La belle province captures miners’ hearts

A highlight of the week was the Fraser Institute’s annual Survey of Mining Companies 2009/10, representing the views of high-level managers from around the world on the mineral endowments and public policies of 72 mining jurisdictions spanning the globe.

• The survey of 670 mining-related companies took place during the last four months of 2009, and so it’s full of that period’s surprised optimism stemming from a sooner-than-expected recovery in mineral prices after the global recession of 2008-09.

Many of Canada’s mining provinces came off very well in public-policy ranking, with the top 10 jurisdictions, in descending order, comprised of Quebec (number one for the third year), New Brunswick, Finland, Alberta, Nevada, Saskatchewan, Chile, Newfoundland & Labrador, Manitoba and South Australia.

Quebec’s top ranking, however, doesn’t take into account the recently tabled provincial budget, which sees the cash-strapped and deeply indebted government of North America’s most-socialist jurisdiction immediately jacking up its tax rate to 14% from 12% and then adding 1 percentage point on each of the next two New Year’s days, for a total 33% tax hike by 2012. It looks like miners in Quebec will now be paying up for the provincial government’s famed largesse towards the mining industry over the past many years.

As for fading Canadian stars, the survey confirms the views held by anyone working in the mining industry in these jurisdictions: Ontario, with its myriad of land-access problems and looming carbon-sink craziness; B.C. with its own land-access problems and unresolved First Nations land claims; and the Northwest Territories, perhaps the biggest disappointment, with its sad squandering of much of its newfound diamond glory through the immobilization of the mining sector with red tape and regulatory uncertainty.

Miners are notorious for cravenly sugarcoating their on-the-record views of the governments they deal with globally. However, one fun aspect of the Fraser Institute survey is its splendid array of anonymous comments by miners about working in some of the world’s seedier jurisdictions:

“California is full of eco-hippies who do not understand that their lifestyle is dependent upon mining.”

“In the Democratic Republic of the Congo, everything is wrong. Government consists of corrupted crooks.”

“Guatemala has no rule of law, corruption. Government agencies and contracts are not respected.”

“In Mongolia, there is no security of title, the laws constantly change, and any law can be circumvented by connections or payoffs.”

“Some Hollywood types want to fence off Montana from development and only let in those that can service them, i.e. “flip my burgers for me, cowboy!”

“In Venezuela, the only thing certain is uncertainty — worst corruption I’ve seen on the planet.”

“Populist politicians in Tanzania like to blame foreign miners for all the country’s ills when the real problem lies elsewhere.”

“India is too opaque, corrupt.”

• Federal Liberal Member of Parliament John McKay gamely defended his anti-mining private members Bill C-300 in an entertaining speech before a teeth-clenched crowd at a monthly luncheon of the Toronto branch of the Canadian Institute of Mining, Metallurgy and Petroleum (CIM).

Unfortunately for the many diehard Liberals that dominate Bay Street, McKay came across as a rather shallow thinker harbouring more than a touch of vanity, early on arguing that Canada should keep changing its mining laws until the moment when the capricious Hollywood actor Martin Sheen is satisfied, and repeatedly framing his own appearance before the CIM as being primarily about his own bravery and supposed open-mindedness.

But perhaps the most disturbing aspect of McKay’s anti-miner stance, aside from his insufferable arrogance in stating that he is better at discerning miners’ “enlightened self-interest” then they are, is his sophomoric credulity in taking at face value almost any overheated rhetoric, political theatre or outright lie peddled by leftist activists at home and abroad.

McKay strikes us as genuinely oblivious to the fact that a person can have an ulterior motive — be it political, monetary or psychological — when complaining about, for instance, the environmental record of a foreign, capitalist miner operating in a developing country.