Editorial Mining industry can use the help

Mining needs all the help it can get these days, so on general princ iple it can hardly fault the Association of Mining Municipalities of Ontario for a submission it made recently at a conference on northern competitiveness at Elliot Lake, Ont.

This Association, which has become pretty active just in the last year or so, presented its brief to David Peterson, acting Minister of Northern Development and Mines, and in it called for a) elimination or a substantial reduction and restructuring of the present provincial mining tax, and b) use of the freed-up monies from this to establish a “heritage fund” designed, it says, to foster economic development and diversification in mining municipalities in the province.

It’s not surprising, first of all, that mining communities in Ontario should band together in some kind of concerted effort to assist the industry on which they all, to a more or less degree, depend. Many have been severely hurt, as communities, by the cut- backs and layoffs which have been the inevitable result of hard times.

The Association, to its credit, gives the industry full marks for its efforts in attempting to ward off the effects of low metal prices and stiffening international competition. “Faced with this challenge,” the Association says, “our mining industry is using every managerial and technical innovation possible in order to cut costs and thereby become more competitive and preserve its market share. Retrenchment, rationalization, modernization and automation have become the buzz words of this new and leaner mining industry. Unfortunately, so have layoff, attrition and closure.”

And, while calling on government to ease the tax burden of the industry in particularly tough times, the Association also urges labor unions to support the industry, and to work closely with it in implementing technological and/or production changes.

On the main issue, tax concessions, the Association is hardly covering new ground when it calls for either complete elimination or reduction of the Ontario mining tax, but deserves plaudits for the attempt. Industry spokesmen, including Patrick Reid, executive director of the Ontario Mining Association, indicate they welcome the Association’s support, but express doubt about the likelihood of positive government response, especially on the mining tax issue.

As Mr Reid notes, the government has already recognized that something had to be done, with its earlier move from the graduated to the flat rate tax system.

We’re dubious about the mining municipalities’ other idea of a special heritage fund set up with monies freed as the result of any mining tax change, part of which, as noted, would be used to promote economic development and diversification in mining communities, as well as (they add) to assist in “correcting environmental damage caused by the mining industry.”

Better, we think, that the government should keep such monies in a general account and assist mining communities on a case-by-case basis where help is obviously needed.