The Sudbury Star is the City of Greater Sudbury’s daily newspaper.
The government of Ontario must stop stalling and get serious about bringing partners together to plan and build transportation infrastructure for the Ring of Fire.
Not one ounce of the estimated $60 billion worth of chromite and other minerals in this area of Northern Ontario can be mined until a transportation system and power grid are built. And that can’t start until the much-vaunted Ring of Fire Infrastructure Development Corp. is fully functioning.
A year ago, the province announced creation of the development corporation to design, engineer, construct and maintain transportation infrastructure for the Ring. Since then, the Liberals have re-announced it three times, the last when it was formally established in August with an interim board of four Ontario public servants.
The “mature” corporation is to be comprised of representatives from government, the mining sector, First Nations and other communities. So it was disappointing to learn four bureaucrats were the only appointees. First Nations leaders and mining company officials are furious about not being drawn into infrastructure talks after a year of dilly-dallying.
Last week’s comment by the new chief executive of Cliffs Natural Resources, whose Black Thor deposit is the largest of those owned by 20 companies in the Ring, came as no surprise to anyone following this saga. Lourenco Golcalves said he has “zero hope” the Ring will be developed in the next 50 years.
That petulant proclamation was nothing new. Cliffs mothballed Black Thor a year ago and has been shopping the asset around. It wasn’t just government inaction that prompted Cliffs’ action. The iron ore company is being pounded by low prices for iron ore pellets and management struggles.
In May 2012, Cleveland-based Cliffs and the province announced an agreement in which Cliffs would build a $1.8-billion ferrochrome smelter in Sudbury, to process chromite from the Ring, in exchange for considerations. It was to be operating by 2015.
Little work had been done at the front end: no open-pit mine, no transportation system to move ore, no environmental assessments, no agreements with First Nations on revenue-sharing.
For the rest of this column, click here: http://www.thebarrieexaminer.com/2014/11/03/ring-of-fire-development-needs-attention