This column was originally published in the National Post on October 01, 2004

Canada’s corporate sector has benefited tremendously from access to the United States economy, the richest and largest in the history of mankind. A crucial component of the wealth of that rich market is the secure and sustained access to essential industrial metals.

The Canadian government must not allow Noranda’s 60% controlling interest in Falconbridge to fall into Chinese government control, a prospect that seems likely if the recent $7-billion bid by state owned China Minmetals goes unchallenged. Falconbridge is the third largest producer of nickel in the world. Nickel, a white-silvery metal, whose unique properties, is a critical component to the health of the U.S. economy, including its military/industrial complex.

Nickel is not an abundant metal in the Earth’s upper crust.  The mining and refining of this vital metal for national defense and industrial applications, is a very specialized business.

Four countries, Russia, Australia, Canada and New Caladonia account for approximately 60 per cent of world mine production. Falconbridge is one of four elite companies – the others being Norilsk (Russia), Inco (Canada) and WMC (Australia) – that account for a little over half of world production.

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There was quite a hullabaloo last week over Industry Minister Tony Clement’s funding announcement that saw $5.5 million go to the University of Toronto’s Innovation Centre for the Canadian Mining Industry, and nothing for Sudbury’s Centre for Excellence in Mining Innovation.

The similarity in names is no coincidence — they are both research centres vying for government support and private investment. The difference, of course, is that one is located where mines are and one isn’t. Is that bad?

It might not be the problem that some make it out to be, but Clement’s decision to fund the U of T program and not Sudbury’s can only be interpreted as a political move, despite the semantic squirming that was done to explain how all this came about.

CEMI — which has about half a dozen staff members and 20-odd researchers — partners with local educational and industry organizations to conduct research into exploration, deep mining, mining processes and environmental sustainability. Read the rest of this entry »

This column was originally published in the Sudbury Star on February 20, 2004

Liberal Premier David Peterson had the vision and the will to support Northern Ontario

History will probably show that The Honourable David R. Peterson PC, QC was the best advocate Northern Ontario ever had. Ontario’s 20th premier, who was also Minister Responsible for Northern Development and Mines, was a true visionary, in the same mold as John A. McDonald, this country’s first prime minister.

Premier Peterson’s greatest legacy was the decentralization of parts of the Ontario civil service to various regions of the province. This forward thinking Liberal policy was initiated to spread the wealth and stability that government jobs provide. At that time, a disproportionate number of civil servants were located in the booming Toronto region which was choking on its excessive growth.

By relocating government offices and jobs throughout the province, the Peterson Liberals helped diversity the economic base of many communities that were affected by rapidly changing economic conditions.

In those innovative years, the Ministry of Natural Resources was relocated in Peterborough, the OPP headquarters went to Orillia, the Ministry of Agriculture moved to Guelph, parts of the massive Ministry of Health was shifted to Kingston and a section of the Ministry of Transport headed for St. Catherines. Unfortunately the Conservatives stopped the relocation of the Ministry of Tourism and Culture to Niagara Falls.

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Growth Not & Fed Not

How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed

Michael Atkins is president of Northern Life and sits on the Board of Governors of Laurentian University

“Growthnot” is a term for the much-hyped, once-upon-a-time Northern Ontario Growth Plan promoted by the province, which has been diligently crisscrossing the north interviewing, caucusing, conferencing, engaging with, and otherwise teasing northerners about a new beginning in economic planning for northern Ontario.

The plan would feature bringing together and aligning many ministries of the province to attack the disastrous economic conditions in the north. The first announcement of significance to affect the north came from the co-chair of the Northern Ontario Growth Plan, George Smitherman, who is also deputy premier of Ontario and Minister of Energy and Infrastructure. He announced an infrastructure investment in a mining innovation centre at the University of Toronto, which competes with the Centre for Excellence in Mining Innovation (CEMI) at Laurentian University.

“FedNot” is a term for FedNor — the once proud and (some might say) cocky federal economic development organization that stands humiliated by its minister and mocked by Sudbury Liberal MPP Rick Bartolucci (we must credit him for the FedNot moniker) for refusing to invest in CEMI.

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This column was originally published in Northern Life on Jun. 21, 2007

The McGuinty Liberal’s policies of the past four years are severely hampering Northern Ontario’s two main industries – forestry and mining.

In the spring, Premier Dalton McGuinty ignored a delegation of five northern mayors, whom collectively represented two-thirds of the region’s population, and were presenting a policy document – Northern Lights: Strategic Investments in Ontario’s Greatest Asset – that detailed constructive solutions for the region’s many problems.

After 130 years of being a resource colony for the south, has the time finally come to create our own province?

Yes, I see the eyes rolling and the heads shaking, but northern separation does have merit.

And if it was possible to carve out Nunavut from the former Northwest Territories with a tiny population of about 30,000 – roughly twice that of Kenora – then a separate province in the north is economically feasible.

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Last week, I had the pleasure of being invited onto TVO’s flagship current affairs program, The Agenda, hosted by Steve Paikin. www.tvo.org The topic for the first half-hour segment was about northern Ontario forming a separate province.

As the station’s website states, “TVO is Ontario’s public educational media organization and a trusted source of interactive educational content that informs, inspires, and stimulates curiosity and thought. TVO’s vision is to empower people to be engaged citizens of Ontario through educational media.” The Agenda has been described as a program that “presents in-depth analysis and intelligent debate on issues of concern in the rapidly changing world around us.”

The participants on the five-member panel were:

From Thunder Bay:

• Rebecca Johnson, City Councilor
• Livio Di Matteo, Lakehead University Economics Professor

From Sudbury:

• Rejean Grenier, Editor of Le Voyageur

Toronto TVO Studio:

• John Beaucage, Union of Ontario Indians Grand Chief
• Stan Sudol, Communications Consultant, Northern Life Columnist

To view the entire program click below:

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BHP Billiton chairman Don Argus stated last summer that Canada’s commanding role in global mining had been reduced to “branch office” status. This criticism reflects the fact that Canada`s major mining companies like Falconbridge, Inco and Alcan have fallen under foreign control.

Vancouver-based Teck, however, withstood this wave of industry consolidation and stands today as the last, diversified Canadian mining giant.

So I am both wary of and troubled by the intense negative media speculation over the immediate future of Teck. Due to the emotional “herd” mentality of current stock market investors, if you repeat something often enough it seems to become a fact even though it’s not.

Much of this negative coverage focuses on the company’s ability to handle the US$9.8 billion debt it incurred to fund its acquisition of the assets of Fording Canadian Coal Trust. There is concern over the $5.8 billion in bridge financing that is due at the end of October, 2009. The remaining US$4 billion is term debt and repayable over three years.

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The Canadian Mining Journal is Canada’s first mining publication.

This article was originally published – August/2005

Everything you wanted to know about laterites but were afraid to ask

The last few years of the 20th Century were not very kind to the nickel industry. In October and December of 1998 the LME price for nickel dipped to US$1.76 a pound, the lowest level ever, if you factor in inflation. The imploding Russian economy was dumping nickel on western markets, the Asian currency crisis was annihilating economic growth and metal demand, and new lower-cost mine production was threatening to come on stream.

Of great concern to Canadian nickel giants Inco Ltd. and Falconbridge Ltd., the second and third largest producers after Russian MMC Norilsk, was an upstart Australian company called Anaconda Nickel Ltd.

Andrew “Twiggy” Forrest, Anaconda’s chairman, was well known in Australian mining circles for his legendary salesmanship and determination. One could almost imagine him pounding the table like Nikita Khrushchev and boasting that “he would bury the West with low-cost laterite nickel.”

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Premier McGuinty should consolidate the province’s scattered post-secondary mineral education programs at Laurentian University and establish a world-class centre of excellence – a Harvard of the Mining Sector.

In one visionary initiative, the Premier could give Sudbury an economic boost, help resolve mining skilled labour shortages, spend university funding more efficiently and be in sync with the recently published provincial report “Ontario in the Creative Age” by Richard Florida and Roger Martin of the Rotman School of Management.

Notwithstanding the current commodity slump, there is a demographic time bomb ticking in the mineral sector as the baby boomers get ready to retire. It is believed that 60% of geo scientists – the people who find new mineral deposits – in Canada will be 65 or older by 2015.

In early 2008, the Mining Industry Human Resources Council (MIHR) projected that mining industry yearly labour requirements face three scenarios: high-growth (9,200), no-growth (6,200), and industry contraction (4,600), until 2016.  These were only based on retirements.

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(L to R) Ontario Deputy Minister of Northern Development and Mines, Kevin Costante; Timmins Mayor, Tom Laughren; Ontario Minister of Northern Development and Mines, Honourable Michael Gravelle; Ontario Mining Association President, Chris Hodgson; Ontario Prospector Association Executive Director, Garry Clark

What a difference a year makes at the Prospectors and Developers Association of Canada (PDAC) annual convention, the largest on the planet. The PDAC is where the world’s mining analysts, investors, prospectors, exploration managers, government representatives and anyone else connected to this industry come to meet, do business, attend lectures and of course party. There is also a large Investor’s Exchange that the general public can attend to find out about the newest exploration plays or interrogate company presidents about their stock performance.

Needless to say, the mood was somewhat somber as everyone is trying to cope with commodity prices and metal demand that over the past six months have fallen off the proverbial cliff. The rapidness of the crash, along side with the unprecedented turmoil in credit and capital markets that has dried up funding for most exploration and development work has sent a legitimate fear throughout the entire junior mining sector.

A PricewaterhouseCoopers survey found that the market capitalization of the top 100 TSX-V junior mining companies plummeted from $20.2 billion on June 30, 2007 to $4.1 billion by November 2008. Investors are shunning higher risk exploration companies like the plague.

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