LETTERS TO THE EDITOR — Ignorance a threat to mining’s

The following came from recent conversations:

“I’m sure they can find ore deposits in areas that are not environmentally sensitive.”

(I tried to explain that areas do not become “environmentally sensitive” until someone wants to engage in industrial activity.)

“Why can’t more aboriginal people be employed in Northwest Territories mines?” (Because not everyone wants to work in the mines, and because there are not enough people with the necessary skills, I replied.)

“Then can’t the ore be left unmined for two or three hundred years until these people have acquired the necessary skills?”

These were separate conversations with, believe it or not, a 55-year-old computer programmer and a 65-year-old engineer and businessman. Both have always lived in cities and have never been in the bush (nothing would induce them to go there). They know all about the wilderness because they watch television documentaries and read National Geographic. Anything I say is dismissed as biased because I work in the mining industry.

These are educated and supposedly mature, intelligent people. If this degree of impenetrable naivet is typical of our urban population — and I suspect it is — the future of Canadian mining, and of Canada itself, is bleak.

Tom Morrison

Delta, B.C.