The Sudbury Star is the City of Greater Sudbury’s daily newspaper.
It was the last question at the first Ontario Progressive Conservative leadership debate, submitted online by a man from Huntsville. But it fired up candidates and an audience of about 150 people, most party faithful, at College Boreal on Monday night.
Whitby-Oshawa MPP Christine Elliott, Nipissing MPP Vic Fedeli, Nepean-Carleton MPP Lisa MacLeod and Barrie MP Patrick Brown were asked what their plans were to spur development of the Ring of Fire.
“We’ve heard a lot of talk and promises from the Liberals,” wrote the Huntsville resident, “but no real plan to move forward.” All four candidates couldn’t have agreed more with that statement.
Fedeli summed up the frustration of northerners with the lack of development of the chromite deposits 500 kilometres northeast of Thunder Bay at the first of six debates before a new party leader is named May 9.
A former two-term mayor of North Bay, Fedeli said he remembered the Liberals’ Northern Development and Mines minister visiting his town to talk about this “great, vast find.”
A prospector who still has a licence and pans for gold, Fedeli was so excited about the area’s potential, he immediately travelled there and has visited three more times.
It was exciting that first visit to see 250 people working at camps operated by Cliffs Natural Resources and Noront Resources. On his last trip this year, Fedeli said there were fewer than six people working and the camps were gone.
Rather than dwell on the past and what he believes is a Liberal government that “ideologically … just doesn’t want to see this happen,” Fedeli outlined what he would do to develop the Ring.
Noront is interested in “the easy nickel” rather than the hard-to-get-at chromite, so Fedeli and the Tories would build a road to move ore from the Ring to Webequie, the nearest first nation.
His government would then make the winter road from Webequie to Pickle Lake an all-season road while members of first nations, government and industry were involved in the design, construction, financial and legal work of building a north-south rail route to open up the area.
Elliott called the question about the Ring of Fire the most relevant of the night in terms of economic development because the area has huge potential, not just for the North but for all of the province.
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