Northern Ontario mining group urges public support of

The following was submitted by the North Superior Mine Managers Group during the Ontario Mining Association’s Mining Week (May 31 to June 6):

We speak for the dedicated men and women at our operations. Our six mines are essential to the prosperity of every Ontario town between Schreiber and Wawa. More than 2,000 people work at our operations and thousands more supply goods and services to the mines. Our metals improve peoples’ lives all over the world every day. Our mines played a major role in opening up this area. Mining communities are vital threads in Ontario’s economic fabric. The industry contributes 30,000 direct jobs and $5 billion of new wealth to Ontario each year. In northern Ontario, mining provides 10% of the jobs and 20% of government revenues. Each year, Ontario’s mining industry pays $500 million in taxes, uses $700 million in supplies, does $50 million of research and development and spends $300 million on environmental projects. Throughout Canada, mines have provided the infrastructure for other industries as miners pushed back the frontiers. Mining and milling provide 3% of jobs in Canada, 16% of exports and an $11-billion trade surplus. These numbers speak volumes about the productivity of people in more than 100 mining communities. Our metals are used for a thousand purposes (from cars to medicines) which define us as a prosperous and progressive society, and they have given us the wealth that has made Canada the best place in the world to live. We are leaders in mining technology, which we export all over the world. Unfortunately, our success has made us the goose that laid the golden egg; battered by high taxes, regulations, environmental extremism, low metal prices, unstable politics and public indifference, we are now losing our industry to countries which are more hospitable to mining projects. Many challenges face Ontario’s mining industry, but with public understanding and positive government support, they can all be met. Some examples follow. Our toughest challenges are regulatory and the most immediate of these is electricity. Provincial hydro rates have increased by 30% in the past three years. Our mines have cut electricity use to the minimum, but our power costs are now rising out of control as conservation opportunities dwindle. Ontario’s economical power was once the envy of North America, but no more — Ontario Hydro must get its spiralling costs under control if Ontario is to compete.

Costs associated with the province’s Workers’ Compensation Board (WCB) have become onerous for industry. We have the highest WCB assessments of any province, yet the board has unfunded liabilities of hundreds of millions of dollars. The mining industry has reduced its lost-time injury frequency by 80% since 1977, an achievement which WCB costs do not reflect at all. The WCB seems to have become a source of general revenue, and this must change. Environmental issues affect our mines greatly. We are committed to minimizing our effect on the environment, to reclaiming our minesites and to using the best economic technology available. We can — and will — operate our mines as the people of Ontario wish. Mining can coexist with any other land use, but we need better ways of weighing the environment against industry. It is urgent that governments, environmentalists, miners and the public talk about how industry and the environment can combine to sustain us all. If we work to find compromises, we will succeed in this endeavor. Compromises will lead to an environmental agenda based on good science, real need and clear knowledge of human and financial costs. Finally, Canadians should ensure that our politicians and civil servants believe in keeping Canadians at work in the industry. Why? Because while Canada’s attractiveness as a place to explore for minerals has declined, every other mining country has revised its laws to attract mine-finders and developers.

Canadian mining companies are developing cutting-edge technology to produce safely and efficiently while paying the highest average wage of any primary Canadian industry. Our operations must be profitable for us to continue to do this, but taxes and regulatory costs have greatly reduced the funds available for new mines and technology. We cannot retain enough of our earnings to perpetuate our industry, and mining is not alone in this — Canada’s long-term industrial prosperity is being compromised to pay yesterday’s bills. We believe Canada still has a pioneering economy which needs the mines and the forests to prosper as it always has. Our children will still need to push against the northern frontier and use natural resources to create prosperity and growth. Resource industries will help us change the sad fact that northwestern Ontario’s rate of job loss from 1991 to 1992 was 4.5 times higher than in the province as a whole.

We in mining ask that people support our efforts to remain the economic engine which we have been along the north shore of Lake Superior for 92 years. This can be done by pressuring politicians, civil servants and environmental groups to balance their agendas so that the mining industry can continue to flourish. Canada’s miners need the public’s help to convince these groups that the following initiatives will sustain both our industry and our environment:

— Governments must refine their environmental standards into a rational, cost-efficient, consistent, fair and stable set of policies based on real need, good science and common-sense economics.

— All levels of government must restore and improve the range of exploration and development incentives which made Canadian mining the envy of the world until the mid-1980s. In the long run, this will provide more employment, more taxes and more prosperity than does squeezing more money from a shrinking mining base.

— Ontario urgently requires stable and competitive taxes, power costs and regulations.

— Miners, politicians, environmentalists and First Nations must talk, and work out co-operative, multiple-land-use policies to allow for development of Canada’s natural resources.

— Governments must leave miners enough funds to reinvest to keep mining self-sustaining.

— Members of the North Superior Mine Managers Group: Thomas Dickson, manager of Minnova’s Winston Lake zinc-copper mine at Schreiber; Maurice Ethier, manager of Noranda’s Geco copper-zinc mine at Manitouwadge; Ruston Ford, manager of Teck-Corona’s David Bell mine at Hemlo; John Keyes, manager of Hemlo Gold’s Golden Giant mine at Hemlo; Peter Rowlandson, manager of Teck and Homestake’s Williams gold mine at Hemlo; and Andrew Stevens, manager of Algoma Ore Division’s McLeod iron mine at Wawa.