http://www.northernlife.ca/
Ontario created the Ring of Fire Secretariat in 2011 to develop, according to an Ontario Business Report document, “the chromite and other deposits in the Ring of Fire as quickly as possible and with due regard to environmental impacts and the needs of the Aboriginal communities within the region.”
That sounds great. Except if you ask anyone with a stake in the Ring of Fire, they’ll tell you they can’t figure out what the Secretariat has done the past four years….Then, less than a year ago, Ontario unveiled the Ring of Fire Development Corporation, ostensibly to do the same thing as the Secretariat. How many cooks does one meal need?
[Dalton] McGuinty sees mining the way his environmentally conscious (but terribly misinformed) southern urban supporters see it — dirty….Which begs the question, why would the Ontario Chamber tap his son to write the report card? Even if their intentions were pure, the optics of it are awful. I mean, there’s any number of educated policy wonks with information-gathering skills and no ties to the Liberals who could’ve written it.
Instead, the chamber is playing politics by defending the Ontario Liberals and trying to shame the feds into action, when they should be coming down on the side of development — that’s why they’re there. (Mark Gentili)
Mark Gentili is the managing editor of Northern Life and NorthernLife.ca.
The Ontario Chamber of Commerce’s “Where Are We Now?” report card on the Ring of Fire development in the Far North is a nice document. It’s full colour, has some good pictures and sports an attractive layout.
Read more