EDITORIAL PAGE — Taken for granted

It seems that too many Canadians see only the benefits of a world in which mining and its “loathsome” Windy Craggys are absent.

It would be true, for example, that the world would be a quieter place without mining — no “boob tube,” no VCRs, no radios, no CDs, in short no din. It would be a less complicated world, too. No toaster to go on the fritz, no leaky faucets, no stopped-up toilets.

There would be less haste in the world as well. Try doing 60 kliks an hour on foot. There would be no car to hurtle down a non-existent expressway. Nor trains, for that matter; nor airplanes, come to think of it. Now we might begin to wonder what it is we’re going to work at in a world without mining. No cars to build, for example, no farm tractors or snowplows, no printing presses or precision tools, no fridges or stoves, no office towers or apartment buildings or SkyDomes.

It might be a touch cool in the winter, too. Especially after God’s green earth had been raped of all its forests to warm the several billion of us who decided uranium, coal, oil and natural gas were undesirable. Come to think of it, all that smoke spewing from the bonfires we northerners would huddle around might choke us all. And consider the escalation of the “greenhouse effect.” Disease and famine surely would follow — the result of a scorched, naked earth.

OK, we concede this is an extreme view, a possibility only if mining were to stop utterly today. But it does balance rather nicely the equally bleak picture painted by environmental extremists, of a world devastated by technology.

The mining industry, fortunately, need not concern itself with environmental extremists. Such a species cannot be converted to reason. But it must begin to convince ordinary people in this country that mining contributes vitally to our standard of living, that it plays a fundamental role in the lives of the inhabitants of the entire planet, and that it can be done and is being done in an environmentally responsible manner.

With this in mind, we were elated to see that, finally, the industry has embarked on a co-ordinated, cross-country campaign to convince Canadians that mining is not playing blacksmith to the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse. Unveiled at the University of Toronto recently (amid as much publicity as hired PR firm Hill & Knowlton could muster), a 10-point assault on the Canadian public is now in the works.

Four people from the industry will fan out across the country to hold town-hall-type meetings and go on radio and television talk shows to discuss and explain mining to the public.

The industry, through the Mining Association of Canada (MAC), will push for several changes, among them improved land-use planning, a streamlined environmental approval process and a change to the tax laws on mine reclamation.

The initiative goes beyond strictly environmental concerns, touching on productivity and safety improvements, support for advanced technology and the like.

To this, we can only applaud, and pray that it produces the desired effect. After all, as MAC President George Miller pointed out in launching the campaign, investment in mining has dropped by half from 1981 to 1991. Furthermore, between 1991 and 1992, investment in exploration by the bigger companies dropped to $302 million from $430 million. This could spell disaster for the future of mining in Canada.

We know how important mining is to the people of this country and we know, too, that it’s not as environmentally villainous as it has been portrayed. It’s time the public learned the truth, too.