COMMENTARY — Industry requires federal support

The author is president of The Mining Association of Canada. He has written the following article at the request of Keep Mining in Canada, a grassroots campaign designed to increase awareness of the importance of mining in this country.

The election campaign is down to its final weeks and, as expected, jobs and the economy have been key issues for all parties. These are also key issues for Canada’s mining community.

With its annual contribution to the national economy of $23 billion, the Canadian mining industry is fundamental to the country’s fiscal health.

Mining is also vitally important to thousands of households and scores of communities across the country, which benefit from the 350,000 jobs it has created.

These are not static figures — provided the investment climate is favorable, there can be both economic and job growth in the mining sector. According to the federal government, mining has the potential to create 30,000 new jobs over the next five years.

Many Canadians are not aware of the benefits mining brings to their lives.

For that reason, the Keep Mining in Canada campaign has been working hard during this election to make sure the industry’s concerns are not overlooked.

We have been encouraging mining communities to ask their local candidates a series of questions about mining. These questions highlight our concerns about Canada’s lack of competitiveness in attracting mining investment and its complex and overlapping regulations. These impediments hinder the growth of the mining industry, inhibiting its ability to create new jobs and contribute more to the economy.

We are asking candidates what their parties will do to create those 30,000 new mining jobs. We want to know how they plan to deal with outstanding land claims. We are asking if they agree that we need a single streamlined set of regulations, setting high standards of environmental protection and, if so, how they plan to achieve this. We would like to know how they and their parties intend to speed up the process of regulatory reform.

We are not keeping the candidates’ answers to ourselves. Their responses are available on the Keep Mining in Canada web site (http://www.kmic.ca) and in our special weekly newsletter, Campaign Update, so that all Canadians with an interest in mining know where the parties and their candidates stand.

When the polls close and when the last vote is counted, we’ll have some concrete statements by which to judge the new government’s commitment to mining issues. Over the next four years, the mining community will also hold the new government accountable for those statements.