EDITORIAL & OPINION — Mines are where you find them — Apples and oranges

Not everyone agrees that the “Living Legacy” initiative is good news for northern Ontario’s multi-billion-dollar exploration and mining industry, despite the positive spin placed on the land-planning process by the province’s Ministry of Northern Development and Mines.

Some in the industry believe that Ontario Premier Mike Harris has sacrificed northern jobs for southern votes and that the process was not as fair, open and transparent as it was supposed to be. Others worry that the park process will never end, even after the stated objective of 12% protection is achieved.

It isn’t that miners are red-neck barbarians who don’t want parklands preserved for future generations — quite the contrary: most say they can live with 12% protected status as long as they have a say in the process that determines the “where” and the levels of protection. But here the industry has problems, the biggest being that Mother Nature hides most of her riches, and conventional thinking is often at a loss in figuring out where they are stashed. This makes it enormously difficult for even the best-trained geologist to determine areas with mineral potential. For example, experts once believed that the granitic rocks in Canada’s Northwest Territories were of such low mineral potential they weren’t worth mapping, whereas they are now known to have valuable kimberlites hosting diamond deposits.

Mining companies and industry organizations are expected to sit down with other stakeholders — a grab bag of interested parties that typically includes environmentalists, native groups, government officials, guides and outfitters, hunters and trappers, forestry companies and local residents — and draw lines on a map. In some areas, resource development will be allowed; in others, it will be denied.

Forestry companies have an easier time determining areas to develop. After all, they can see the forest, if not the trees. Likewise, environmentalists generally know what areas they want preserved, and native groups aren’t afraid to demand a say in what happens on their traditional lands.

Pity the poor miner, for he alone is left to make an educated guess at best, and a wild stab in the dark at worst, about what ground is prospective. He alone has to try to convince the other stakeholders that mines are where you find them. He alone has to remind government bureaucrats that mining generates billions of dollars in annual revenues yet uses less than 0.001% of the nation’s land mass. And he alone has to remind environmentalists that mineral exploration is a risky business and that companies typically explore up to 1,000 prospects before finding one that has the potential to be a mine.

A further obstacle is the currently dismal market outlook for most mined commodities. Fewer and fewer mineral deposits have sufficiently robust economics to warrant being placed into production, and yet the rhetoric from some of the other stakeholders is that unless lands are “protected,” mining companies will dig up half the province in their rapacious thirst for profits.

Another problem is that the land-planning process does not distinguish much between foresters and miners, when in reality they are as different as apples and oranges. Consequently, when environmental groups want to stop logging in a contested area, their solution is to demand that the area be off-limits to all manner of development, even if the region is one of high mineral potential.

That happened time and again in British Columbia, where an unfair land-use planning process has had disastrous consequences. After agreeing to preserve 12% of the land mass, the province’s mining industry found itself shafted by environmental elitists and a government that kept moving the goalposts. Eventually, almost 40% of the province had become “protected” by some designation or another, and the industry pulled out of the land-planning process entirely. In effect, the government appears to have sacrificed its once-lucrative mining industry for two new growth industries: gambling and a specialized version of hemp growing.

What happened to British Columbia’s once-flourishing mining industry is nothing less than tragic. Now the eyes of the mining world are on Ontario. Will the government take a strong stand against never-ending demands for land withdrawals, and support an industry struggling for survival? We can only hope.