Editorial: When the fec hits the mining fans

To every enviro protest, there is a Four Seasons. Anti-mining street activism took a noxious turn in downtown Vancouver on May 24, as a luncheon — held at the Four Seasons hotel by the Canadian Institute of Mining, Metallurgy and Petroleum and featuring coal junior Compliance Energy — was interrupted by a half-dozen environmentalists who pulled fire alarms and wildly flung liquefied feces, or possibly well-decayed fish, into the crowd of 120 before fleeing the chaotic scene.

The fetid material hit some CIM members and the stench filled the room. People gagged, a few threw up and one young woman cried as firefighters arrived wearing haz-mat masks. Some $100,000 worth of damage was inflicted on the hotel.

The environmentalists are against Compliance’s 60%-owned Comox joint venture, which is advancing the Raven underground coal project in the Comox Valley on the east coast of Vancouver Island. Raven hosts a coking coal resource of 72 million measured and indicated tonnes, plus another 59 million inferred tonnes.

A local environmentalist blog has described the stunt as “a great force used to crash the daydreams and sick fantasies of industrial development,” and warned that “we are through with dialogue . . . no mine, no compromise, no Compliance, no way! Towards a liberated reality with minerals in the ground and fish in the sea.”

The Vancouver police have made no arrests, but are investigating the incident and trying to see if there are links to similar law-breaking in B.C. The police are considering laying criminal charges of mischief over $5,000 and assault or assault with a weapon. Anyone with pertinent information can contact the local CIM branch at exec@cimvancouver.org, and they can pass it along to the officer in charge of the file.

It’s a defiance display long embraced by rancorous zoo primates and prison inmates: radical left-wing street activists have in the last few years taken up the tactic of throwing liquefied feces or urine at riot police and other authority figures, and are now bringing the modus operandi into the genteel meeting rooms of corporate Canada.

It’s a depressing trend that’s in keeping with the general coarsening of our culture, and a security concern every corporate event planner needs to be aware of.

• Aaron Regent has been turfed from Barrick Gold as president, CEO and a director.

Jamie Sokalsky has been lifted from his position as executive vice-president and chief financial officer to be Barrick’s new president and CEO, as well as a director. An accountant by training, Sokalsky earned a commerce degree at Lakehead University in Thunder Bay and worked at George Weston for a decade before joining Barrick as treasurer in 1993, and becoming chief financial officer in 1999.

Barrick director John Thornton has been appointed co-chairman — a duty to be split with the formerly sole chairman and founder Peter Munk, now aged 84. A Harvard, Oxford and Yale grad, Thornton is a businessman and corporate director who serves as chairman of the Brookings Institution, and is a former Goldman Sachs president.

“We are fully committed to maximizing shareholder value, but have been disappointed with our share price performance,” Munk said, explaining the shake-up.

Barrick’s share price was $42.70 (US$34.27) on the day Regent joined Barrick, and it was $43.70 (US$42.05) on his last day on the job, or a rise of 2% in Canadian dollars and 23% in U.S. dollars. Over the same period Newmont Mining’s stock advanced 36% in U.S. dollars, AngloGold Ashanti rose 44% in U.S. dollars and Goldcorp moved up 27% and 52% in Canadian and U.S. dollars, respectively.

With Regent at the helm, Barrick said goodbye to its controversial hedge position, African Barrick Gold was spun off amid acute difficulties with the Tanzanian assets, copper miner Equinox Minerals was bought for US$7.8 billion in cash, and mega-projects such as Pueblo Viejo in the Dominican Republic and Pascua Lama in Chile and Argentina were pushed forward.

Before coming to Barrick in January 2009 at age 43, Regent’s claim to fame was leading the management team that sold off Canada’s largest base-metal miner Falconbridge to Swiss-based Xstrata for $26 billion. The timing was superb in that it was carried out at the peak of the nickel bubble, though stepping into an established company and selling it out to foreigners is easy, compared to being a company and nation builder.