) – A federal court has revoked the environmental license for a large gold mine planned by Belo Sun Mining Corp on the Xingu River in the Amazon, ruling that the company had failed to assess the impact on local indigenous communities.

The ruling published on Tuesday can be appealed. Belo Sun’s stock fell 7 percent on the Toronto Stock Exchange to 19 Canadian cents.

“This is an important victory for justice. It can still go to an appeals court, but we think it will be difficult to overturn,” said Helena Palmquist, a spokeswoman for the federal prosecutors office in the northern state of Para.

The Volta Grande, or Big Bend, open-pit project is slated to start operating in 2016 and become Brazil’s largest gold mine. It is next to another controversial project, Belo Monte, which is designed to become the worlds third largest hydroelectric dam and has also been the target of lawsuits by prosecutors.

Belo Sun could not immediately be reached for comment, but the Toronto-based company said in a news release that a federal judge in Para had ruled that the company needed to complete an indigenous study for its preliminary license to be valid.

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