Editorial In perspective

The province’s total land area amounts to 1,069,000 square kilometres. Of that, 891,000 square kilometres is land and 178,000 is water.

Some 27,000 square kilometres of that total land mass is either staked, patented or leased land. But land actually affected by mining amounts to only 200 square kilometres, and much of that is underground.

Park land, which covers 63,000 square kilometres, accounts for more than double the land that is staked, patented or leased. Roads in Ontario cover 4,000 square kilometres — 20 times the area of land actually affected by mining. Highway 401 in Ontario alone covers more land — and potentially productive farmland at that — than do all the tailings disposal areas in the province, according the Ontario Mining Association.

So when there’s talk of mining scarring the landscape, let’s keep things in perspective.

]]>