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October 5, 2011 - No. 8
40th Ontario General Election
Establishing Ownership Over Our
Resources and Decision-Making -- A Central Election Issue
Ontario's Resources
• Establishing Ownership Over Our Resources
and
Decision-Making -- A Central Election Issue
The Ring of Fire
• Mining Development in the Service of U.S.
Imperialist War Preparations - Dave Starbuck
• Positions of the Liberals, Conservatives
and
NDP
• An Issue of Sustainability -
Patrick Whiteway, Canadian Mining Review
Letter to the Editor
• Our Resources Stay Here!
Ontario's Resources
Establishing Ownership Over Our Resources and
Decision-Making -- A Central Election Issue
In this issue Ontario Political Forum provides
detailed information on mining development in the northern Ontario
region known as the Ring of Fire,
in the service of U.S. imperialist war preparations. The central issue
this project raises is how to establish ownership rights and
decision-making related to the
mineral treasure trove that has been discovered in the Ring of Fire
area and over northern development as a whole. The
resources found in the geographical territory known as Ontario belong
first of all to the First Nations and through them to the peoples of
Ontario and Canada.
This is not a matter of paying lip-service to the First Nations to
justify a paternalistic "consultation process" and "job training" for
First Nations youth. It is a matter of right and making arrangements
which provide that right with
a guarantee. So long as different
northern development plans do not
recognize the rights involved
and the relations of one right
to another
and do not establish a process which enables the different interests to
set the development program, then everyone falls victim to the
competition between municipalities, provinces, governments and others.
Everyone is set jumping to the
tune set by the globe's biggest monopolies and superpower.
U.S.-based monopoly Cliffs Natural
Resources has staked claims on the Ring of Fire and is in a big rush to
begin chromite mining and smelting. Chromite is important in steel
production and it is clear that this project furthers Canada's
annexation to the U.S. by using its people and resources to supply the
U.S. Empire's war preparations, all with the full support of the
Ontario and Canadian governments.
The development of the Ring
of Fire can be approached by
First Nations, workers and local politicians in an entirely different
way, as a key component of a Canadian nation-building project. First
Nations' peoples and Canadians have to start by taking stock of how
they are being played against one another so as to marginalize them and
pay lip-service to
their issues in the name of jobs, benefits, the youth, etc. They can
set
their own agenda and then pursue that agenda with single-minded and
single-hearted determination. The First Nations who inhabit the area,
the workers whose labour will extract the ore from the earth and
process it into usable
commodities, the mining communities in northern Ontario, the people of
the entire province and country are One. It is possible to work out a
program which does not pit one section against another section in a
race to the bottom. It Can Be Done! It Must Be Done!
Ontario's Economy Needs a
New Direction
 Plans for the economy of
northern Ontario as
well as that of the
whole province need a new direction. The current capital-centred
mining development has enriched the owners of the foreign monopolies
who have seized control of Ontario's
mineral assets. Over the past two generations, the claim of labour on
the mining resources of the North has declined. Tens of thousands of
jobs have been eliminated in the northern Ontario mining and
metallurgical industries in this time. Many small towns remind one more
of the fifties than the
twenty-first century.
More capital-centred mining development will not solve
the crisis facing the Ontario economy. Neither will more government
handouts to foreign mining monopolies. Electricity subsidies, road or
rail infrastructure and tax incentives will hand billions of public
monies to Cliffs Natural Resources
over the life of the proposed mines. And, for all of the public monies,
no more
than 1,300 direct jobs will be created.
Capital-centred mining development severely challenges
the natural and social environment in the areas where it is developed.
The Ring of Fire is an area of permafrost and muskeg, five hundred
kilometres
from
existing rail and road links, and
inhabited only by widely
separated First Nations. Mining development under such conditions poses
exceptional
challenges if the natural and social environments are not to be
severely harmed. The future of the First Nations peoples who live in
the James Bay Lowlands is of particular concern. These communities are
amongst the most economically
and socially deprived in the province. Rapid development, if it is
brought about from outside and without empowering the First Nations
peoples and workers in a manner which upholds the rights of
all, could easily wreck what remains of the social and economic fabric
of the First Nations
peoples in the James Bay Lowlands.
Protest by Nishnabe
Aski Nation at Queen's Park, September 16, 2010, against Bill 191, the Far North Act, which came into force in October
2010 and directly pertains
to
plans for chromite mining in the area known as the Ring of Fire.
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Current northern
development plans promoted by
provincial governments and political parties within the parliaments and
in opposition are all versions of capital-centred, not human-centred
plans. None of them solve the problem of providing the
ownership and decision-making power
with a modern definition which establishes the real owners' control
over
the resources. Capital-centred development of the Ring of Fire has
the aim of ensuring that the U.S. war machine has an ample supply of a
strategic war material by placing the public resources of the province
at the disposal
of a foreign monopoly. Such activity disregards the interests of the
First
Nations, the workers and the mining communities, and must be rejected
as a
basis of mining development in the Ring of Fire or anywhere else.
Rejection of development which negates the peoples'
interests is the first step to
elaborate a human-centred
alternative to capital-centred mining development. Human-centred mining
development, as a fundamental principle, recognizes the right of First
Nations to their hereditary rights if they are to benefit economically
from industrial development
in their traditional territories. This necessarily means ensuring First
Nations can exercise their right to decision-making
regarding these projects, including the right of veto. Human-centred
mining development recognizes the right of labour (both Native and
non-Native) to establish its claim as the
key factor in the creation of wealth and does not denigrate labour as a
cost of production. Human-centred mining development
recognizes that workers and their families have the right to a modern
Canadian standard of wages, benefits and working conditions for
themselves and education, health care and other social services for
their families. Human-centred
mining development recognizes the right of the northern communities to
decide their fate as well. To function in a modern way recognizes
that economic development must also take place in harmony with the
natural and social environment. The contradictory and competing
interests can
be sorted out on the basis of mutual benefit.
No to Mining Development in the Service
of
U.S. War Preparations!
No to Capital-Centred
Mining Development! Let's Discuss!
The Ring of Fire
Mining Development in the Service of
U.S. Imperialist War Preparations
- Dave Starbuck -
 In March 2006, geologists
searching for diamond-bearing
kimberlites in the McFauld's Lake area of the James Bay Lowlands of
northern Ontario, 500 km northeast of Thunder Bay, found vast amounts
of a black ore which was determined to be chromite. The deposit is one
of the largest discoveries
of chromite in the world and the only one in North America and is
reported to contain enough chromite for 100 years worth of production
at current demand levels. Other exploration quickly found nickel,
copper, zinc, gold and platinum group metals. The discovery was quickly
dubbed the Ring of
Fire. It had been theorized that there was mineralized greenstone in
that part of the province as surveys had been flown by the Canadian
Geological Survey in 1957 but isolation and harsh conditions had
precluded detailed exploration.
Early in 2010, a large U.S. company, Cliffs Natural
Resources Inc. of Cleveland, Ohio purchased two large chromite deposits
and the controlling interest in a third deposit in the Ring of Fire and
announced "its intent to develop the mining operation in the Ring and a
ferrochrome processing
operation at a site to be determined in Ontario ... with projected
start-up in 2015." Dating back to 1846, Cliffs is the largest producer
of iron ore pellets in North America, a major supplier of iron ore out
of Australia and a significant producer of metallurgical coal.
Eighty-seven per cent owned by institutional
investors and mutual funds with the largest shareholders being Capital
World Investors (9.17 per cent), The Vanguard Group (5.31 per cent),
Growth Fund of
America Inc.(4.22 per cent) and State Street Corporation (4.08 per
cent).
A project description of Cliffs' chromite project was
released this February naming Sudbury as the front-runner to host the
ore processing. The project details outline a 6,000- to
12,000-tonnes-per-day mine. An on-site ore chromite processing facility
would handle
between 3,600 and 7,200 tonnes
per day at full production, producing a concentrate suitable for
refining which would then be transported by truck down a proposed
300-kilometre permanent road to a railhead near the northwestern
Ontario village of Nakina and loaded onto CN freight for direct
delivery to Sudbury for refining.
Their preferred location is a 5,000-acre former open-pit iron ore mine
near Moose Mountain, north of Capreol in the City of Greater Sudbury.
The refinery would produce from 400,000 to 800,000 t/yr of
ferrochromium that would subsequently be used to produce alloy or
stainless steel. As many
as 1,300 direct jobs could be created with 300 to 500 jobs at the
remote mine site, 200 to 300 in transportation, and 400 to 500 in the
ferrochrome production facility. Metallurgical test work is being
conducted by Xstrata Process Support (XPS) at their facilities in
Sudbury. The tests will provide data
on the friability of the ore and the amount of electrical energy
consumed in its smelting.
However, Sudbury is not the only site being considered
by Cliffs for their proposed ferrochrome smelter. Timmins, Thunder Bay
and Greenstone have also put forward proposals. This has led to the
unseemly sight of mayors and economic development officials competing
amongst themselves
to provide the most tax incentives and infrastructure to the project, a
phenomenon that Cliffs readily encourages. Cliffs has not committed to
building its smelter in Ontario, threatening to locate it in Manitoba
or
Quebec if Ontario does not provide a more favourable hydro rate.
According to the Manitoba Hydro website, a company like
Cliffs Resources would pay a hydro bill of about $63 million a year if
it located the smelter in Ontario. The same refinery located in
Manitoba would pay $26 million a year or $33.5 million a year in
Quebec. While Northern Ontario
generates some of the cleanest and greenest electricity (mostly from
hydroelectric sources constructed decades ago) at some of the lowest
costs on the planet, the pricing of electricity is set province-wide in
Toronto. Xstrata closed the Kidd Creek met site in Timmins last year
citing high hydro rates,
as did Vale its copper refinery in Sudbury four years earlier.
Xstrata was paying hydro bills of $70 million per year at its Timmins
smelter, and now is paying less than half that amount in Quebec.
Cliffs' President of Ferroalloys Bill Boor said,
although
the Capreol is the most "technically feasible" site for the ferrochrome
processing, there is no place in Ontario that makes economic sense with
the price of power at its current provincial rates. "The availability
of a large, reliable and cost-competitive
supply of electricity is a key consideration in locating the
appropriate site of the ferrochrome production facility," said Boor.
Cliffs said the electric arc furnaces used in ferrochrome production
require 300 megawatts of power, slightly more than one per cent of
Ontario's total electricity production.
Timmins Mayor Tom Laughren said Cliffs' message is
clear, that Ontario won't get any of the processing or stainless steel
manufacturing jobs until power rates come in line with other provinces.
"We (northern Ontario municipalities) can all compete for the project
individually but at the end
of the day, if we do not get energy rates in line with what their
(Cliffs) expectation is none of us is going to see it (the ferrochrome
refinery)."
***
The development of the Ring of Fire in the James Bay
Lowlands will extend the development frontier of Ontario from Timmins
to the Attawapiskat River and result in billions of dollars of spending
on new mines, processing facilities and infrastructure, according to
senior executives of several junior
mining companies. "This is going to be huge," said Frank Smeenk,
President, KWG Resources in June 2009. "This greenstone belt, this Ring
of Fire crescent, is about the same land area of the Abitibi Greenstone
Belt, which includes Timmins, Kirkland Lake, Noranda and Val d'Or. It
comprises a
substantial part of the mining wealth of Canada, and we have a sister
to it."
At present, the main supplier of ferrochrome for the
North American steel industry is South Africa. While in South Africa,
chromite is found in narrow seams of two to three metres thick that go
for miles and miles and miles, the Fauld Lake deposit lies close to the
surface and is 100 metres
wide, 300 to 400 metres deep and extends over a mineralization zone of
sixteen kilometres.
***
Chromite is the only ore of chromium, a metal
used to
induce hardness, toughness and chemical resistance in steel. Most
chromite ore is converted into ferrochromium that is consumed by the
metallurgical industry and most of that is consumed to make stainless
and heat-resistant steel. Alloyed with
iron and nickel, chromium produces an alloy known as nichrome which is
resistant to high temperatures and used to make heating units, ovens
and other appliances. Thin coatings of chromium alloys are used as
platings on auto parts, appliances and other products. Superalloys use
chromium and
have strategic military applications. Applications of superalloys
include: gas turbines (commercial and military aircraft, power
generation, and marine propulsion); space vehicles; submarines; nuclear
reactors; military electric motors; racing and high performance
vehicles, chemical processing vessels,
bomb casings and heat exchanger tubing. Chromium has no substitute in
stainless steel, the leading end use, or in superalloys, the major
strategic end use. Chromium-containing scrap can substitute for
ferrochromium in some metallurgical uses.
United States' chromium consumption is equivalent to
about 14 per cent of all the chromite ore mined each year. In the
Western
Hemisphere, chromite ore is produced in small amounts in Brazil and
Cuba; the United States, Mexico and Canada do not produce chromite.
South Africa, India, Kazakhstan
and Turkey account for three-quarters of world chromite ore production.
World resources of chromite are sufficient to meet conceivable demand
for centuries. However, until the discovery of the Ring of Fire, about
95 per cent of the world's chromium resources were geographically
concentrated
in Kazakhstan
and southern Africa.
***
 It is the military applications of chromium
that make it
the target for such rapid development. Chromium is a strategic metal.
The need for a safe and secure supply of chromite for the U.S. military
machine was revealed recently by WikiLeaks. In secret diplomatic
messages sent by U.S. diplomats
stationed around the world, concern was expressed about foreign
dependence on key commodities. Reponding to this, KWG Resources, one of
the junior miners purchased by Cliffs, issued a statement. "The
inclusion of chrome sources in Kazakhstan and India, on a U.S. State
Department leaked
listing of strategic assets, demonstrates the potential global
significance of the Ring of Fire chromite discoveries. Until now, North
America has had no commercially viable sources of chromite," said KWG
president Frank Smeenk. "We have pressed both our Canadian and Ontario
governments to
heed the strategic significance of these remarkable discoveries, as
they represent potential continental self-sufficiency and a Canadian
export commodity that is crucial to Canada's allied trading partners.
These leaked intelligence reports have dramatically underscored our
message in this regard."
In July 2011, the Center for Strategic Leadership of the
U.S. Army War College published an Issue Paper entitled "Strategic
Minerals: Is China's Consumption a Threat to United States Security."
Revealing their fascist and imperialist hearts, the authors begin the
paper by providing a
1937 quote from Hjalmer Schacht, then German Minister of Economics: "No
great nation willingly allows its standard of life and culture to be
lowered and no great nation accepts the risk that it will go hungry."
In the paper the writers say: "The vitality of a
powerful nation depends upon its ability to secure access to the
strategic resources necessary to sustain its economy and produce
effective weapons for defense. This is especially true for the world's
two largest economies, those of the United States
and China, which are similarly import dependent for around half of
their petroleum needs and large quantities of their strategic
minerals.
"Because China's economy and resource import dependence
continue to grow at a high rate it has adopted a geopolitical strategy
to secure strategic resources. China's resulting role in the mineral
trade has increased Western security community concern over strategic
minerals to its highest point
since the end of the Cold War....
"The U.S. dependence on overseas sources of strategic
minerals essential to sustain its economy and defense sector is more
pronounced than its dependence upon foreign oil. Approximately 60% of
the petroleum consumed in the United States is imported. By comparison
the American nation
depends upon overseas suppliers for over 80% of its most important
strategic minerals.... There are substitutes for petroleum as a source
of energy, but this is not true of many strategic minerals.
"There is not, for example, a substitute for manganese
in the production of steel, or chromium in the production of stainless
steel.... United States' vulnerability to a loss of access to these
important mineral supplies is more pronounced today than at any time
since the end of the Cold War. The
uneven distribution of strategic mineral reserves and their
concentration in a handful of politically unstable or potentially
hostile countries makes it necessary that U.S. policymakers recognize
the security of resource supply as a top national security issue."
***
At present, the U.S. is the sole military superpower.
Its military expenditures approach a trillion dollars per year and are
more than those of all other countries combined and ten times that of
the second-ranked country, China. It possesses nearly ten thousand
nuclear warheads. It is engaged in half
a dozen overt and covert wars in North Africa, the Middle East and
Central Asia. The purpose of this is not only to control oil resources
but to create a block against its competitors, to limit the expansion
of Europe and Russia and to encircle China, preparing conditions for
what is portrayed as an
inevitable war with China. In this, the lack of a secure supply of
chromium is a major inhibiting factor in its push to war. Without a
guaranteed supply of high grade chromium, the U.S. war machine will be
severely inhibited. The rapid development of the Ring of Fire chromite
project aims to remove
a major U.S. vulnerability in case of inter-imperialist war.
No to Mining Development in the Service
of
U.S. War Preparations!
Positions of the Liberals, Conservatives and NDP
The Ontario Liberal government of Dalton McGuinty has
been an avid promoter of the rapid development of the Ring of Fire.
Their government gave it special attention in the Speech from the
Throne and the
budget speeches of the past two years and in speeches by the premier
and provincial cabinet ministers.
The Liberals made it one of five key components in their Open Ontario
Plan: "Your government will ensure the North benefits from its Open
Ontario plan. In 2008, northern Ontario became home to our first
diamond mine. Your government will build on that success --
particularly
in the region known
as the Ring of Fire. It is said to contain one of the largest chromite
deposits in the world -- a key ingredient in stainless steel. There is
no substitute for chromite. There is no North American producer of
chromite. It's the most promising mining opportunity in Canada in a
century. Echoing this, Minister
of Finance Dwight Duncan in the 2010 Budget Speech, said: "For the 21st
century, the discovery of chromite in the Ring of Fire could be as big
as the discovery of nickel was in Sudbury in the 19th century." In the
current election, the Liberals speak of incentives to cut electricity
costs for the resource
industry with their three-year, $450-million Northern Industrial Energy
Rate program.
 The Ontario Progressive
Conservative Party is advocating
the elimination of all barriers to the development of the Ring of Fire.
"Ontario needs a robust mining industry and the good reliable
high-paying jobs it brings. We will remove barriers by cutting red
tape, getting energy costs under control,
ensuring fair and strong land tenure and developing partnerships to
bring investments in infrastructure that a strong mining industry
requires," says Changebook North, the Conservatives northern policy
paper. The Conservatives also call for the scrapping of the Far North
Act to allow for greater resource
development. Fred Gilbert, PC candidate in Thunder Bay-Atikokan said:
"We will champion the Ring of Fire, representing the voice of northern
Ontario throughout the entire province. We will convince people in
southern Ontario that the Ring of Fire matters to them and remove all
barriers to make
development more effective and efficient."
The New Democratic Party is also supporting the
development of the Ring of Fire. Gilles Bisson, NDP MPP for
Timmins-James Bay said: "We will ensure that barriers to developing the
Ring of Fire are removed so that badly needed jobs are created in the
North. We will draft new land use
planning rules that protect the interests of First Nations, provide
clarity for development and are based on good stewardship principles of
the land. We will assist in the development of infrastructure such as
roads, rail and electrical transmission lines to the Ring of Fire. We
will provide the local workforce
with training and education opportunities so as to qualify for jobs at
the Ring of Fire." The NDP's Respect for the North plan includes
continuing the Northern Industrial Electricity Rate Program and extends
it to include smaller companies, and amending the Mining Act so that
resources such as
minerals that are mined in the North are processed in the North.
"Mining Tax revenue from new mines will stay in the North with First
Nations and Northern Ontario municipalities to meet the challenges
facing the North," says the NDP plan.
An Issue of Sustainability
- Patrick Whiteway, Canadian Mining
Review, May 29, 2011 -
Massive deposits of chromite and nickel have been
discovered in the 'Ring of Fire' under the boreal forest of
northwestern Ontario and plans by Cliffs Natural Resources and Noront
Resources respectively to develop them are well underway. How this
development is managed by the federal
and provincial governments could be historically significant for
resource development in Canada.
Canada's existing nickel mines and concentrators (at
Thompson, Sudbury, Reglan and Voisey's Bay), smelters and refineries
(at Thompson, Sudbury and Long Harbour) are located in four provinces
(Manitoba, Ontario, Quebec and Newfoundland) and are operated by two
companies (Vale and
Xstrata). The development of new nickel mines and concentrators in
Ontario's 'Ring of Fire' and at Nunavik (Reglan South) in Quebec by
other companies demands that all four provinces give due consideration
to maximizing resource efficiency and long-term sustainability on
behalf of all Canadians.
(Pap by P.
Whiteway) The scale of the undertaking is huge. It could, in the
next 10 years, create Canada's first chromite mine and open up a large
area of northern Ontario via air, rail and road links to future mineral
development. With an appropriate level of long-term visionary
leadership, the Ring of Fire development
could also transform Canada into the lowest-carbon-emitting source of
stainless steel on the planet.
How? Well, almost all of the things that go into making
stainless steel -- nickel, chromium, iron, scrap stainless steel and
low-carbon emitting hyro-electric energy -- are readily available
within
a 500 km radius of the Ring of Fire. Putting them all to good use in a
co-ordinated effort will be the
challenge.
What is not in place is a co-operative agreement with
the native people of northwestern Ontario and a commitment on the part
of the key corporate players to protect the source of these people's
livelihood -- the boreal forest. That could be a deal breaker.
A feasibility study to construct a $2-billion railway to
link the isolated northern property to existing infrastructure just
north of Lake Superior is expected soon.
To benefit from this unprecedented opportunity,
Canadians should demand a high level of inter-provincial cooperation.
Is Canada's existing national mineral development policy
sufficiently equipped to guide this process?
AT THE PRESENT TIME, CANADA'S NATIONAL MINING policy
does NOT include a requirement for companies developing mineral
resources to do everything possible to add value to those resources
before exporting them to other countries. It should.
If it did, then metal "concentrates" would be processed
here in Canada, thus maximizing benefits to all Canadians. This would
include the processing of primary chromite and nickel into stainless
steel. But would such an enterprise be economic?
Game-changing hydro electric developments are presently
taking place in Manitoba. And, over the next few years, as the world's
major economies adopt some form of carbon tax or cap-and-trade system
for managing carbon emissions, this source of electrical power will
give Canada a distinct
competitive advantage in the global economy.
Our national mineral development strategy should,
therefore, include a requirement to use mineral resources to our
advantage by processing them prior to export.
The close proximity of the 'Ring of Fire' to the
Thompson Nickel Belt in Manitoba, where smelting and refining
facilities are in place, makes the development of a domestic stainless
steel melting capacity worthy of serious investigation. Manitoba should
do everything within its power to make
such a 'brownfields' development attractive to existing stainless steel
producers.
Such a long-term vision would be a shining example of
inter-provincial co-operation, resource efficiency and sustainable
development that would benefit all Canadians.
References
"Power to the (other) Provinces", by Jan Carr. Globe and
Mail, Saturday, July 31, 2010.
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/opinions/power-to-the-
other-provinces/article1656514/
Access to land resources is an emerging sustainability
issue for mining companies and environmental groups alike. In the
southeastern United States, for example, coal mining companies want to
mine coal by a method called mountain top removal. They are pitted
against environmental groups
which want to use the same mountains for erecting a string of wind
turbines to generate renewable energy in perpetuity. See: "A Battle in
Mining Country Pits Coal Against Wind," by Tom Ziller Jr., The New York
Times, Sunday, August 14, 2010.
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/08/15/business/energy-environment/15c
oal.html?_r=1&hpw
Recent studies have shown that mountain top removal does
negatively impact the natural environment. See: "Mountain Mining
Damages Streams" by Natasha Gilbert in Nature, August 9, 2010.
http://www.nature.com/news/2010/100809/full/466806a.html
Letter to the Editor
Our Resources Stay Here!
Ontario cannot squander our
precious resources or reduce
the workers and people in resource related industries to hewers of wood
and drawers of water and still expect to have the where-with-all to
provide the infrastructure and social services needed by society. What
is not produced cannot
be distributed. As a society we cannot permit that our timber and our
minerals are exported and processed elsewhere. Yet this is precisely
what is happening and the direction we are headed in this globalized
economy organized for the benefit of a handful of monopolies and
governments that serve
their narrow interests.
The main
obstruction in resolving the question of whose resources these are and
in whose
interest they are to be developed, lies in the fact that the Ontario
government currently plays to the tune called by the domestic and
foreign finance capitalists and their monopoly interests. Instead of
upholding public right it uses the state power to crush public right
and uphold monopoly right. Along with successive federal
governments, successive Ontario governments directly intervene on
behalf of the monopolies to wreck manufacturing and destroy productive
assets in the name of attracting investment to guarantee prosperity and
job creation!
Community rally
against closure of Tembec pulp mill,
Smooth Rock Falls, June 23, 2006.
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There are many examples. Here are but a few. When Tembec
decided to close its operations in Smooth Rock Falls in 2006, citing
poor market conditions, the community came up with alternative ways to
use the forest resource. The government of Ontario however would not
take back the harvest
licences from Tembec and thus prevented the community from moving ahead
with its plan. Raw logs are now shipped out for processing elsewhere.
Another example: the McGuinty government has let
Abitibi-Bowater make a quick profit selling off hydro electric dams,
and the water licences that go with them, knowing full well it means
the paper mill will not survive in the hands of others if it has to
purchase power at commercial rates.
Yet Ontario granted the transfer
of water licences, the latest being at Iroquois Falls, just this past
year. Power generating rights belong to the people of Ontario, not to
Abitibi-Bowater or any monopoly.
 In Timmins the workers at
the Kidd Creek Metalurgical
refinery mobilized the entire community and local governments across
the north in an effort to stop Xstrata from closing down and destroying
what was a most modern, leading edge technology copper refinery. The
Ontario government
would not even consider exploring alterative uses for the site. More
than a thousand direct jobs and 4,000 indirect jobs -- gone. Millions
in
municipal, provincial and federal revenue from the metallurgical
operation -- gone. Timmins no longer processes the copper mined there.
Xstrata now ships raw
copper concentrate out of Ontario for smelting and refining and the
metallurgical refinery is being taken apart and destroyed!
The current direction is destroying even the
infrastructure necessary for processing our forest and mineral
resources! Yet anyone who says "Our Resources Stay Here" is ridiculed
as out of touch with the reality that we live in a globalized economy.
McGuinty Liberals call it a "job killer", saying
if we restrict access and monopoly right to do as they please here, our
trading partners will retaliate, resulting in even more job losses.
But the workers and people of northern Ontario are not
against globalization, international trade and so forth. It is
neoliberal globalization, imperialist globalization and the wrecking
of our economy as a result, that is rejected under the slogan Our
Resources Stay Here! The workers and people
of Ontario are very much in favour of international trade and commerce
-- on the basis of a modern, sovereign, self-reliant economy and on the
basis of mutual benefit!
A new direction is needed for Ontario and the demand Our
Resources Stay Here, heard and seen across the north, is very much part
of the workers opposition bringing that new reality into being.
A reader in Northern Ontario
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