EDITORIAL PAGE Co-ordinating efforts on Mining Week

Any effort to increase public awareness of mining’s positive role in Canadians’ lives is laudable. Devoting one week in the year to tell the mining industry’s story is one such effort.

An example is Ontario Mining Week which, as we reported recently, was aimed “at making people stop and think about how the minerals industry has contributed to their lives and to the economic and social development of the province.”

Ontario Mining Week was the result of a tremendous effort by a variety of mining-related sponsors that have seldom joined forces so effectively. The mix of events to raise the profile of the mining industry was effective in reaching both adults and children in urban centres and mining communities.

Each February a similar effort is organized in British Columbia, the first province to establish an annual mining week. It, too, has proven to be effective. Saskatchewan also celebrated a mining week earlier this year and the Northwest Territories will be running its mining week June 17-23.

These are all worthy events and each one that has been held has achieved a good measure of success. Even so, the mining industry as a whole might do well to reconsider just how it goes about organizing these public relations events. Surely it could get a bigger bang for its buck by co-ordinating mining week in each of those various jurisdictions to run concurrently.

That might mean the mining companies and professional associations involved would have to spread themselves a little thin. After all, many of the same presidents and directors who make an effort to participate in British Columbia’s mining week, for example, also try to participate in Ontario’s and others’. It could prove to be a hectic few days.

And companies or associations that operate solely in one province might be reluctant to contribute to activities in another province. Understandably, they have no interest beyond their own jurisdictions and might be leery of interference on how they run their own show.

But the benefits of co-ordinating the timing of these mining weeks would offset those concerns and needn’t require any major change in how each jurisdiction conducts its own particular mining week activities. It would simply mean that exposure gained in one part of the country would be reinforced by exposure elsewhere.

The goal is to communicate the importance of mining to those who may take it for granted. A good step in that direction might be for the various provincial organizations to communicate among themselves about how they can better co-ordinate their efforts.