The Sudbury Star is the City of Greater Sudbury’s daily newspaper.
The Ring of Fire Infrastructure Development Corporation is an opportunity to “create a vision from the moon” of what one of the first planned mining camps in Ontario will be like. Maurice (Moe) Lavigne, for one, is eager to get going on that.
The vice-president of exploration and development for KWG Resources Inc., has ideas for what the development corporation should do first when it is up and fully running.
Northern Development and Mines Minister Michael Gravelle announced Thursday it would start with an interim board of public servants and “transition” to a more mature board of partner members from first nations, industry and governments.
Some were critical that is taking too long to happen. “In my biggest fantasy, I would have liked to have seen the Ontario government start that particular process five years ago, but they didn’t,” said Lavigne on Thursday.
Still he considered the official establishment this week of the “devco” — headquartered in Thunder Bay — a step forward.
Planning the infrastructure to support development in the Ring of Fire chromite deposits, an undeveloped area of the province located 540 kilometres northeast of Thunder Bay, is something new for just about everyone.
“All mining camps kind of developed as individual mines and villages popped up all over the place, like Sudbury for example. It was just a real ad-hoc affair and mining companies were in control,” Lavigne said this week.
“Here’s a situation where we know we’re going to have a mining camp, as opposed to just a single mine, and we actually have an opportunity to design it.”
That’s where the vision needs to come in, and it will likely have to come from the development corporation.
To underpin that vision, said Lavigne, board members will have to do studies of a number of issues.
Start with discussions with First Nations near the Ring of Fire about “what they want out of this deal.”
Those discussions have been taking place and are to move into another phase before the “mature board” of permanent members of the development corporation is established.
Gravelle said Thursday those talks will continue between Frank Iacobucci, representing the Government of Ontario, and Bob Rae, representing the Matawa Council chiefs, building upon the historic regional framework agreement settled by the two sides earlier this year.
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