Mining must adapt to stay competitive, banker says

Mining, like other industries in Canada, must change with the times to remain competitive, the chairman of the Bank of Montreal said at the 56th annual convention of the Prospectors and Developers Association of Canada (pdac).

Addressing a luncheon hosted jointly by the pdac and the Toronto branch of the Canadian Club, William Mulholland said that for industry today there is no greater task than “the management of change.”

A former president of Brinco Ltd., Mulholland said the Canadian mining industry has shown it can compete internationally. No industry, he said, has faced more challenges in recent years than mining.

Tough times have dogged the industry during the past two decades, he said, but throughout the years, including a devastating period in the early 1980s, the industry stayed competitive.

“Canadian producers are in better shape today then they’ve been for some time,” Mulholland said.

He listed four “areas of challenge” confronting the mining and other Canadian industries: low-cost competition, which he said is not likely to disappear; world currency markets and the growing exchange- rate volatility; Third World debt, a long-term problem which he sees inhibiting world trade; and, erosion of the trading system from within (people continuing in their attempts to get around the rules).

Mining, Mulholland said, is part of a global economy. How well the industry adjusts, he said, will decide its future.