Thunder Bay Chronicle-Journal is the daily newspaper of Northwestern Ontario.
WHAT a difference a year makes. In 2013, Northwestern Ontario communities were giddy at the prospect of getting in on the tremendous economic opportunities connected to the Ring of Fire mining belt. Thunder Bay and Sudbury were fiercely competing to be the site of a processing facility while Greenstone and other centres were pitching themselves as logical transportation hubs.
Then the big player walked away. For a variety of reasons — provincial indecision, First Nations objections, competitors’ alternatives, falling commodity and stock prices — Cliffs Natural Resources ended its substantial exploration activities. A coup of sorts among shareholders put in place a new CEO who agreed to return Cliffs’ attention to its iron ore business which Thunder Bay area residents can see when they drive through northern Minnesota.
While Cliffs hasn’t abandoned its stake in the Ring’s massive chromite deposit other companies that remain active in the region are now getting all the attention.
Noront Resources has its eye on the region’s rich nickel deposits and has promoted an east-west transportation route linking mine sites with the CN main line and running past several First Nations which would stand to enjoy direct employment opportunities along with economic partnerships.
Noront has big international partners and is intent on capitalizing on the political imperative of developing the Ring of Fire to finally inject Northern Ontario’s economy with serious income.
The Liberal government under its new premier, Kathleen Wynne, has committed to spending $1 billion on a transportation route through the remote lowlands and is pestering Ottawa to join in.
The Ring of Fire is a priority of the Northern Policy Institute, created by the province to tend to this region’s concerns. In a column for this newspaper published on Saturday, NPI’s senior director in charge of the RoF acknowledged Ontario’s sky-high power prices restrict its ability to convince miners to process their ore into finished products here when neighbouring Manitoba and Quebec can offer much lower priced energy.
Rick Millette wrote about the possibility of somehow matching our neighbours’ prices and noted another key Ring player, KWG, is researching a smelting process using natural gas, the cost of which is competitive in Ontario.
So, while Cliffs decides its future in the Ring of Fire, others — including gold producers from Red Lake to Greenstone — are pressing ahead with political support for a renewed mining boom that still augers well for the future of the Northwest.