Mining: the year in review

Nineteen ninety-nine was both difficult and disappointing for British Columbia’s mining industry: two mines closed and no new mines were opened. Moreover, mineral exploration spending plummeted dramatically and, for the current year, is expected to total just $25 million, compared with $264 million in 1990.

In 1998, British Columbia’s mining industry incurred a $156-million loss, and whether that trend was repeated in 1999 will not be known until the final industry figures for last year are tallied.

The amount of money being spent to find new mines is the barometer by which the future of the industry is measured. Simply put, if people are not spending money looking for mines, no mines will be found to replace those that are nearing the end of their productive lives. If this situation persists, then, in a few years, there will no longer be a mining industry in the province.

In the past decade, 14 mines were closed and only seven were opened, which is hardly a formula for sustainability. And yet despite this disturbing trend, there is no question that things can be turned around — provided the political will exists.

Last year, mining in the province was responsible for generating a billion dollars in tax revenue for governments — money that is crucial to the delivery of education, health care and other services we all desire for ourselves and our children.

Last year, mining generated 56% of all rail freight revenue in the country, and mining products accounted for 69% of total port volume — far greater than grain shipments and all container traffic. Yet despite these desirable economic attributes, the provincial government continues to turn a blind eye to the policies that are threatening the future of the industry. In doing so, the government is jeopardizing its own prosperity and, by extension, the prosperity of the people of the province.

Balance needs to be restored to the provincial government and to the policies they are developing and implementing. There needs to be some serious re-thinking of these policies, in particular such initiatives as land-use planning, which continues systematically to deny British Columbians access to their own resources.

Minerals, in sufficient quantity, represent enormous wealth and opportunity to those who own them . . . and in British Columbia, the owners happen to be the people who live there. The role of the mining industry is, in effect, to provide a service for the owners of those mineral resources. We dig their minerals out of the ground for them and, in doing so, create jobs, wealth and opportunity.

Our work is complicated, it’s expensive, and it requires a lot of engineering expertise — but, at the end of the day, it’s just a service we perform for the owners. If the people of British Columbia and Canada are to continue to benefit from the mineral wealth they own, then access to the land that contains those minerals must be assured. If we limit that access, then we limit the benefits we all enjoy.

— The author is president and chief operating officer of the Mining Association of British Columbia.