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Thunder Bay

Future may be here in a week [Ring of Fire] – Thunder Bay Chronicle-Journal Editorial (February 11, 2010)

The Thunder Bay Chronicle-Journal is the daily newspaper of Northwestern Ontario. This editorial was originally published on February 11, 2010.

For an extensive list of articles on this mineral discovery, please go to: Ontario’s Ring of Fire Mineral Discovery

IT WOULD be difficult to overstate the importance of the so-called Ring of Fire, a huge, horseshoe-shaped geological structure in the James Bay Lowlands of Northern Ontario. In just 30 months it has gone from a single drill hole to the probable jewel in the crown of a regional economic recovery.

The nearest communities to the ring of high-grade nickel-copper-platinum-palladium, chromite, vanadium and gold are the First Nations of Marten Falls and Webequie which are naturally angling to share the wealth. Much has been done to achieve that objective but lately, it appears the First Nations are not happy. An early partnership between Marten Falls and Noront Resources, the area’s key exploration company, for example, came apart this winter when the band council authorized members to block Noront planes from landing near their camps.

Everyone in Northern Ontario – most particularly First Nations anywhere near mineral deposits – must fervently hope that Marten Falls and Webequie don’t send companies packing from the Ring of Fire like another band further north did earlier. It cost Ontario taxpayers $5 million in company compensation, but the loss in this instance would be almost incalculable given the ring’s potential.

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From coal to gas [Ring of Fire and Other Mining Implications] – Thunder Bay Chronicle-Journal Editorial (November 24, 2010)

The Thunder Bay Chronicle-Journal is the daily newspaper of Northwestern Ontario. This editorial was originally published on November 24, 2010.

For an extensive list of articles on this mineral discovery, please go to: Ontario’s Ring of Fire Mineral Discovery

AS ONTARIO continues its onerous but ultimately necessary march toward cleaner air it is stepping into increasingly difficult territory. Its so-called green energy proposals are proving costlier all the time, and while no one should expect to reduce greenhouse gases and begin to reverse climate change without complications, Ontario seems to be making things more difficult for itself than it needs to.

This realization can be seen in every retreat from and change in its green energy policy, most recently to offer rebates on soaring electricity bills and alter an ill-thought-out time-of-use pricing plan.

Consumers are enraged at the proliferation of charges over and above basic electricity while lucrative contracts signed with alternative energy suppliers seem unnecessarily rich, given the fact that demand for electricity is going nowhere but up.

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Nishnawbe Aski Nation (NAN) and Ontario Ministry of Natural Resourses (MNR) – it’s time to talk – Thunder Bay Chronicle-Journal Editorial – (August 6, 2009)

The Thunder Bay Chronicle-Journal is the daily newspaper of Northwestern Ontario. This editorial was originally published on August 6, 2009.

For an extensive list of articles on this mineral discovery, please go to: Ontario’s Ring of Fire Mineral Discovery

IT’S time that Natural Resources Minister Donna Cansfield sat down with Nishnawbe Aski Nation leaders and come to some sort of an agreement on the Far North Act. NAN’s Grand Chief Stan Beardy has blasted the provincial government over a perceived lack of consultation regarding Bill 191, which will set aside 225,000 square kilometres as a protected area within NAN First Nation homelands.

“Without (NAN’s) consultation, accommodation or consent,” Beardy stated, the legislation will effectively lock down the land to prevent First Nations – among the poorest people in Canada – from achieving economic independence by preventing the development needed to build healthy communities and help strengthen the Ontario economy.

While the government has launched committee meetings on the legislation, NAN says there are no hearings set for communities in the far North portion of the province, the ones most affected by the legislation.

The closest the Standing Committee on General Government gets to the far North is at the Sioux Lookout and Thunder Bay hearings.

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Thunder Bay a link to ‘Heartlandia’ – by Livio Di Matteo (Thunder Bay Chronicle-Journal)

The Thunder Bay Chronicle-Journal is the daily newspaper of Northwestern Ontario. This column was originally published on June 01, 2009.

Economics Matters

For much of its economic history, Thunder Bay’s lake head role made it a transshipment point and transportation node that enabled it to reap the benefits of east-west economic flows – in particular, the grain trade. Thunder Bay’s role as the gateway to the west is about to get an important boost given the continued economic growth in western Canada and particularly the central interior North American economic region of Heartlandia.

Heartlandia – comprising Northwestern Ontario, Manitoba, Saskatchewan, North and South Dakota and Minnesota – is a region at the cross roads of the North American continent and indeed the world.

Heartlandia covers 2.4 million square kilometres with a population of nearly 9 million people and a GDP of about US$405 billion. This economic region contains agricultural production activities, food processing, forestry, petroleum, potash, uranium, coal, mineral and hydroelectric resources as well as substantial manufacturing, research and service capacity.

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For the North from the North [Leo Bernier – Emperor of the North] – Thunder Bay Chronicle-Journal Editorial (June 29, 2010)

The Thunder Bay Chronicle-Journal is the daily newspaper of Northwestern Ontario. This editorial was published on June 29, 2010.

LEO Bernier was a big man from a little town who emerged as the first home-grown northern politician to genuinely matter in Ontario government. A senior cabinet minister in the sturdy Tory government of Bill Davis, Bernier saw to it that Northern Ontario finally got noticed in provincial affairs. It is his lasting legacy and one that successive governments have maintained, if not always honoured in full.

First elected in 1966 to represent Kenora under John Robarts, he worked to equalize northern services and opportunities with southern standards, but never thought that he had to move south to accomplish it. Born in Sioux Lookout and raised largely in Ear Falls, he settled into Hudson, a town of 600 where the family business became its mainstay. It was there that he continued to live until his death Monday at 81.

Fittingly, Bernier entered politics after a succession of frustrating trips to Queen’s Park lobbying on behalf of his home town. “I always came back from Toronto downhearted,” he told The Chronicle-Journal for a look back at his career in 1999. “I saw the lack of concern and the lack of sympathy for the North.”

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Natural resources still hold potential – Thunder Bay Chronicle-Journal Editorial (December 20, 2010)

The Thunder Bay Chronicle-Journal is the daily newspaper of Northwestern Ontario. This editorial was published on February 6, 2011.

For an extensive list of articles on this mineral discovery, please go to: Ontario’s Ring of Fire Mineral Discovery

EVEN as Thunder Bay and other Northwestern Ontario communities press ahead with knowledge-based industry initiatives there remain opportunities in traditional natural resources industries, but not all of them. Embracing high-tech knowledge business is essential to securing the future of northern communities.

Thunder Bay in particular is growing spectacularly in its health care research sector. Just as in other regional communities, with a number of its forest industries idled, new pursuits are essential to maintaining and growing the local economy.

A new study by the Conference Board of Canada confirms that the natural resources sector — and the industries that support it — provide the strongest potential for Northern Canada’s future economic development.

This report, Mapping the Economic Potential of Canada’s North, is one of a series of studies for the Centre for the North.

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Time for North [Ontario] to take control – Thunder Bay Chronicle-Journal Editorial (February 6, 2011)

The Thunder Bay Chronicle-Journal is the daily newspaper of Northwestern Ontario. This editorial was published on February 6, 2011.

For an extensive list of articles on this mineral discovery, please go to: Ontario’s Ring of Fire Mineral Discovery

Provincial energy policy has punished the North with electricity prices that haven’t been able to match competing jurisdictions nearby. And yet, the North produces all of the electricity that it needs at a real price that is far lower than that which is being charged its industrial, business and residential users. (Thunder Bay Chronicle Editorial – Feb/06/2011)

THE TIME has never been better for Northern Ontario to take control of its own destiny. Discontent with provincial policy has rarely been stronger in the North which has been given a strong new hand to play in the form of major mining opportunities.

This region has shipped its resource riches and the bulk of their profits to southern Ontario and beyond for many decades, even as they provided the province with a major part of its revenue. One provincial government after another promised to facilitate value-added manufacturing of forest products but the logs and lumber, as well as much raw mine product, left here. Paper mills that did thrive are now mostly closed due in large part to provincial energy policy that helped to render them uncompetitive.

A slow provincial reallocation of forest resources is beginning to show some results, but the woods industry will never be what it was. The Northern Growth Plan remains to be written but from what is known about it so far, we should not expect a breakthrough in innovative thinking at Queen’s Park.

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Get the price of power down [Ring of Fire smelter] – Thunder Bay Chronicle-Journal Editorial (February 8, 2011)

The Thunder Bay Chronicle-Journal is the daily newspaper of Northwestern Ontario. This editorial was published on February 8, 2011.

For an extensive list of articles on this mineral discovery, please go to: Ontario’s Ring of Fire Mineral Discovery

THE MESSAGE could not be clearer, the opportunity greater nor the time shorter for the Thunder Bay area. Cliffs Natural Resources, the major player in the giant Ring of Fire chromite deposit far north of here, has all but told the provincial government that it will build an electric arc furnace to process an estimated 70 million tonnes of ore in Northern Ontario if it can afford the electricity.

“At current provincial power rates, there isn’t a location in Ontario that is economically viable for Cliffs to build the ferrochrome production facility,” the company’s ferroalloys president Bill Boor said last week.

The ferrochrome furnaces would need 300 megawatts of power and “only a few” places in Northern Ontario meet these requirements, however, Sudbury is representative of a “technically feasible site,” he added. That is, it has the power supply, mining history and allied business.

“Representative of a feasible site” is pretty open-ended, and encouraging for alternate sites.

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Ontario’s Stagnating Economy: First Decade of 21st Century Sees Decline – by Livio Di Matteo

Livio Di Matteo is Professor of Economics at Lakehead University in Thunder Bay, Ontario.  Visit his new Economics Blog “Northern Economist” at http://ldimatte.shawwebspace.ca/

“Ontario’s net public debt was 1.6 billion dollars in 1965 and has risen to reach an estimated 245 billion in 2010.  The debt is the sum of accumulated deficits plus interest.  Given that Ontario’s net debt was 132 billion in the year 2000, it means that nearly half of Ontario’s net debt was acquired over the last 10 years…. In 2010, Ontario’s debt-to-GDP ratio actually surpassed that of the Federal government for the first time in living memory.” (Livio Di Matteo, Jan/31/11)

I was invited to present to the Ontario Standing Committee on Finance and Economic Affairs as part of the pre-budget consultations and did so via video-conference on January 31st, 2011.  Below is the text of my address.  Please note that actual delivery may have varied from the prepared text.  Slides used for the presentation are available on my university web page.

Ontario: A Province in Decline

Good morning Mr. Chair and Committee Members of the Ontario Standing Committee on Finance & Economic Affairs.

My name is Livio Di Matteo and I am Professor of Economics at Lakehead University in Thunder Bay.

Let me being with a quick summary. Ontario’s economy was severely hit by the recent recession particularly in its resource and manufacturing sectors.

While the recession is ending and both employment and output are beginning to recover, we still need to address the long-term performance of the Ontario economy.  Even without the impact of the recession, the fact is that Ontario has been performing poorly over the last decade when compared to many of the other provinces in the Canadian federation.  Productivity and income growth has lagged.

Fiscal sustainability is having the resources necessary to provide the public goods and services that as a province we have decided we need.  When lagging productivity and income growth is combined with fiscal indicators that point to rising deficits and debt, the sustainability of Ontario’s public finances is called into question.

Poor economic growth, low productivity and lagging per capita incomes will result in a decline in Ontario’s standard of living and ultimately also result in poorer public services.

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Northern Policy Advice for Ontario’s Next Premier: Hudak or McGuinty? – by Livio Di Matteo

Livio Di Matteo is Professor of Economics at Lakehead University in Thunder Bay, Ontario.  Visit his new Economics Blog “Northern Economist” at http://ldimatte.shawwebspace.ca/

For an extensive list of articles on this mineral discovery, please go to: Ontario’s Ring of Fire Mineral Discovery

A regional power authority could become a valuable tool for
northern development and provide the cheap electricity for
value-added processing and development necessary for mining
in the Ring of Fire. – Livio Di Matteo (January 17, 2011)

As Ontario heads towards its fall 2011 election, there will inevitably be discussion of what new policies can help drive Northern Ontario’s economy in the 21st century. Historically, economic development in Ontario’s North was a partnership between private sector resource exploitation and a public sector economic strategy to make the north an investment frontier for the south as well as a source of government revenue via the exploitation of natural resources.

Nineteenth century Ontario implemented a northern development scheme that could be termed a “Northern Ontario Policy” that operated parallel to the Federal government’s National Policy. Ontario’s Northern Policy provided a regional program of northern land grants to promote agricultural settlement and the building of the Temiskaming and Northern Ontario Railway and colonization roads to foster access.  As well, there was the passage of the “Manufacturing Condition” which required that timber cut on crown land be processed within the province so as to retain value added as well as provide government revenue.

At its peak, the province of Ontario obtained nearly one quarter of its revenue from northern resources and used it to fund expanding provincial services.  Indeed, in the early part of this century, Ontario’s northern forests and mines were akin to Alberta’s oil today. 

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Breakaway Country [Northwestern Ontario] – by Livio Di Matteo

The National Post is Canada’s second largest national paper. This article was originally published in the Financial Post on September 06, 2006.

Livio Di Matteo is professor of economics at Lakehead University in Thunder Bay, Ontario, and a co-author of a recent paper in Canadian Public Policy dealing with “Mantario.”

How can we empower people in these regions to help solve their own problems rather than wait for a supplicated solution from a pharaoh in a distant capital? In an act of supreme neglect, the Canadian federation has allowed its vital “zone of transit” [Northwestern Ontario] to decline to the point where an errant moose could choke the lifeblood of the nation. – Livio Di Matteo (Sept/06)

The isolated residents of northwestern Ontario are tired of life as a resource extraction colony. One option would be to create a new province – Mantario

The northwestern portion of Ontario, comprising the Districts of Thunder Bay, Kenora and Rainy River, represents 60% of Ontario’s land and an area the size of France. It was an imperial acquisition of the 19th-century when the province viewed itself as “Empire Ontario.”

It is a region rich in natural resources but sparse in population, and yet it is vital to the Canadian federation as an east-west transport corridor for road, ship and rail. Indeed, one can only imagine how different Canadian history might have been had northwestern Ontario become part of Minnesota. While alienation from Southern Ontario has affected all of Northern Ontario, sparking periodic calls to separate, the feeling has become particularly acute in the region stretching from White River to Kenora.

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