NDP is simply anti-mining

Despite the rhetoric and sweet talk flowing from the Bob Rae-Bob White administration ostensibly wooing business, I saw absolutely nothing in the recent Ontario throne speech that could possibly encourage mining. Yet it’s the very industry most capable of creating new high paying jobs if given half a chance.

It’s no secret that the mining industry is fast losing its enthusiasm for Ontario, due to onerous regulations and heavy taxation.

Me thinks Premier Rae speaks with forked tongue, giving with one hand and taking away with the other. For at the recent prospectors’ convention in Toronto, both he and mines minister Shelley Martel promised to reduce and streamline mounting bureaucracies.

But at the same time, they are turning over almost the entire north country to the aboriginal peoples, with a requirement that Indian approval must be obtained before any work permits pertaining to mineral exploration or development are granted.

That in itself can be quite an undertaking as Sandy Lake Explorations has found out.

A well-heeled junior company, it took eight months to get the approval of a group representing no less than 46 Ojibway and Cree communities spread across northern Ontario. Even then, it was granted on condition that the company obtain written approval of the local native community before actually beginning any work. It had planned to drill test seven separate aerial geophysical anomalies from the ice of Big Sandy Lake. Next year perhaps? And the exploration climate could get worse — probably a lot worse — it was gathered from the many comments heard at the prospectors’ gathering. If the sweeping aboriginal demands for self government are acceded to, it could mean a whole new level of government the industry would have to cope with — federal, provincial and First Nations.

Already over-governed and over-taxed, such a move would certainly carry a heavy additional price tag.

Mining is already being smothered with each level of government struggling to get on the regulatory and environmental bandwagon. This is especially so in Ontario and British Columbia where NDP administrations seem hellbent on driving mining right back into the ground.

British Columbia’s Geddes Resources is a classic example. With a world-class copper-cobalt deposit on which it has already spent over $47 million, the company is still light years away from getting any green light for production. And there’s that patently unfair charge against Matachewan Consolidated Mines and its directors for a costly and silly cleanup of inert sands from an old tailings pond.

Looming ever more ominous to industry are proposed amendments to Ontario’s Labour Relations Act which, if enacted, are sure to frighten foreign investment, further eroding mining’s competitive position.

Already hard hit by recession, the last thing Ontario should be doing in this climate is changing labor laws to give unions more clout and further restrict business flexibility, sending signals to potential investors that Ontario is not a good place to look for mines.

And what does mentor Bob White contribute? As head of the big auto workers union, he vehemently opposed concessions of any kind, even with the fate of a GM plant and 4,000 jobs hanging on a hair. Incredibly, the union voted down GM’s request for 1-hour-per-week compulsory overtime if needed. In contrast, workers at the National Sea Products plant in Nova Scotia, who deem overtime a privilege, recently went on strike over its allocation, demanding that any available be offered on seniority basis rather than the rotating system used by management.

Even those of us with the dimmest of memories must recognize that socialism (labor governments) has invariably run every economy it has dominated into the ground.

NDP governments are anti-mining, period.