Editorial Tomorrow’s leaders

Thomas Meyer wants someday to be a mine manager and Craig Bournes wants to study rock mechanics. The two second- year students at the University of Toronto will likely attain those goals and the mining industry will be the better for their contribution. But it’s getting more and more difficult to find students with a commitment to mining, and even harder to find students who will keep that commitment upon graduation.

Meyer and Bournes are two of an ever diminishing number of university students who plan to pursue careers in mining. In fact, a large part of the credit for encouraging them to do so goes to people in the industry who recognize that an effort has to be made today to ensure there will be leaders available in the industry tomorrow. The two students were the recipients of the first Reginald J. Redrupp memorial scholarship, an award to second-year students of geo-engineering at the university. Teck Corp. donated the $35,000 capital fund in memory of Reginald Redrupp who was a mining banker for many years at the Canadian Imperial Bank of Commerce. Redrupp and the bank helped Norman Keevil, Sr., establish a small mining company that grew to become one of the world’s largest.

But the award provides more than just financial assistance to deserving students. It shows that the industry recognizes the need to nurture young people today so that tomorrow they will be ready and willing to take on the role as the industry’s leaders.

Meyer and Bournes, however, are part of a very small group. There just aren’t that many students entering mining engineering programs at Canadian universities today and, judging by the continuing low levels of enrolment in mining-related disciplines, it’s not unreasonable to ask: Where will tomorrow’s mining leaders come from?

The very real possibility exists that growth in the industry will be restrained simply by a shortage of qualified people. There just aren’t enough mining engineers or technologists graduating from our schools to meet the need.

The cyclical nature of the industry is such that enrolment in mining relate d disciplines at Canadian schools has waxed and waned, generally about two years behind the industry cycle. Today, however, there seems to be more of a structural shift away from mining engineering.

To keep the flow of young people moving through the universities and into the mining industry, it’s necessary to recruit those who have some commitment to the industry to begin with. Too often graduates have no inclination to spend their careers in Mattagami, Thompson or Matheson. They want to step into head office jobs in Toronto, Montreal of Vancouver. That’s the result of the process of urbanization, a process prevalent not only in mining but in all industries right across the country.

But there are ways to attract students who will stay with the industry and are willing to make a good life in one of the communities off the TransCanada Highway. William Stanley and Robert Holmes, in a study conducted by Coopers and Lybrand Consulting Services, suggest that Canadian universities make greater efforts to attract technical school graduates. These graduates, from the Haileybury School of Mines, for example, are snapped up by American universities who have regular recruiting drives in Canada. Canadian universities, however, give little credit for graduation from colleges such as Haileybury.

Steven Scott, the new chairman at the University of Toronto’s geo- engineering division in the faculty of applied science and engineering, suggests it’s also important to go to the communities that are based on mining and recruit students who might be more likely to return after graduation.

Whatever the reason for the shortage of students, it’s something the industry should recognize could be a significant problem in the future and something the industry must address if it is to survive and prosper in the twenty-first century.