Canadian Miners Help Out Haitian Quake Survivors

The second trading week of the year was highlighted by a large, spontaneous act of charity on the part of about 400 executives at some of Canada’s biggest and most successful mining and mining-related companies.

• Canadian-based mining executives opened their wallets to help with the Haitian earthquake, raising $900,000 from individuals during the Canadian Mining Hall of Fame’s induction ceremony held before a crowd of 800 in Toronto on Jan. 14, little more than 48 hours after the deadly quake destroyed much of Port-au-Prince and its environs.

Hall of Fame director Ed Thompson came up with the idea a day before the event and ran it past Pierre Lassonde, master of ceremonies and chairman of Franco-Nevada Corp., deciding the funds could be handled by the Red Cross.

They decided to keep the donations capped at $25,000 per person and together kicked in the first $50,000. Thompson said the money raised at the event could have been higher, but some had already made large donations earlier in the day. At the time and in the days afterwards, it was by far the largest donation towards Haitian relief efforts by any single small Canadian group.

• Presenter Ian Telfer, chairman of Goldcorp, couldn’t resist getting a dig in at Barrick Gold during the Canadian Mining Hall of Fame event, noting with a smile during his address that Barrick hadn’t taken a table at the induction ceremony, and that “you may have heard rumours that Barrick Gold couldn’t afford a table here tonight, but that isn’t true.”

A day earlier, Goldcorp and New Gold announced they had each received a statement of claim from Barrick that the gold giant is suing the two Vancouver-based companies over the El Morro dustup. In October, at the large El Morro copper-gold project in Chile, Barrick had arranged to buy Xstrata’s 70% interest for US$465 million, but 30% owner New Gold surprised the markets on Jan. 7, saying that it would exercise its right of first refusal to buy the 70%. The twist is New Gold will use US$463 million advanced by Goldcorp to buy the 70%, and then flip the interest to Goldcorp in return for $50 million in cash, plus far more generous project-financing terms on its remaining 30% stake.

Goldcorp and New Gold deny Barrick’s claim that they acted improperly.

• The half-year-old strike by unionized workers at Vale Inco’s Sudbury mining and smelting operations is seeing some movement, with Vale planning to restart limited operations at the Sudbury smelter in late January, using non-striking staff to smelt stockpiled ore. The restart comes at a time of strongly recovering steel and iron ore markets, and improving nickel markets.

About 3,500 Vale Inco workers have been on strike in Sudbury since July 13. Unionized workers at the company’s Port Colborne refinery on the Niagara peninsula and at the Voisey’s Bay nickel mine in Labrador are similarly on strike.

The workers’ inevitable strike fatigue combined with Vale Inco’s refinery in Clydach, Wales, operating well below capacity and its customers becoming increasingly motivated to seek out alternative sources of nickel means the two parties have growing incentives to come to a new collective bargaining agreement in the months ahead. The biggest sticking points are still the proposed changes to the pension system, nickel bonuses tied to the price of nickel, and employee job-transfer rights.

However, the United Steelworkers — which represents the striking workers — has just filed a “bad-faith bargaining complaint” against Vale Inco at the Ontario Labour Relations Board, and roughly 1,000 pro-union folk gathered in downtown Sudbury on Jan. 13 to mark six months of strike action and rally support for its continuation.

• In western Canada, another big, low-grade copper-gold project jumped a major regulatory hurdle, as Taseko Mines got the provincial government’s environmental OK to proceed with its proposed Prosperity mine in central B.C. The next task is to get federal environmental approval. The company is looking at mining 70,000 tonnes per day for 20 years, churning out 247,000 oz. gold and 108 million lbs. copper annually, on average.

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